Welcome to the Spirit of the Written Word blog at Cancer Connection!
Current and former members of Spirit of the Written Word, the weekly writing group for people impacted by cancer, post in this occasional blog. By sharing our writing, we invite you into what for many of us is a healing process. Writing in a small group setting like this can be restorative, a way to release challenging emotions or experiences onto the page and transform them.
We are new and longtime writers at various stages of the cancer journey: in treatment, longer term survivors or caregivers. In prose or poems, non-fiction or fiction, we often write about our experiences with cancer. We also write about childhood memories, family, travel, what sustains us and more. Some of our writing is humorous or joyful!
Please do not copy or reproduce any of the writing without permission. Copyrights remain with each writer. Use of the writings for training AI technologies is prohibited.
Thank you for reading our blog.
About Spirit of the Written Word
We meet remotely on Tuesdays, 2-4 pm, mostly year-round.
We write in response to prompts, read our writing, and comment about “what sticks with us” about the writing. Everything is confidential and voluntary; when we comment we speak about the “narrator.”
Our facilitator is Pam Roberts, a two-time cancer survivor, and longtime writer and writing workshop leader.
No experience is necessary to join the group, just a willingness to write.
For more information, please call Cancer Connection at 413.586.1642.
Am I telling you anything about my cancer?
It is October 5, 2004 and I am alive. I rejoice in the company of other singers of life’s songs even though that rejoicing includes tears for those no longer singing. It is a rich time, full of expectations and trepidation, full of pizzazz and powerlessness, full of romance and regret, full of gratefulness and grumbling, full of grace and forgetfulness.
I am alive.
John Bos was one of the original members of Spirit of the Written Word at Cancer Connection in 2003. This piece is from Words to Live By, the collection of inspiring poems and prose that he directed and co-edited as a fundraiser for Cancer Connection (available for purchase on the Cancer Connection website). He left us in 2024 at age 88.