Sophie Sabbage

Transcript

as an educated white woman living in a first world democracy i had known great freedoms until cancer gatecrashed my ship-shaped life the worsening diagnosis unfolding in excruciatingly precise freeze frames first you have a tumor in your lung mrs savage the shock ricocheted through my body like a bullet while i retreated into a hazy optimism which refused to admit i'd been shot i pictured my tumor being surgically removed radiation making me more radiant a brief bald period when i would wear a purple wig and flaunt a surprising sense of tumor followed by the resumption of my privileged life as if this was just another bridge to

cross on the road to grandchildren and gray hair i pretended not to hear the low rumblings of a storm blowing in i locked my fear in a shiny urn of positive denial and left it there second you have tumors in your lymph nodes mrs savage which meant the cancer i had rejected was growing on me it was systemic incurable a bridge i would not cross a diagnosis i was assured i would not come back from and a use by day that preceded my daughter's fifth birthday i sat in the brown leather chair across from his desk stunned words fell from his mouth like icicles on

a winter's day while hope retreated into another room dimming the lights stopping the clock on the wall he didn't notice i'd stop listening that my best friend was asking questions on my behalf that remorse had lodged in my chest about the ways i abused my body in the past about the grief this would bring my husband and the motherless life my daughter was going to live i locked my fear in a casket of shame and left it there third you have tumors on your spine mrs savage and the one on your neck paralyzed you his words paralyzed me and my own words crouched in the

corner of my throat as i stared at the scans on his computer school what could i say to make the tsunami turn around and drain back into the ocean the shock went in deep this time and the universe quietly imploded as the water of possibility closed over my head i locked my fear in a morgue of despair and left it there finally i am so sorry sophie but you have brain tumors how many i asked as my eyes broke like glass and i found myself facing a fate worse than death losing my mind my wisdom my eloquence not being sophie anymore too many to count

he said with a tenderness that fear could not circumvent his assistant kindly drove my trembling body home it now being irresponsible for me to drive myself it was a dark very english afternoon when the night draws in before the day is done and my husband had lit the wood burner in the living room for me while he picked up our daughter from nursery i sat next to it on the carpet and i pulled fear very close i gave myself to it completely until it bent me double i let it rattle my bones and catapult my dreams at the stars the more i surrendered the more

space opened up inside me and the more i realized that i hadn't locked fear up fear had locked me up it had also locked out possibility and creativity and hope standing in its flames while flames licked the glass on the wood burner doors it was fear that melted not me in this most restrictive circumstance of my life i viscerally experienced freedom from fear as the greatest freedom of all fear tried to trap me and damn near killed me but i escaped in the six years since i was given six months to live i've entered into fear and surrendered to it many times each encounter is

no less intense than the last but each exit expands my wings you see fear is not to be overcome but welcomed and given a place to thought i'm not free of cancer but i'm more free than i ever was before it gatecrashed my shipshape but not yet liberated life because only when we step through fear can we step out of it and know what it is to be free then repeat thank you

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.

Transcript

here are my breasts the rest of me is coming tomorrow this was how i learned how i learned to alleviate the awkwardness of boys my age whose eyes tended to meet my over ripe chest from the age of 10 onwards it broke the ice while leaving some cracks in my dignity i was good for a laugh but not for dancing with at parties by the time i turned 11 i was a five foot five double d cup menstruating child in a woman's body who had to take id on public transport to prove i was under sixteen those years became a catalogue of humiliations inappropriate gropings

and intense shame i attended my first proper dance of 14 a charity event with a thousand tickets and heightened odds of my not merging with the flowers on the wall mum bought me a deep pink chiffon dress in a brand new crispy bra i'd been wearing one for years by then but still stared upwards when i clipped it on every morning and a flat-chested skinny girl who lived in the ceiling stared back on arrival i chatted nonchalantly to girlfriends hoping no one would catch me looking around every so often wondering if just one boy would notice the private but passionate heart i was wearing on

my deep pink chiffon sleeve far sooner than anticipated a tall dark-haired lad asked me to dance who knew i tried to maintain my composure as we walked onto the dance floor but i was too excited and skipped it didn't matter if this was my only dance of the night it didn't even matter what his name was all that mattered was that he had noticed me and that i would feel beautiful for a few brief minutes suddenly strobe lighting illuminated whatever was white on the dance floor and cloaked everything else in darkness i felt brave being invisible and i began to relax the music moved into

my hips and pulled me into my skin my self-consciousness lifted and for the first time since my period started and my breasts arrived i felt worthwhile and attractive and free it can only have been a couple of minutes before i looked down and noticed my brand new white bra blazing like neon through my transparent chiffon dress my breasts were luminous and my dance partner several i am not with her feet away that moment stopped me dead in my dancing shoes for many years to come it would be a long time following a severe eating disorder a date rape and several lacerating relationships before i danced

that freely again a major turning point occurred in my late twenties when my boyfriend of three years pinned me to a wall and put his hands around my throat up till then we'd been a perfect psychological match because he believed i was an unworthy woman and so did i but in that moment my self-regard rose with such ferocity something shifted that never shifted back again it didn't need to overreach by making me special or stunning or awesome claims that usually indicate the absence not the presence of self-worth true self-worth is simpler and humbler than that it says you are human you matter you're okay as

you are and you are beautiful to some i call this non-judgment day this shift carried me forwards until i met my person and danced with him in an abbey near oxford during a time of uncontainable grief snot and vulnerability by the time he told me i don't know anyone whose beauty is more congruent with their soul i realized that my heart won authenticity and self was respect for what he had fallen in love with i didn't need to look beautiful to be worthy my worthiness made me beautiful because beauty is a verb not a noun

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.

Transcript

I'm looking in a large mirror as the anesthetist injects my scalp several times the injection sting like scorpions and I yell you freaking kidding me before the first tears of the day fall at which point I'm offered valium for what's coming next so uplifting which I declined because I want to be alive to this experience I want to be alive to everything turns out the injections are a godsend because I can't feel the holes being drilled into my skull or the heavy bronze metal frame being screwed onto my head but I do wonder how many of my faculties are about to become untethered technically I'm

not supposed to be here because I have nine brain tumors and the max for this radiotherapy treatment which targets that she was very precisely instead of frying the whole brain is six hence the metal frame to lock my head into the Machine and immobilize it before long my oncologist returns from reviewing the very fine brain scan he did this morning to see if more have appeared mrs. Savage the scan revealed 27 - murmurs I flinch I want to duck this terrifying truth and all I can see as my six-year-old daughter somewhere in a heartbroken future where I'm just a memory of the mother she once

had now my tears roll like monsoon rain on glass windows which I am good with because I cry like a grown-up I'm expecting him to send me home when he says well there are no other patients today so you're in luck let's do this I laugh at the cognitive dissonance I'm in luck you knew and before long my head is locked into the machine for a procedure that will draw out for eight hours my husband and best friend are in a room next door but for a moment I feel a loneliness so sharp I could cut my hands on it I consider my options tough

this out relieve my body like I learned to when I started hating it or surrender to every feeling that asks to be felt like I did after my diagnosis two years ago when they didn't bother to count my brain tumors and the tumors on my spine damn near broke me I cried like a grown-up then too every day for weeks now Here I am again finding resilience in a place where the river meets the rocks it rises from my trembling humaneness like a memory and a thirst it pulls me to my feet when I'm on my knees and says take off your shoes Sophie you

are standing on holy ground for a while memories float by like trains passing through stations telling Gabrielle her age for that she was a smart cookie to which she responded and you are a beautiful super my husband proposing to me by the Ponte Vecchio on New Year's Eve and my deepest unmet longing exploding for joy with the fireworks hating God for giving us all such a short embrace on earth when I found myself dying just a few years later and finding my sense of humor when we got stuck in traffic behind a hearse carrying a shiny oak coffin and laughing all the way to the

meeting where I was told you are terminal I've already outrun my prognosis by miles as I lie here motionless I don't know I'll be telling this story four years from now during a global pandemic having had a boatload more brain tumors and very nearly dying I don't know how many more surrenders are coming well the extent to which cancer will make me rather than break me I don't know that 27 is a sacred number 3 times 3 times 3 the Trinity of Trinity's I don't know I will see my daughter turn 10 in lockdown or how grief at the prospect of leaving her will pull

me into the body I tried to return to sender until I can feel the light on my corneas and the Mercy's underfoot but I do know this resilience doesn't return us to our usual shape after a crisis is the diction we say it liberates our authentic shape by stripping us of the shapes we thought we had to be but didn't the perfect successful standout in control very thin shapes the shapes that cannot shape the rain from our feathers or let us cry like grown-ups or allow us to rest in peace before we die resilience is a softening not a hardening it opens rather than closes

the shell we're all terminal by the way any one of us can be taken out at any moment by an aneurysm a microscopic virus and if you are black by a police officers knee on your neck but I've had the privilege of being put on notice of experiencing the present moment expand with my gratitude for it like when you finally kiss someone you've been aching for and time stands still and the house how long have I been in this machine no matter what matters is that I can lie immobilized for eight hours without going crazy that I can laugh at a coffin when I'm dying

that can cry like a grown-up

Transcript generated from the recording and shown as captured, without added punctuation. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.

Transcript

I'm looking in a large mirror as the anesthetist injects my scalp several times the injection sting like scorpions and I yell you freaking kidding me before the first tears of the day fall at which point I'm offered valium for what's coming next so uplifting which I declined because I want to be alive to this experience I want to be alive to everything turns out the injections are a godsend because I can't feel the holes being drilled into my skull or the heavy bronze metal frame being screwed onto my head but I do wonder how many of my faculties are about to become untethered technically I'm

not supposed to be here because I have nine brain tumors and the max for this radiotherapy treatment which targets that she was very precisely instead of frying the whole brain is six hence the metal frame to lock my head into the Machine and immobilize it before long my oncologist returns from reviewing the very fine brain scan he did this morning to see if more have appeared mrs. Savage the scan revealed 27 - murmurs I flinch I want to duck this terrifying truth and all I can see as my six-year-old daughter somewhere in a heartbroken future where I'm just a memory of the mother she once

had now my tears roll like monsoon rain on glass windows which I am good with because I cry like a grown-up I'm expecting him to send me home when he says well there are no other patients today so you're in luck let's do this I laugh at the cognitive dissonance I'm in luck you knew and before long my head is locked into the machine for a procedure that will draw out for eight hours my husband and best friend are in a room next door but for a moment I feel a loneliness so sharp I could cut my hands on it I consider my options tough

this out relieve my body like I learned to when I started hating it or surrender to every feeling that asks to be felt like I did after my diagnosis two years ago when they didn't bother to count my brain tumors and the tumors on my spine damn near broke me I cried like a grown-up then too every day for weeks now Here I am again finding resilience in a place where the river meets the rocks it rises from my trembling humaneness like a memory and a thirst it pulls me to my feet when I'm on my knees and says take off your shoes Sophie you

are standing on holy ground for a while memories float by like trains passing through stations telling Gabrielle her age for that she was a smart cookie to which she responded and you are a beautiful super my husband proposing to me by the Ponte Vecchio on New Year's Eve and my deepest unmet longing exploding for joy with the fireworks hating God for giving us all such a short embrace on earth when I found myself dying just a few years later and finding my sense of humor when we got stuck in traffic behind a hearse carrying a shiny oak coffin and laughing all the way to the

meeting where I was told you are terminal I've already outrun my prognosis by miles as I lie here motionless I don't know I'll be telling this story four years from now during a global pandemic having had a boatload more brain tumors and very nearly dying I don't know how many more surrenders are coming well the extent to which cancer will make me rather than break me I don't know that 27 is a sacred number 3 times 3 times 3 the Trinity of Trinity's I don't know I will see my daughter turn 10 in lockdown or how grief at the prospect of leaving her will pull

me into the body I tried to return to sender until I can feel the light on my corneas and the Mercy's underfoot but I do know this resilience doesn't return us to our usual shape after a crisis is the diction we say it liberates our authentic shape by stripping us of the shapes we thought we had to be but didn't the perfect successful standout in control very thin shapes the shapes that cannot shape the rain from our feathers or let us cry like grown-ups or allow us to rest in peace before we die resilience is a softening not a hardening it opens rather than closes

the shell we're all terminal by the way any one of us can be taken out at any moment by an aneurysm a microscopic virus and if you are black by a police officers knee on your neck but I've had the privilege of being put on notice of experiencing the present moment expand with my gratitude for it like when you finally kiss someone you've been aching for and time stands still and the house how long have I been in this machine no matter what matters is that I can lie immobilized for eight hours without going crazy that I can laugh at a coffin when I'm dying

that can cry like a grown-up

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.