The Cancer Support Writing Group: Grounding Numb Feet

This is a writing about writing, thoughts that occurred to me as and after I did the writing exercise entitled Grandma and Angels. I think it must be part of how the Amherst Method works.

(there was a grounding and centering exercise before the prompt)

It's a cancer writing group, led by a breast cancer survivor. I haven't met a single man in any of these groups. Where do the men go?

The first prompt comes from a set of cards depicting women and female images. I find only one ambiguous enough that I can see men. I choose to write about it, but my writing is meandering, vague. I don't want to write about these cards. I want to write about leaving another safe place for another unknown place. But in this place the cards are more important.So I write about the cards, half hearted, and am surprised to hear that what I wrote was powerful. What if I wrote what *I* thought was powerful? Nonsense or insanity, I guess. I am no judge of power. That's why I break things or fail to open jars.

Sigh.

The next prompt is a reading, and I lose the thread, instead write what's in my mind, the burden of my labels. It's about learning something, and I doubt I've learned anything. There's something about saying what I mean to say, or what I really want, but I don't want to tell these women.What I really want is to have learned something about being a man. But that lesson will elude me as surely as relaxation. "Feel your feet on the floor..." My feet are effing numb! Hasn't anyone in this group had peripheral neuropathy before? I use my own strategy. I block out the words droning in the warm tea atmosphere and pick up my zen training: let go of my breath, let go of tension. I manage to let go of something and feel myself sink into the cushiony soft sofa.

Oh well.