This month’s resource, Wildfire Magazine & Community, might be specific to those who experience breast cancer, but the message behind it is universal: Wildfire burns through everyone’s life at some point, clearing the old and leaving fertile ground for the new. But let the founder, April Stearns, explain:
In nature, a wildfire is one of the most devastating natural forces. It burns hot and fast and leaves little behind but ash and char. Or so it seems. Very soon after the fire passes through the forest, life returns. Shrubs and weeds that clogged the forest floor have burned away, leaving space for new trees, grasses and flowers to emerge and flourish in the sunlight that can now reach them. Habitats are created, bringing new insects, birds, reptiles, and mammals. A cancer diagnosis can feel like a wildfire, our bodies becoming this new, fire-clarified landscape. For some, cancer changes utterly everything. For others, cancer bring greater clarity and purpose. And some of us are still searching for what life after a cancer diagnosis will look like.
This writing community is the only “breast cancer group” that I felt drawn to. I have never wanted breast cancer to define me and was not keen to use it as the reason to connect with others. I wanted to write with other women, but not connect in complaint, lament or fear.
When I found April and the people she attracts to her, I found a place I never knew existed. Compassion, truth-telling, comfort in connection, tears, fears, rage, wicked humour and hopefulness. Humanity basically, shared by people who know that life is precarious and grief is an inevitable result of making friends with people dealing with terminal diagnoses. It has been an uplifting experience to write alongside others who know the score and an honour to be published within pages of story-telling from our similar and differing experiences of “this scourge”.*
My third piece to be published in Wildfire, Paper Aeroplane, is now also available via their Podcast, The Burn, where I first read the article and then spend 15 minutes being interviewed by the insightful April Stearns.
This edition of the magazine was all about Family and the impacts on parenting and our circle of loved ones, plus genetic legacy and infertility. The implications of a breast cancer diagnosis and then subsequent treatment are legion and rarely recognized until you are the person having to face having a full hysterectomy and losing the chance to have children. It is also not sufficiently recognized that there are hundreds and thousands of young women being diagnosed in their 20s and 30s. This is not an “older woman” disease. We need to update our understanding and read some of the personal accounts of these young women, too many of whom are now faced with living with metastatic breast cancer for LIFE! Can you imagine what that does to your family?
Before I start shouting from the rooftops again that things need to change for this truth to be turned around, please let me encourage you to check out a copy of Wildfire magazine, or see what is being said on social media if you don’t feel inclined to purchase a print or digital copy from their website.
*Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals.
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GATHERING THIS WEEKEND: Sunday 28 July 2024 - 10amPST/1pmET/6pmUTC
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