Blog Real Life

Nothing in fiction can top real life and I confess that I prefer fiction to memoir and biography.  The sprinkling of imagination like spices on a gourmet dish can turn boring history into explosive fiction.  Reality as the back drop for fiction needs to go outside the boundaries of hum-drum.

 

Belly of the Whale is the fictional account of twenty-four hours in the life of a young woman with breast cancer; a disease whose reality is lived everyday by so many people.  If you look at statistics the numbers are staggering.  Age forty, that mid-life crisis birthday, is when having mammograms should begin.  Breast cancer occurs at any age, but more often as women get older.  Your chances of not ever having cancer are slim, very slim.  For most; it will happen.

 

Breast cancer is the nightmare turned real in the ordinary life of my character, Hudson Catalina.  Bringing the quality of emotion that I felt was needed to depict a situation so grave and where all hope was lost began with the intention not to focus on the cancer but instead on what happens at an over-the-top level; when one person’s life is broadsided by bad news on a beautiful day.

 

Given previous experience and the fears that follow, how does someone cope with this type of diagnosis?  How does the woman in my story maintain her ability to keep hope alive? Extensive research produced one common thread, family.  The love, kindness and patience of a spouse, boyfriend, life companion, children, siblings, and friends are crucial to quality of life.  Caregivers can have the opportunity to be the best they have ever been, the best husband, the best daughter, or the best brother.

 

Many people have been touched by cancer, as victim and as witness.  Others have been touched by tragedy and by loss.  What kind and how each are defined does not matter.  There is darkness in every life.  The challenge: can we come out on the other side spirit intact?  We can because hope belongs to everyone.  Without hope, there is nothing.

 

Blog what you hear,see, think and feel.

Linda Merlino, author of Belly of the Whale

Every Three Minutes…

Every three minutes a person is diagnosed with breast cancer.  This in a world of: wait-a-minute, give-me-a-minute, be-with-you-in-a-minute, and this-will-only-take-a-minute.

 

Sixty seconds multiplied by three is one hundred eighty seconds; that is all a woman has before her entire life is broadsided.  Her drive home from the doctor, and the telephone calls to family, all will take longer than three minutes.

 

On August 13^th I attended the Kickoff Breakfast for Making Strides Against Breast Cancer in New York City.  Hundreds of people were guests of the American Cancer Society.  There were many speakers on the program but the first, a woman who spoke from her table not from the podium pulled me to the edge of my seat and kept me there as her story unfolded.

 

The woman’s voice was soft but strong, her name was Stephanie and she smiled as she spoke and her hair, a perfectly coiffed shoulder length wig made her appear younger than her years.  Stephanie had grown children, one in Iraq and another living in New York City.  Among other things she was an author with a book just released when her three minutes were up.  Her orderly, well defined life was upended, and now she was a resident of Hope Lodge in New York City undergoing treatment for breast cancer. 

 

As an author of newly released fiction, I was caught up in her heartbreaking story.  I’ve written about breast cancer without being sure why.  Now I know.  As the daughter of a breast cancer survivor I have something more than words invested in this battle.  Women like my mother, my character, Hudson Catalina, and like Stephanie deserve our respect.  They need advocates and their message must be spread across the planet.

 

Hope Starts With Us – is the slogan for the American Cancer Society’s 2008 Making Strides Against Breast Cancer.  The message of Belly of the Whale is hope and survival.   Together we will be in Central Park on October 19^th under the Tent.  Come walk with us.  Every stride you take makes a difference.

 

Blog what you hear, see, think and feel…

 

Linda Merlino