When you are diagnosed with cancer you may experience an array of different emotions --fear, anxiety, depression, anger, worry and many others. Some cancer patients or survivors may feel alone or unable to talk to friends or family members about how they are really feeling.

Research has suggested that writing can help with the healing process after cancer. Living Beyond Breast Cancer (LBBC) is hosting a networking meeting for women affected by breast cancer called Healing with words: Writing the Breast Cancer Experience.

Alysa Cummings, MLS, CPT, of Pink Ribbon Poetry, will explain how women affected by breast cancer can use writing to heal. Attendees will hear a presentation by members of Pink Ribbon Poetry. Following the presentation, attendees can choose to share in a poetry therapy group and learn about online resources for writing their stories.

The networking meeting will be held on April 26, 2007, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Cherry Hill Library in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. A light dinner and refreshments will be available after the networking event. To register for this free event, visit LBBC's website or call the office at 610-645-4567.

It does not matter what kind of cancer you have been diagnosed with, this therapy can work for anyone, you can take advantage of writing in a journal in your own home. It can help heal your mind on so many levels. Try it out. You will be pleasantly surprised at the release it can give you.

I'm sharing seven bits of wisdom this Sunday that are not my own. I am borrowing them from Pat McRee who has collected all sorts of survivor stories, affirmations, quotations, poetry, lyrics, and resources, has wrapped them with a bunch of hope and humor, and has packaged them in a box she calls Support to Go, The Unbook for the Journey through Breast Cancer.

McRee's colorful, lively box contains 80 cards. And on each card is some type of tip, idea, recipe, myth, truth, and essay that makes the breast cancer road easier to travel.

Live it. Learn it. Pass it on. That's what McRee says -- and exactly what she did when she stacked her deck of cards with such meaningful and magical material.

There is no way I could easily choose seven cards from my own box of support -- there's just too much good stuff, and it all deserves equal attention. So I drew seven random cards from the pile that sits before me, and this is what I got.

Queasy Made Easy
This card lists menu items targeted for the chemo tummy. A registered oncology nurse for 20 years, Betty Dozier shares what she has learned about what to eat -- clear, cool drinks, fruit juice, plain baked potatoes, Cold canned or fresh fruit, saltines, rice, toast, clear broths, sherbet, Popsicles -- and what not to eat -- gravy, sauces, potato chips, sour cream, heavy creamed soups.

Safety in Numbers
McRee doesn't put much stock in statistics and numbers generated by calculators that have nothing to do with real people. But she does believe in numbers when it comes to survival. On this card, she lists the names of genuine survivors with real numbers. She lists Shirley Weinman, a 20-year-survivor, Janice Johnston, an eight-year survivor, Linda Beebe, a 15-year survivor -- and so on.

No Smile Left Behind
McRee offers a prescription for play, an invitation to smile and laugh and rejoice in the face of cancer. "Cut eye holes in a paper bag and wear it to treatment," she says. "Tell 'em you just couldn't face another day." Another idea -- "Pass the word that everyone who enters the waiting room will get a Standing Ovation. They all deserve 'em just for showing up."

Fuzzy Logic
Check out this oh-so-true poem:

Too gray, too wavy, too doggone thick,
Smack in the front ... a big 'ol cowlick!
Split-ends and frizzies whenever it rained,
Now it's hard to believe I ever complained;
So, Lord, let's grow something! I'll nevermore whine ...
Gray, thick and wavy will suit me just fine.

Postcards
McRee provides a few postcards intended for mailing to surviving friends. One says, I hear you're patched, retreaded and approved for the road. Another says, U are not alone.

Hair Tomorrow
McRee offers a souvenir keeper for a lock of pre-chemo hair. Why not save it, says McRee, who shares that what grows back might be as different as your new life will be.

Buttoned-Up
Make your own buttons -- and wear them proudly. This card gives button wording ideas -- like Symmetry is so yesterday, Cancer: Been There, Beat That, and Stamp Out False Hopelessness.

Seven down -- 73 to go. I can't wait to read more.

My nose was buried in books just after my breast cancer diagnosis. I craved information and thought the pursuit and acquisition of it would somehow help me gain control over a seemingly uncontrollable disease.

For the most part, reading helps me. But sometimes, I read too much -- "Stop reading", my oncologist instructed me one day after I rambled off a bunch of worries I'd gathered from research -- and I've been known to get overwhelmed by statistics and numbers and theories and clinical jargon. When this happens, I usually find refuge in the personal stories of women living with breast cancer. Those who have weathered the cancer storm are often the real experts on cancer and know how to sift through the details, offering just what's important to all who follow.

For more than a decade, two-time breast cancer survivor Pat McRee searched for the perfect guide she could recommend for women she saw at the Flying Colors cancer resource and support center she directs.

"Too long," "Too detailed," "Overwhelming," "Just plain scary," were the responses she heard about the books she had found.

So she decided to think outside the book, to create her own support guide. An unbook is what she calls it. And it's not too long, too detailed, too overwhelming, or too scary.

Support to Go, The Unbook for the Journey through Breast Cancer is instead a compilation of survivor secrets, affirmations, inspiring quotations, poetry, song lyrics, attitude buttons, funny anecdotes, and referrals to expert resources in oncology, radiology, surgery, psychology, and complementary therapies.

McRee considers her book a support group of sorts, a place where survivors can turn their wild rides into unforgettable journeys.

Take it one day at a time.
Get a good cry one time.
Find someone to talk to, not talk to you.
Watch, listen to everything funny.
It ain't over.
Pray. -- Tips from the Trenches

Flying Colors is a community support center of The Memphis Cancer Foundation. If you live in the Memphis area, it sounds like an excellent place to visit and meet others facing cancer and surviving cancer who can help you learn techniques to regain control emotionally, psychologically, and physically.

They provide a lending library, one-on-one counseling and activities. However, if you don't live close enough to visit in person, the Flying Colors website offers a variety of information for cancer patients.

You can read Affirmations, add your name to the Chain of Hope, send e-Cards, meditate on the Mindless Meditations, join the Society for Silly Survivors, read Tips from the Trenches and survivors sharing poetry and stories. There's much more in wonderful content but this gives you an idea of what to expect when you visit the Flying Colors website. I got lost in there for a time. It's nicely done.

Joining such notable poet laureates as Robert Frost, Rita Dove, Billy Collins and James Dickey, New Hampshire poet Donald Hall has become the 14th United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.

South Carolina's poet laureate Marjory Wentworth writes in Poet laureate writes of ordinary things that Hall is one of America's most distinguished and respected literary figures. Educated at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford universities, he is an award-winning writer who has published 18 books of poetry, a memoir, essay collections and children's books.

In a farmhouse in rural New Hampshire, near where Robert Frost once lived, Hall shared a life with his wife poet Jane Kenyon for more than thirty years -- before her death to cancer. Bill Moyers featured the couple in the Emmy Award-winning documentary film A Life Together. Filmed in 1993, Hall had then recently recovered from cancer. Hall said at the time that the odds were against him living another ten years. Hall beat the odds. Kenyon did not.

Kenyon was in the prime of life, being in her 40's, when she died of leukemia, and Hall often speaks of her life and death with his poetry now published in a book called Without.

Wentworth says in her review of Without, "For anyone who has lost someone they love to cancer or any other illness, this collection of poems will touch you and provide solace. The day-to-day details will be painfully familiar, but it is a good thing to read his words and share in his grief. His gift is his ability to describe the kind of pain and loss that is indescribable for the rest of us."

When Wentworth attended a memorial reading in his wife's honor, she said Hall stated, "My heart is broken, and now I am breaking the world's heart." In addition to Wentworth's review, you can read an interview in conversation with Donald Hall and Judith Moore here.

Paul Gleason, who played the go-to bad guy in Trading Places and the angry high school principal in The Breakfast Club, has died. He was 67.  Gleason died at a local hospital Saturday of mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer linked to asbestos, said his wife, Susan Gleason.

"Whenever you were with Paul, there was never a dull moment," his wife said. "He was awesome."

A native of Miami, Gleason was an avid athlete. Before becoming an actor, he played Triple-A minor league baseball for a handful of clubs in the late 1950s. Gleason honed his acting skills with his mentor Lee Strasberg, whom he studied with at the Actors Studio beginning in the mid-1960s, family members said.  Through his career, Gleason appeared in over 60 movies that included Die Hard, Johnny Be Good, and National Lampoon's Van Wilder. Most recently, Gleason made a handful of television appearances in hit shows such as Friends and Seinfeld. Gleason's passions went beyond acting. He had recently published a book of poetry. 

"He was an athlete, an actor and a poet," said his daughter, Shannon Gleason-Grossman. "He gave me and my sister a love that is beyond description that will be with us and keep us strong for the rest of our lives."

Gleason was survived by his wife, two daughters and a granddaughter. Funeral plans were pending.

Heroines: Transformation in the Face of Breast Cancer, a book of photography and poetry chronicling the spiritual odyssey and transformation of women, from 33 to 73, who have faced breast cancer, and who have had the courage to define and create their own sense of reality. The photographs are breathtakingly beautiful, the poetry moving. Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul, introduces acclaimed photographer and photojournalist Jila Nikpay's artistic project as a book with an essay written for women recently diagnosed with cancer.

From the author Nikpay in the book Heroines: Transformation in the Face of Breast Cancer: "The soul, obscured by ego and encased in the body, expresses itself in the most unlikely ways and in the most unexpected places. In my search for this elusive human quality, I have crossed the land of health into the land of illness to meet with those who have experienced breast cancer. My subjects have realized beyond this hinterland of suffering, lies a body of water in which the spirit caresses their soul and heals their wounds. Caught between the profane and divine realities, my subjects have faced their own mortality, mourned the loss of their breast and moved into the land of grace."

You can order this book from the Heroines: Transformation in the Face of Breast Cancer website. Pages of the book are featured on the website as well. As a breast cancer survivor, I highly recommend this inspirational and spiritually soothing work of art in book form, as a gift to yourself as a breast cancer survivor or as a gift for a woman in your life who is facing life with breast cancer.