“It’s important to say
what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be
fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and tremendous
destruction. The hope I’m interested in is about broad perspectives with
specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act. It’s also not a
sunny everything-is-getting-better narrative, though it may be a counter to the
everything-is-getting-worse narrative. You could call it an account of
complexities and uncertainties, with openings.”
Rebecca SolnitHope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
Writer, historian and activist, Rebecca Solnit’s book Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild
Possibilities, originally published in 2004, has been reissued this
year. Although a book exploring
political activism, Ms. Solnit’s articulation of what hope is and is not has a
correlation to the idea of hope as experienced by people with cancer and their
caregivers. Hope is something that the
Cancer Support Community (CSC) advocated for cancer patients and their families
back in 1982 when it began as The Wellness Community and when cancer was mostly
dread and death. Dr. Harold Benjamin and
his wife Harriet, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in the 1970s, founded CSC
with its free psychosocial services of group support, classes, social
activities and education. The Benjamins
knew firsthand the despair that cancer can bring and claimed a
space for hope within the arena of life-threatening illness. The seventies and early eighties were not often
times of positive outcomes for cancer patients, or for open discussion of the
anxieties that cancer brings to everyone affected by it.Rebecca Solnit, also the author of Men Explain Things to Me, brings her journalistic eye, deep intellect and activist nature to this topic when she suggests a link between hope and action. Emily Dickenson wrote, “Hope” is the thing with feathers – that perches in the soul”. A true subtlety of life, often lost in the blunt upset of cancer, is that hope stays on the ground with us and lifts us, everything together. Hope is often thought of as something that safeguards us from gritty reality but, in Rebecca Solnit’s words, it is about “broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act (emphasis added).”
In 2016, treatments have improved, people are living longer
and better, and the word “cancer” need not be whispered. But, no one would deny that cancer does, at
the very least, bring anxieties and sometimes a loss of hope. Dr. Benjamin’s Patient Active Concept,
revolutionary in 1982 and still relevant today, specifically encourages cancer
patients and their families to partner with their physicians, to not be passive
victims during the course of their disease but to take back control—in short,
to be active in their own lives, to be active in hope and to welcome the
possibility of change.
Ms. Solnit talks about hope as containing “openings.” Hope, as providing an opening for action, is
exactly what CSC encourages. Research now
shows that CSC’s services of support and outlook of hope can enhance
survivorship. As cancer patients and families
look for places to connect with others and for places inside themselves where
the “thing with feathers” perches, CSC remains a place of hope. CSC was created as a vessel for possibilities;
it does not promise that everything will be fine but rather that life, at the
very least, will perhaps be more vibrant in choosing to live as a hope-fueled,
active participant, no matter the outcome.
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