Fall retreat for cancer patients
The weekend before last I was up north in the beautiful autumn Laurentides at Camp Kinkora, with the Young Adults Cancer Group, a division of CanSupport. As luck (good? bad?) would have it, I was the only man there. There were two coordinators, one "MC" and five other participants.
So I took a cab downtown last Saturday to meet with these people who I had never met before save one, by chance. I was feeling, as usual lately, pretty crappy, but I was determined to make it there. My motivation was that I really, really needed to talk to some people that are in a similar struggle for health and mental/emotional well-being.
I am depressed, you see. I am not the same person you met in June, full of hope and great expectations. Sure, I still expect to be better, but the feeling isn't quite as strong. But in June I could not have imagined how difficult this recovery would be, and now the reality is brutal. This depression is affecting how I function in my relationship in a major way, but that's a whole other discussion. This is supposed to be a positive entry.
I drove up with Rosaria, one of the three coordinators. It was an uneventful drive, but nice conversation was had. The view of the colours changing up north, though was wonderful. This absolutely pales in comparison with what I saw on the way there. Shortly after arriving, I took a group picture, and then picked a room in which to reside for the evening. The whole weekend was very chill, we had activities and workshops to do, but we weren't forced to do X at Y o'clock or else.
Now I thought that being with five women with cancer would mean five women with breast cancer because up until then, almost every single woman I have met with cancer had breast cancer. Instead there were two women with Hodgkin's lymphoma, one with...something else I can't recall now, but that is hereditary, and only two with breast cancer.
I made art! We heard a story about Chiron, the centaur healer that ultimately sacrificed himself to save Prometheus from his daily punishment of having his liver eaten from out of his body by an eagle, partly because he was in a lot of pain, and could not heal himself. We then were to imagine that we were descending Mount Olympus, entered a secret cave, and found a magical reflecting pool. We were asked to describe what we saw in the pool, and what we saw in the pool would be ultimately what we would create in the mask. Afterwards, we would make a story for the mask, tell part of it from its point of view, create a home somewhere on the retreat site for it, and then share this information with the group. I won't bore you with my details, but I will say that for others, it turned out to be quite an emotional experience.
I must say, I looked and felt like pure shit that weekend, but I am very glad I participated. I was able to find people that I could reach out to on a level that I cannot with other people. I had loads of fun. I made friends. I started to heal in some small way.