Developing Your Resources as A Cancer Survivor

It is Breast Cancer awareness month and In A MOMENT'S NOTICE Facebook Page was birthed as a result of my own journey with breast cancer.  I will sharing informative post throughout the month and ask that you past them on to your families and friends on FaceBook so that they too like my page and enjoy the information.  My first posting is a repost of a series that I wrote for Breast Cancer Yoga two months ago.

Breast Cancer Mini Series With Dr. Dilley (Part 1 of 4)

August 27, 2013 by

Growing Your Own Hands – Part One

How To Develop A Support System For Breast Cancer

By Dr. Robin Dilley, PhD

This is the first in a series of four on Growing Your Own Hands after the diagnosis of Breast Cancer.  You can find a version of this story at http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm031.htm

One of my favorite stories to use as a psychologist is the story of the Miller’s Daughter.  This story resonates in so many ways with those facing breast cancer and other life threatening situations.   This story echoes the many multilayers of emotion throughout the journey with breast cancer, especially that emotion where it is normal to feel as if our bodies betrayed us.  The story is an old Grimm’s fairy tale and it goes like this:  A miller came upon hard times. He was approached in the forest by a strange character and was told, “If you give me what is behind the mill right this moment, I will make you a rich man.”

The miller thought to himself, “There is nothing behind the mill except an old apple tree”, so the Miller agreed.  But, to his surprise, it was his daughter that was behind the mill.

So, when the time came, a struggle ensued between the strange character and the miller’s daughter.  The daughter used spiritual symbols of that era to protect herself.   She drew a circle around herself and the strange character could not pass through the boundary of the circle to acquire his prized possession.  Finally, the strange character said to the miller, “Look I am going to take back all of your riches that I have given you unless you cut off your daughter’s hands.”  The miller, being a selfish man, did just that.

The miller then turns to his daughter and says,  “With my riches, I will build you a castle and take care of you in every lavish way.”

The daughter responded,  “No thank you.  I will go out into the world and trust the goodness of others.”  And so her mother bound her daughter’s handless arms and she left her father’s house for a journey she chose after a traumatic even happened to her.  Life as she knew it had came to an end.

Over the next seven years, the daughter grew her own hands.  When facing all of the struggles of treatment, fears of death, and the constant roller-coaster of emotions that sometimes drown us, there is still that place deep down inside of us that we can access and move forward to write the next chapters of our lives.  And by doing so, we grow our own hands again in ways that we never have could imagined.
Once we receive the diagnosis with breast cancer, our emotions go into shock and we are faced with very important life-changing choices.  It is important at this time to rely on the goodness of others and build a support system.  Ideally, one of those people should be a “research director” who can take the information from the pathology report that gives you the map the oncologist and radiologist will be using to offer you the best treatment options available to you at this time.

Your path report will tell you what type of breast cancer, what stage, what grade, etc.  Each one of those foreign words can be researched online to help you better understand what you are facing.  By having a good research director on board, s/he can forward you information worth looking at and discard the hundreds of articles that you do not need to know at this time.

From there, create a list of questions for your oncologist and radiologist.  There are no stupid questions.  And in the emotional turmoil that you are in, you may need to ask the same question over and over until you understand the ramifications of what you are about to go through.  It is important to feel that you have choices and that you are a vital part of your own treatment team.  There are many oncologists out there, so give yourself permission to shop around if you don’t like the responses you are getting from yours.  You may not be able to control the fact that you now have breast cancer, but you can make lots of decisions along the way.     Blogger: Robin B. Dilley PhD

Labyrinth Mondays: Necessary Journeys

It is a journey to Bethlehem from Nazareth which is about 80 miles, traveled with donkey and on foot would be at least a four day journey, perhaps a week given that Joseph was an older man and Mary was with child, not any child, but the Christ Child. That is the traditional Christmas story. In our Labyrinth Mondays, we have been talking about the power of the journey. There are many journeys in our lives that we just do not want to take but for whatever that makes sense to us at the time, the journey feels like a must. Mary and Joseph had to take the Journey as they had to pay taxes. It was necessary.


The 3-Day Breast Cancer walk of 60 miles has become a phenomenon in America. It is a journey that breast cancer patients, their friends and relatives take to punctuate the power of survival and the hope for a cure. It is necessary!

It is only three days before Christmas and anticipation of Santa is in the air, the jolly fat guy that brings us gifts of cheer, journeying all over the globe in a twenty-four hour period to make children happy with delight that they are not forgotten and are gifted just because it is Christmas. It is necessary!

Really, Dr. Dilley, the journey of Santa Claus is necessary? I know it is easy to become cynical about the craziness of the perfect Hallmark Christmas. However, we have made it crazy, not Santa Claus. We have not dealt with are neurosis, our perfectionism, our need to be better, nor our competitive nature, such as “My Christmas lights are better than yours.” As Americans, Christmas has become crazy not because of commercialism, but because our neurosis, our unhealed selves have allowed ourselves to be seduced by more and better, not because the 1% is trying to make a bigger profit. We have contributed to this fiasco of “It is Necessary!” It is not the Jolly Fat Man’s fault.

So what now? Relax, get back on track. Take back a little bit of you for Christmas. Step back to the spirit of the Journey. Make a child smile. Make an adult feel appreciated. Make a loved one know that they are important. Take a step into the center and change turn down the throttle on Christmas chaos. It is necessary!

To have help in getting your life back into perspective, becoming centered, and moving forward, then please join me on the Labyrinth workshop January 7, 2012. That is the day after Epiphany. Come and move forward away from the chaos. Go to www.psycotherapyunlimited.com to register for the workshop today.

My Breast Cancer Journey and the Labyrinth

With October being breast cancer awareness month,  I personally did alot of reflecting on my journey as a survivor.  In honor of that journey and my spiritual relationship with the Labyrinth I have decided to share the entire chapter about my Labyrinth relationship on Labyrinth Mondays.  Here is that Chapter.  To read more about my journey you can purchase my book at http://www.amazon.com/ or directly from me at http://www.psychotherapyunlimited.com/. 

OTHER SPIRITUAL PIECES:

THE LABYRINTH

My life has always been a mixed tapestry of spirituality. Spirituality is a part of who I am and not something that I do. I deeply believe that we are spiritual beings and it is our job to attend to our spiritual garden. The spiritual garden is within each of us and we can let it grow weeds, let it dry up and die, or we can gently tend to it throughout all of the days of our lives. When we face a storm our garden can become overwhelmed with waves and wind damage and we must use our resources to repair it and re-establish it. When there is a drought, we must carry water to our spiritual garden. In the next few chapters, I want to share some of the spiritual practices that I used during and after my journey with breast cancer. It was natural for me to turn to my spiritual resources during this time. The Labyrinth, the Healing Power of a Native Sweat, and a Vision Quest are three key components of my journey.
During the Nineties, the spiritual significance of the labyrinth began pouring into print. It seemed that everywhere I turned someone was writing or talking about his or her experience of God as he or she walked the labyrinth. I began to read about this spiritual practice and discovered its ancient history. A labyrinth is not a maze. In the English language, the words “labyrinth” and “maze” are often used interchangeably. A maze contains dead ends and often has many entrances. A labyrinth has one entrance and one exit. It is a path from the outside in and then from the inside out. It has a sacred sense of journey about it; perhaps the eleven-circuit labyrinth began as a spiritual practice for those who could not make the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem. No one really knows the reason labyrinths were created but there are eleven-circuit and seven-circuit labyrinths. Seven-circuit labyrinths date back four to five thousand years and are seen in Hopi, Cretan, and Celtic spiritual practices. The most famous eleven-circuit labyrinth is in Chartres Cathedral in Chartres, France, and dates back to the twelfth century. The number of circuits simply means the number of times the pilgrim passes the center of the labyrinth during his or her walk.

My interest in the labyrinth grew. I responded to that interest by making a special pilgrimage to San Francisco to walk the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral. There, I, too, experienced a peaceful sense of purpose. I felt a sense of holiness about the journey in and out and around the path that brings us into the center of God, and back out to the world again. Grace Cathedral has an indoor and an outdoor eleven-circuit labyrinth. The indoor one provides the pilgrim with quite an intense experience because sacred music is playing during the labyrinth walk. It was easy for me as I walked it to become lost in the music, feeling as if I was transcending consciousness. The outdoor labyrinth overlooked the busy San Francisco streets. Walking it created a sense of purpose, with a special connection to the world. The two labyrinths provided me with an experience and a picture of God inside of me and outside of me at the same time.

When I left San Francisco, I wanted desperately to have a local labyrinth. I felt a strange loneliness for it. I felt connected, sort of called to it as a way of worship. There was something about this walking meditation that provided me with an experience of God that fed my hungry soul. That journey to San Francisco was in 1997.

In 1998 our Episcopal Cathedral, Trinity, was under reconstruction. Trinity is a local historical landmark for Phoenix as well as the headquarters for the Episcopal bishop and church administration. The Dean of the cathedral at the time, Rev. Rebecca McClain, was in charge of the reconstruction. Lo and behold, she was having a beautiful eleven-circuit labyrinth built in the center of the courtyard. I felt like God had answered my prayers. I was ecstatic about the plans. I couldn’t wait for it to be finished. Trinity finished the labyrinth in December 2000. One of my New Year’s resolutions of 2001 was to walk the labyrinth once a week for the entire year.

I walked it every Wednesday. If I was out of town for some reason, I made arrangements to walk it at some other time. The experience of that commitment created a sacred space inside of me and I developed a personal relationship with this sacred art form that allowed me to be touched and touch God in unique ways. I was very aware during my labyrinth walks of the gift of life. It seemed that each week my gratitude for my life and my recovery became deeper. I was aware on these walks with God that my life was meaningful and that I needed to be awake to all God had in store for me. During this time my gratitude for being alive grew.

I definitely have an attention problem that becomes a bother in times of prayer, but the motion of walking, following a path, and making a pilgrimage to the center where all is well and perfect is a powerful and unifying experience. I used this time with God to refocus my life, to pull close to the spiritual world, recommitting to a life of meaningful experience with God. I not only re-dedicated my life to one of service and ministry but also used the time to refocus on the art of prayer and watched as my prayer life transformed from a dead stick in the ground to a beautiful lush green plant.

The story of the dead stick is significant because when I was a student of spiritual direction during my master’s program, I had a director who told me to plant a stick in the ground and to water and care for it as if it were alive. Of course, I thought this was a silly exercise, but part of being a student of spiritual direction is learning to follow direction. I learned so much from this exercise that it still empowers my consciousness in my psychotherapy practice. For example, many times I think to myself, we are not getting anywhere in therapy. Nothing is ever going to change in this person’s life; it is just the same old thing. In my discouragement it would be easy to give up, but I remember the exercise of watering the stick. This mutually powerful and silly exercise taught me to stay with a project even though it seems fruitless.

The stick did not change, but I did. I learned just how much water the earth was able to absorb in order for the stick not to get too wet and rot. I also had to learn just how much water was sufficient to keep the ground closed around the stick in order that it remained erect. I practiced caring for it daily while acknowledging that I got nothing back in return. I had to live through my own embarrassment about the craziness of watering a stick, thinking horribly judgmental thoughts at times. Sometimes, those judgmental thoughts were directed at me and my stupidity for participating in such a ridiculous exercise and at other times those criticisms were directed at my spiritual director.

In my head, I accused her of being mean and manipulative. Walking the labyrinth on a weekly basis sometimes was like watering the stick. Sometimes I felt silly, as if I were going nowhere. At other times, it was a soul-ripping experience that shook me to my core. I was able to unravel complexities in my life during that time. I was able to pick up pieces of my life that I had laid aside, such as my writing. I was able to focus again on the alpha and omega of God. At the same time that I started my relationship with the labyrinth, I also started a professional relationship with a teacher and healer.

Communicating about the Big "C"

Developing Resources and Skills To


Help You and Your Companion Person

Communicate About Your Cancer

An Overview of a Workshop by Dr. Dilley



Cancer defines some things about us. But it does not define us. I am not a cancer patient or survivor, I am a person with cancer and who has survived cancer for 10 years. Why does cancer rock our world more so than some other diseases? Silence, fear, anxiety, depression, and shame, and what I call "THE GREAT UNKNOWN" all impact our experience of living with cancer.

What is cancer? Cancer is abnormal cell growth, stuck in the “on” position. It is the generic name for over 100 diseases that share similar characteristics of malignant cells. A malignant cell is a cell that has lost its mind and is sucking the life out of other cells to survive. 10 Million people survive the malignancy every year. So what is the problem? The problem is that the “cell” is out of control. It must be killed. It will not stop on its own. Thus, the wonders of chemotherapy. Then radiation to “make sure”. But the real problem is the fear it creates within us and between us. Thus we have to talk about it.

So how do we talk about it? The “C” Word ignites our innate Defense Mechanisms of survival. Thus, whatever stressors we have in our lives and our relationships become magnified with that sentence that each of us have heard come out of our doctor’s mouth, “I am sorry, but you have cancer.”Remember that day? I bet you remember every detail of that moment. You knew it was coming. You knew that when you saw your oncologist after surgery, that he/she would have your path report. You were already feeling shaky, scared, and lost, then those words fall out of his/her mouth and your world is turned upside down. Life as you have known it, has come to an end. Who do you tell? What do you tell them?

What are some safe ways to talk about the big "C"?

Journal what you want to say, then edit it.

Write a letter to your companion.

Ask someone else for help to express what you need to say.

Tell your companion, I want to talk, but I am not sure how to say the things I need to say. I need you just to listen and not comment. Then, after you think about it, we can talk. I just don’t know how to do this. So I am going to do my best.

What are some questions to ask when your partner has cancer?



1. What is the hardest part for you right now?

2. What does this treatment do to me/you?

3. What do you need from me right now?

4. Can you share with me what is going on in your head right now?

5. How are you feeling about what is happening?

6. I hear you are sad about losing your hair. Can you tell me about it?

7. I hear you are angry that this is happening to you. I know you are. I am angry too. It should not be happening, but it is. I am not afraid of your anger. You can share it with me.

8. “What can I do to make you more comfortable?” Notice how different that question is rather than, “Can I do anything to make you more comfortable?”

9. I would like to go in with you to see the doctor. Four ears are better than two. Would you like for me to go in with you?

10. I don’t know what you are feeling right now. I do care. Can you talk to me about what you are thinking or feeling?



Things to remember:



Cancer does not define us

Cancer gives us many opportunities to change

While wrestling with this disease, it will be best if we communicate to our companion the things we want, need, wish, desire, and feel.

Words do not have to be so scary.

What's the goal? There are many goals in this race against time, however, there is only one goal that both of you have control over. That is this goal: Live the Best Life Possible in the Time You Have.



Live the Best Life Possible in the Time You Have.