A Little Help from My Friends

2017 had been a bit of a...hard...year, for a number of reasons.

On November 17, 2017 I was in the car, driving to the cancer clinic.  I'd had a CT scan on Oct. 31, done Studio Fair Nov. 3-5, hopped in the van on the 6th, Doug and I driving helter-skelter to Vancouver, set up and done Circle Craft, then driven home on Nov. 13-14.  Neither of those shows had been great and I was exhausted.

When I got home the latest round of edits for the book had arrived and I'd been trying to distract myself from the upcoming appointment on the 17th by working through the manuscript - version 13 point whatever - and beginning to realize I just could not.  It had grown too large for me to cope with.

By the time the 17th rolled around, I couldn't deal with it, especially in the face of my certainty that the cancer was back.  Even though the doctor had been very firm that it wasn't likely.  If it wasn't back, then something else was going on and I at the very least wanted the elephant in the room ruled out.  Because when you have what is rated an incurable cancer that will relapse?  Everything becomes about wondering if it's back again.

As I drove to the clinic the tears began to well in my eyes as I tried to think through what still needed doing and wondering where on earth I was going to find the energy and brain power.  Especially with the conference organizing also beginning to ramp up.

Once again I contemplated abandoning the manuscript and just letting it go. 

I had tried to ditch it several times previously but after a few months something would happen that would re-ignite the project and I'd begin working on it again.  This time?  This time I really thought the file was going to get dumped into the trash. 

But by this stage of the game, so many friends had invested so much into trying to help, it felt like a betrayal of their time, effort and energy.  And so I wrestled with my emotions as I found a place to park and walked up the hill to the clinic.

Suddenly a name popped into my head.  "I wonder if Ruth would come on board as editor?"

Ruth Temple that would be.  I didn't know her very well, had only really 'met' on line, but we had shared friends and we'd friended each other on Facebook.

I even had her email because we'd emailed over a project for one of those mutual friends so I contacted her.  "Would you edit my manuscript?"  I think I asked if she had the time to fit me into her schedule because I knew she did this as her profession and I didn't know what kind of queue she had.

"Yes." 

Then the tears really did come.

So when I saw the doctor, I didn't cry when I was told that um, yes, I had been correct.  The cancer was back.  My remission was over. 

But now I had a lifeline.  I sent Ruth the files I had been working with and asked her to tell me if I was wasting my time and hers.  She assured me that I was not.

My friends had also assured me I had something that needed to be said but by this point I needed someone else to tell me I had to continue.

So many people had read very early embryonic versions of the manuscript in all it's raw status.  How many was it going to take before I believed them?  One more apparently.  One more.

In the end, the book took the better part of six years, in no small part due to my teaching/traveling/show schedule, but also because of illness - mine and my mom's - and the increasing fatigue that is a major symptom of so many things, including the type of cancer I have.

By the time I contacted Ruth, I had come to the realization that I was way beyond my pay grade in terms of knowing how to get through the details of not just writing the content, but formatting such an ambitious project, and - last but not least - getting it onto the website to make it available to sell.

All of the feedback from my student's questions in the classroom, but also from the people who read those prototype versions of the manuscript was poured into the text and it would not be the book it is without all of the help and support of those people.  Some even went so far as to provide some examples of textiles because I was running out of time to get them done while I dealt with the adverse effects of the drug I take that makes it possible for me to live with cancer on a daily basis.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main..." John Donne wrote a couple hundred years ago.

I could not have done this without the help, encouragement and support of my friends and Doug.  They lifted me up when I fell.

I got by with a little (a LOT!) of help from my friends (and partner in life).

Thank you all.