Yes, I survived cancer. But that doesn't define me

Debra Jarvis had worked as a hospital chaplain for nearly 30 years when she was diagnosed with cancer. And she learned quite a bit as a patient. In a witty, daring talk, she explains how the identity of “cancer survivor” can feel static. She asks us all to claim our hardest experiences, while giving ourselves room to grow and evolve.

I just met you on a bus,

and we would really like
to get to know each other,

but I've got to get off at the next stop,

so you're going to tell me
three things about yourself

that just define you as a person,

three things about yourself

that will help me understand who you are,

three things that just
get to your very essence.

And what I'm wondering

is, of those three things,

is any one of them

surviving some kind of trauma?

Cancer survivor, rape survivor,

Holocaust survivor, incest survivor.

Ever notice how we tend to identify ourselves

by our wounds?

And where I have seen this survivor identity

have the most consequences

is in the cancer community.

And I've been around this
community for a long time,

because I've been a hospice
and a hospital chaplain

for almost 30 years.

And in 2005, I was working at a big cancer center

when I received the news that

my mother had breast cancer.

And then five days later,

I received the news that I had breast cancer.

My mother and I can be competitive —

(Laughter) —

but I was really not trying to
compete with her on this one.

And in fact, I thought, well,

if you have to have cancer,

it's pretty convenient to be working

at a place that treats it.

But this is what I heard from
a lot of outraged people.

What?

You're the chaplain.

You should be immune.

Like, maybe I should have just gotten off

with a warning instead of an actual ticket,

because I'm on the force.

So I did get my treatment at the
cancer center where I worked,

which was amazingly convenient,

and I had chemotherapy

and a mastectomy, and a saline implant put in,

and so before I say another word,
let me just say right now,

this is the fake one. (Laughter)

I have found that I need to get that out of the way,

because I'll see somebody go

"Oh, I know it's this one."

And then I'll move or I'll
gesture and they'll go,

"No, it's that one."

So now you know.

I learned a lot being a patient,

and one of the surprising things was

that only a small part of the cancer experience

is about medicine.

Most of it is about feelings and faith

and losing and finding your identity

and discovering strength

and flexibility you never even knew you had.

It's about realizing that

the most important things in life are

not things at all, but relationships,

and it's about laughing in the face of uncertainty

and learning that the way to
get out of almost anything

is to say, "I have cancer."

So the other thing I learned was that

I don't have to take on "cancer survivor"

as my identity,

but, boy, are there powerful forces

pushing me to do just that.

Now, don't, please, misunderstand me.

Cancer organizations

and the drive for early screening

and cancer awareness and cancer research

have normalized cancer,

and this is a wonderful thing.

We can now talk about cancer

without whispering.

We can talk about cancer and
we can support one another.

But sometimes, it feels

like people go a little overboard

and they start telling us how we're going to feel.

So about a week after my surgery,

we had a houseguest.

That was probably our first mistake.

And keep in mind that

at this point in my life

I had been a chaplain for over 20 years,

and issues like dying and death

and the meaning of life,

these are all things I'd been
yakking about forever.

So at dinner that night,

our houseguest proceeds to
stretch his arms up over his head,

and say, "You know, Deb,

now you're really going to learn what's important.

Yes, you are going to make some big changes

in your life,

and now you're going to start
thinking about your death.

Yep, this cancer is your wakeup call."

Now, these are golden words

coming from someone who is speaking about

their own experience,

but when someone is telling you

how you are going to feel,

it's instant crap.

The only reason I did not kill him

with my bare hands

was because I could not lift my right arm.

But I did say a really bad word to him,

followed by a regular word, that —

(Laughter) —

made my husband say, "She's on narcotics."

(Laughter)

And then after my treatment, it just felt like

everyone was telling me what my
experience was going to mean.

"Oh, this means you're going to be doing the walk."

"Oh, this means you're coming to the luncheon."

"This means you're going to be wearing

the pink ribbon and the pink t-shirt

and the headband and the earrings

and the bracelet and the panties."

Panties. No, seriously, google it.

(Laughter)

How is that raising awareness?

Only my husband should be seeing my panties.

(Laughter)

He's pretty aware of cancer already.

It was at that point where I felt like, oh my God,

this is just taking over my life.

And that's when I told myself,
claim your experience.

Don't let it claim you.

We all know that

the way to cope with trauma, with loss,

with any life-changing experience,

is to find meaning.

But here's the thing:

No one can tell us

what our experience means.

We have to decide what it means.

And it doesn't have to be some gigantic,

extroverted meaning.

We don't all have to start a foundation

or an organization or write a book

or make a documentary.

Meaning can be quiet

and introverted.

Maybe we make one small decision about our lives

that can bring about big change.

Many years ago, I had a patient,

just a wonderful young man

who was loved by the staff,

and so it was something of a shock to us to realize

that he had no friends.

He lived by himself,

he would come in for chemotherapy by himself,

he would receive his treatment,

and then he'd walk home alone.

And I even asked him. I said, "Hey,

how come you never bring a friend with you?"

And he said, "I don't really have any friends."

But he had tons of friends on the infusion floor.

We all loved him, and people were going
in and out of his room all the time.

So at his last chemo,

we sang him the song

and we put the crown on his
head and we blew the bubbles,

and then I asked him, I said,

"So what are you going to do now?"

And he answered,

"Make friends."

And he did.

He started volunteering
and he made friends there,

and he began going to a church
and he made friends there,

and at Christmas he invited my husband
and me to a party in his apartment,

and the place was filled with his friends.

Claim your experience.

Don't let it claim you.

He decided that the meaning of his experience

was to know the joy of friendship,

and then learn to make friends.

So what about you?

How are you going to find meaning

in your crappy experience?

It could be a recent one,

or it could be one that you've been carrying around

for a really long time.

It's never too late to change what it means,

because meaning is dynamic.

What it means today

may not be what it means a year from now,

or 10 years from now.

It's never too late to become someone other

than simply a survivor.

Hear how static that word sounds?

Survivor.

No movement, no growth.

Claim your experience.

Don't let it claim you, because if you do,

I believe you will become trapped,

you will not grow, you will not evolve.

But of course, sometimes it's not outside pressures

that cause us to take on that identity of survivor.

Sometimes we just like the perks.

Sometimes there's a payoff.

But then we get stuck.

Now, one of the first things I learned

as a chaplain intern was the three C's

of the chaplain's job:

Comfort, clarify and, when necessary, confront

or challenge.

Now, we all pretty much love the comforting

and the clarifying.

The confronting, not so much.

One of the other things that I loved

about being a chaplain was

seeing patients a year, or even several years

after their treatment, because

it was just really cool to see
how they had changed

and how their lives had evolved

and what had happened to them.

So I was thrilled one day

to get a page down into the lobby of the clinic

from a patient who I had seen the year before,

and she was there with her two adult daughters,

who I also knew, for her one year follow-up exam.

So I got down to the lobby, and they were ecstatic

because she had just gotten
all of her test results back

and she was NED: No Evidence of Disease.

Which I used to think meant Not Entirely Dead.

So they were ecstatic, we sat down to visit,

and it was so weird, because

within two minutes, she
started retelling me the story

of her diagnosis and her
surgery and her chemo,

even though, as her chaplain,
I saw her every week,

and so I knew this story.

And she was using words like suffering,

agony, struggle.

And she ended her story with,

"I felt crucified."

And at that point, her two
daughters got up and said,

"We're going to go get coffee."

And they left.

Tell me three things about
yourself before the next stop.

People were leaving the bus before she even got

to number two or number three.

So I handed her a tissue,

and I gave her a hug,

and then, because I really cared for this woman,

I said,

"Get down off your cross."

And she said, "What?"

And I repeated, "Get down off your cross."

And to her credit, she could
talk about her reasons

for embracing and then clinging to this identity.

It got her a lot of attention.

People were taking care of her for a change.

But now, it was having the opposite effect.

It was pushing people away.

People kept leaving to get coffee.

She felt crucified by her experience,

but she didn't want to let that crucified self die.

Now, perhaps you are thinking

I was a little harsh with her,

so I must tell you that

I was speaking out of my own experience.

Many, many years before,

I had been fired from a job that I loved,

and I would not stop talking about my innocence

and the injustice and the betrayal and the deceipt,

until finally, just like this woman,

people were walking away from me,

until I finally realized

I wasn't just processing my feelings,

I was feeding them.

I didn't want to let that crucified self die.

But we all know that with any resurrection story,

you have to die first.

The Christian story,

Jesus was dead a whole day in the tomb

before he was resurrected.

And I believe that for us,

being in the tomb

means doing our own deep inner work

around our wounds

and allowing ourselves to be healed.

We have to let that crucified self die

so that a new self, a truer self,

is born.

We have to let that old story go

so that a new story, a truer story,

can be told.

Claim your experience. Don't let it claim you.

What if there were no survivors,

meaning, what if people decided

to just claim their trauma as an experience

instead of taking it on as an identity?

Maybe it would be the end of being

trapped in our wounds

and the beginning of amazing

self-exploration and discovery and growth.

Maybe it would be the start of defining ourselves

by who we have become

and who we are becoming.

So perhaps survivor was not

one of the three things that you would tell me.

No matter.

I just want you all to know that

I am really glad that we are on this bus together,

and this is my stop.

(Applause)