A Lost Song Found

In 1992, my world came undone. I turned 40, stood at the crumbling edge of a marriage, juggled single parenting with a soul-crushing job, and wore a second skin of exhaustion from nightly, professional theater performances. That year, my father died. Then came the breast cancer diagnosis.

The surgeon’s words were sharp and final: “Chemo and radiation or you won’t see your daughter graduate from high school.” My daughter was ten.

There is a family history. My mother had died of breast cancer in 1973. Since then, I’d quietly chased every article and study about women’s health, cancer, stress, food, and healing. Some of what I found challenged everything I’d been told. I read how prolonged stress, abuse, chronic fatigue, and processed diets could cause cancer. Could these emotions we bury so deeply grow tumors of their own?

There was something in that idea that felt… true. At least for me.

So, I made a decision. I quit my job, finalized my divorce, and threw myself into the creative life I had always loved—music, theater, writing—anything that fed my spirit instead of draining it. I adopted a macrobiotic diet, practiced meditation, homeopathy, and surrounded myself with people who made me feel whole. I changed careers to something softer, kinder.

And I saw a new doctor, one who, during our first visit, didn’t prescribe a pill. Instead, he hugged me. A big, warm, lingering hug.

“Fill your life with people who give you this,” he said. “Every day.”

That hug became my new prescription.

Did you know a person needs four hugs a day to survive, eight hugs a day to maintain, and twelve hugs a day to grow? I didn’t either. But I started collecting them like precious gems. Slowly, gently, I began to feel like myself again—maybe someone I had never truly known.

The most healing part? Learning to see value in myself—not for what I can do, but for who I am.  I stopped trying to fix the world and simply started showing up in it—with honesty, openness, and care.

I wasn’t “cured.” But I was healing. In ways that no scan or blood test could measure.

By 1994, I’d been volunteering at Fenway Clinic in Boston with the AIDS Action Committee. I sat with patients, held hands, witnessed last breaths. One rainy afternoon, I didn’t feel emotionally strong enough to go in. I almost called in a substitute. But then the clinic phoned first—one of my patients, Larry, was close to passing.

I went anyway.

That evening, a new drawing hung on the wall. A charcoal portrait of a man with AIDS. The caption read: “I came here to die with dignity, but I learned how to live with grace.”

I stood frozen in front of it. I was meant to be there that night—not just for Larry, but for myself. I had come to understand: healing wasn’t always about curing. Sometimes, it was about witnessing grace in the hardest moments. And choosing to live in response to that grace.

I never had to suffer through chemotherapy or radiation and I carry one, nearly invisible scar from a hysterectomy. I survived breast cancer, ovarian cancer and currently I live with Stage 2 CLL. Yet I am still here. Still choosing joy. Still gathering hugs.

Cancer, I’ve learned, isn’t a battle to win or lose. It’s a journey that shapes who we become, and what we give. It taught me to look deeper, love harder, and show up even when I’m scared.

Every day, I ask myself one question: How do I win today? Not for trophies or triumphs. Just for the quiet, sacred joy of being here—and the hope of leaving something good behind.

A lost song that returned

There was a time when the music stopped—when fear struck a sour chord and silence felt like the only sound left. But within the quiet, a single note remained. Soft at first, then stronger. The song returned, not as it once was, but transposed into a new key—deeper, more soulful, resonating with hard-won joy. Now, every day is a chorus of meaning, every breath a lyric of gratitude. We are a living anthem—proof that even after the silence, the music can rise again, more beautiful than ever. We now know how to learn the song in someone’s heart and to sing it to them when they have lost it.