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.

Survivorship is the new cancer buzz word -- and what an important word it is. Once left to each individual to define, manage, and transcend, survivorship is now recognized as a distinct phase of cancer recovery -- just as important, and maybe even more so, than diagnosis and treatment.

Linda Griggs, a 13-year breast cancer survivor, clearly remembers the day her chemotherapy ended. With her therapy complete, her hair growing back, and her medical team sending her off to have a nice life, she thought she'd be fine. But she wasn't.

Three months after her last dose of chemotherapy, Griggs was depressed, consumed with worry about how her cancer might come back. And she realized that the end of treatment is not really the end. It's just the beginning.

Griggs told her doctor about her anxiety, about how she was just trying to make it to her next three-month-check up. When her doctor told her, "that's not living," something clicked for Griggs who instantly decided to start living -- really living.

Surviving is about self-nurturing, says Griggs, who has created a kit to help others survive cancer. On her website, she writes that there are a couple of other breast cancer survivor kits out there -- containing tissues, herbal teas, meditation tapes, medical appointment books, and breast cancer resource materials.

"This is not that," she says of her kit that focuses on the emotional upheaval cancer creates.

Griggs' kit is full of hands-on creative materials -- like an inner child notebook, complete with magic markers for journaling and expressing emotions. If you're angry, you can write down angry thoughts. If you're sad, write what makes you sad. Save the pages, tear them up, burn them, do what you wish -- but allow your emotions to flow, Griggs says.

The kit also includes a wooden box with instructions on how to create a healing shrine, a copy of Griggs' non-fiction account of the first five years of her cancer journey, and so much more.

Griggs, who also teaches healing workshops, guides others to understand cancer as a hero's quest. She says when something happens to us -- death, divorce, disease -- we are receiving a call to adventure. All bet's are off. We must start fresh, gather our spirit guides, collect ourselves, dive into the underworld, overcome, and then emerge full of wisdom of growth.

Griggs has emerged -- full of her own wisdom and growth. She is a hero -- on a quest to help others survive a disease that threw her way off track for way too long.

I had a free massage the other day, compliments of a local massage workshop called Caring for Clients with Cancer.

This hands-on gift came to me by way of a woman who was once a scientist and is now a massage therapist. Concerned that cancer patients are rarely encouraged to cash in on the benefits of touch therapy, this woman merged her two disciplines so she could help patients heal in a holistic manner. And so her workshop was born. And I was invited to take part.

I received one completely soothing and invigorating massage. I also received one completely inspiring packet of quotes -- that I've already read over and over again -- related to recovery and healing. Each quote is so perfect in its message, and I wish I could share them all today. But time and space are limited at the moment, and I can only share a few.

So here are seven of my favorite quotes, free for the taking, a gift from me to you. Take a moment to read them, share them, savor them, and quietly reflect on the power of these simple words.

People who have been through illness's dark passage can occasionally give us a glimpse, not only of what it is like to become whole, but of what it is to be more fully human.
--Marc Ian Barasch
The Healing Path

Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.
--Patti Smith

What matters is this: you can look at a scar and see hurt or you can look at a scar and see healing. Try to understand.
--Sheri Reynolds

I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and to share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigating pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk through the rain.
--Audre Lorde

Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.
--Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor

Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something.
--H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Patience is a hard discipline. It is not just waiting until something happens over which we have no control; the arrival of the bus, the end of the rain, the return of a friend, the resolution of a conflict. Patience is not waiting passively until someone else does something. Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient, we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later, and somewhere else. Let's be patient and trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand.
--Henry J.M. Nouwen

The Men Against Breast Cancer organization wants to help men get involved in helping the women they love battle breast cancer. Their symbol, a pink and blue ribbon signifies the war against breast cancer is one that men and women must face together.

Marc Heyison and Steve Peck are the founders of Men Against Breast Cancer (MABC). Marc's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992. He understands how a breast cancer diagnoses impacts not only the patient but the entire family.

The website states that this is the first non-profit organization to provide targeted support services to educate and empower men to be effective caregivers when breast cancer strikes a female loved one; as well as, target and mobilize men to be active participants in the fight against breast cancer.

You can find many resources on the website such as the Partners in Survival workshop that brings practical advice and tips to help the whole family. Special emphasis is placed on men understanding the physical and emotional needs of their female partners.

The website will also have available in January of 2007 a book called For the Women We Love: A Breast Cancer Battle Plan and Caregivers Action Guide for Men.

Lori Fischer began making handmade dolls for her children. Soon her friends were asking for a one-of-a-kind doll of their own. Once, when a friend was suffering hair loss, she made a doll without hair -- and she included wigs and hats for the doll as accessories and gave it to her friend. She started holding doll making workshops. According to Fischer, women and their daughters, or groups of friends, have spent the day sewing, eating, and socializing in a way that has all but been forgotten.

In the fifteen years since she began making dolls, her dolls have evolved into works of art that are shown in local art galleries.

Last year, she was awarded a grant through the City of Oakland's Cultural Arts Funding Program to visit children in two hospitals for the purpose of teaching them to make hand-stitched, one-of-a-kind dolls.

The children that she works with are cancer patients at the Bone Marrow Transplant Center who are required to spend long periods of time in the hospital. Spending time making a doll takes the child's mind off the struggles and challenges they face. Each child is allowed to be expressive and create a doll that reflects individual creativity and personality.

Some of the dolls the children have made, and dolls that Fischer makes, can be seen at Dolls4ArtSake.

Five women.  Five different stories and experiences.  Five breast cancer survivors.  All sharing their messages of struggle and hope and survival in ways they may not have imagined when they first gathered in September 2004 for a writing and theatre workshop with Sacred Cliffs Productions. They debuted a stage performance in December 2004 titled Bosom Buddies: An exploration of breast cancer in the words of survivors and were met with a tremendous response.  After much regional media coverage and offers to tour the New England area with their inspiring messages, Sacred Cliffs is committing their work to a screen adaptation called Getting It Off Our Chests.

Sacred cliffs are those moments we all know so well -- moments when something life-changing happens in our worlds and our only choice is to step off the cliff into uncharted territory.  We all handle these cliffs differently.  Some jump off with eagerness and excitement; some with uncertainty; some with fear and dread.  Regardless, we all have a story to tell once the jump is complete. Just like these five women who share with their audiences stories full of courage, laughter, fear, pain -- stories about life beyond breast cancer.

Getting It Off Our Chests, funded by a non-profit organization, is told by the women themselves, in their own words.  Already, thousands of people have witnessed the wonder of this performance -- a performance that will surely touch the lives of all who hear the empowering voices of these five women.