“Death had slipped quietly into my home and declared herself my teacher,” Barbara Becker writes in the introduction to her debut memoir, Heartwood, The Art of Living With the End in Mind.
It is rare that a book makes me cry. Heartwood is written with such tenderness and beauty and it has helped me see death as my teacher, too.
Barbara Becker has worked with human-rights advocates around the world, many of whom faced death as a result of their outspokenness. She is an interfaith minister and has worked as a hospice volunteer and participated in a delegation of Zen peacemakers and Lakota elders in the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota. She is also a dear friend.
Last year, Barbara and I walked 30 miles of the Cape Cod shoreline, retracing the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau. Over three days, while seals trailed us and seagulls cleared the path ahead, we talked about the surprising connections between pleasure and dying: attention, gratitude, and awe to name a few.
We met this past week for another walk, this time along the East River near where we both live. We talked about the launch of Heartwood and the surprising symmetry of life: the day her book was released, she went in for surgery to remove the tumor that had been found in her breast.
I recorded our conversation as we walked a stretch of the East River Park.
Barbara Becker: I knew something was up because when the results of a biopsy are totally fine, they leave you a message saying, “all good.” When I finally got the doctor on the phone, she said, “Do you have somebody in the room or nearby who can be a support to you?” I was like, “Okay, I have cancer.” I was a little bit surprised by how calm I was. I felt like, well, there it is.
TPR: I can’t think of anybody who's more prepared for this moment than you.
BB: I have done so much work on death and dying. But you just don't know until you're going through it.
I was looking at images online of scars and trying to decide what I would do if I needed a double mastectomy. I literally had a window of 24 hours to decide. I spent that time trying to be at peace with what would change in my body. It's incredible to think about how much of our identity is wrapped up in our image of our bodies.
TPR: Especially for women. Our breasts are so much a part of our identity, not to mention the fact that we nurse our children, and we may have partners who are impacted.
BB: Right. It's not just the person who is going through an experience who's affected but their entire family and support structure around them.
TPR: So what happened?
BB: They thought that I could get away with having a lumpectomy and having lymph nodes removed to make sure it hadn't spread.
I have a killer three-inch scar across the top of my breast that looks like I was in some kind of knife fight. I was joking that I’m gonna wear low-cut t-shirts from now on because my warrior scar looks like I had a fight. And I won.
I'm grateful for all of the women who shared their own cancer journeys, friends of mine who I didn't even know had breast cancer. The amazing thing about the sisterhood of women survivors is that they are so open. Someone would say, “I will show you my saline implant, I will show you my silicone implant, I will show you my scars where I decided not to do reconstruction”. What a gift to be that vulnerable [in order] to help somebody else.
I wouldn't have known about their experiences if I hadn't decided to be vulnerable and share on Facebook. I've spent so much time living with taboos around women's health. I’ve had two miscarriages and I didn't talk about them so nobody had any idea what I was going through. To be that isolated is like a form of torture. I'm convinced.
TPR: I totally agree. Shame is a form of suppression and it separates us from the support we could have.
BB: I didn't want people's pity. I didn't want the puppy eyes. Managing people's reactions was what I was most afraid of. So, this time around, I was like, I'm just gonna tell everybody.
None of us would ever wish that we had anything happen in our lives, but the people who are so interesting to me are the people who are able to turn things around and eventually gain enough perspective to be helpful to somebody else.
TPR: It’s like you prepared for this moment not knowing it is for you.
BB: It was completely surreal, having a book come out the very same day that I was in surgery— a book I wrote on just this, loss in love and uncertainty, and here I am turning around and reading the words that I wrote to help other people to help myself.
When I did training for hospice, we were told to meet people where they are. I've learned through all of this that we have to also meet ourselves where we are. Sometimes we need a huge fight to get through something that's hard and painful. Sometimes we need to surrender. And sometimes we need our tears. And sometimes we need to just forget it all and dance around the living room.
TPR: What else has been helpful these past few weeks?
BB: Food has been amazing—healthy food that friends have made; that's a godsend. Handwritten cards are beautiful. I am keeping all of them. Being outside and walking with friends is completely nourishing. One of my friends crocheted me this gorgeous shawl. She said she was thinking of me with every stitch. It’s beyond a gift. It feels like a prayer.
TPR: It sounds like everything is taking on a deeper meaning. A gift becomes an offering. A shawl becomes a prayer.
BB: I went to the pharmacy the other day to pick up a medicine that I'll need to be on for five to 10 years. I'm afraid of this stuff. It comes with a lot of side effects. I knew I was going to have to change my relationship with it and treat it as a sacred healing medicine. So I took it here to the river, where there's a beautiful tree that I love and I sat underneath that tree and asked the universe for a blessing. Every time I take it, I'm going to turn it into a meditation, rather than having it be my enemy.
TPR: What is it that we are talking about when we talk about dying? Is it an acceptance of the demise of our bodies, accepting that we are finite beings and that there is some end to this existence that we have come to identify as ourselves?
BB: The metaphor that I use is heartwood, which is the inner core of a tree. It is the pillar that gives the tree its strength. It is inert; it’s totally dead. It doesn't participate anymore in the flow of water and nutrients in the tree. And yet, it's like the essence around which all the growth rings grow. So I think that yes, in some way, we are finite. My mom is no longer here. My dad is no longer here, my best friend from childhood is no longer here. But they form my heartwood. They are the essence around which I grow and, in some ways, they feel as present to me now as they ever were when they were physically here. In order to grow and thrive, I need them and they also need us. Heartwood will rot out if there are not strong growth rings around it. It's symbiotic—a disappearance in a physical form, but yet, the essence still remains.
From the Institute for Pleasure Studies:
The Pleasure Report is starting a BOOK CLUB and we are beginning with Heartwood. Get your copy and get ready to join us in early July for a conversation with Barbara. Details to come.
If we looked to trees as metaphors for our lives, we might have a very different culture. Trees talk to one another and warn one another of danger. More established trees lift water up for the younger ones. On the brink of death, some trees will donate their share of carbon to their neighbors. If you haven’t already read this NYTimes article or Richard Powers’ novel, The Overstory, you are missing out. (The Overstory will be our second book club read.)
Ritual is to the soul what food is to the physical body,” writes Sobonfu Somé in Cultural Survival. Grief rituals can help us move our unexpressed grief and to release energy and emotions.
The 10 best and 10 worst things you can say to someone who is in grief.
Join today as a founding member and get a copy of Heartwood, in time for our first book club gathering.