Recap: Cancer. It depletes the body’s strength but it does so much more. It invades the very soul. The terror and helplessness destroy the self-assurance of its victims, leaving them floundering like a shaky, fearful rag doll. The spirit, a vital partner with chemotherapy in healing, is weakened.
Ezer Mizion has many methods of invigorating that vulnerable spirit with positive vibes. Art Therapy is a favorite. Each year the Cancer Support Division’s Art Workshop presents an exhibit for the public in which cancer patients have expressed their innermost thoughts via visual art. The program empowers the patient to create and regain the self-respect he has lost in the bewildering maze of fear and horror. Below is one of the submissions:
I try to learn from the cypress tree. There it stands amid the storms of its existence. But it doesn’t break. Each raging tsunami causes it to bend its branches, sometimes bending almost to the ground. But the tree itself? The tree remains whole.
I envy the cypress as I am buttressed from all sides by the tempests of life. They threaten to break me. The miniatures hanging from the tree represent each assault and I try to imitate the cypress tree and remain whole.
And the last one for our esteemed readers:
‘Again the spring will bloom and I alone will hang on my trunk an ice sculpture with neither bud nor flower, neither fruit nor leaf.’ Covid came and the world went into winter hibernation. Then Covid weakened and the world gradually came out of its cave. Just I alone remained. In eternal winter while the world enjoyed the loveliness of spring. Yet I secretly nurtured a tiny seed of hope…hope that I, too, will break through the frozen ground, a tip of green and soon…a leaf. And indeed, after a year or treatments and another year of recovery, spring has come to me, too
