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Watching updates of Sandra’s arrest, along with all the other protests on social media and TV reminds me of how demanding this work can be.  Reminds me of the challenge of trudging uphill, of the stamina required to proceed forward despite the forces working against.  Rick Bass wrote a beautiful essay about activism fatigue several years ago: “Activism’s Paradox Mountain“ — a piece to which I find myself returning every now and then.  But there’s a reason they continue to climb, almost always a story behind the sacrifice.

A few weeks ago, I completed an application for a writing retreat, in which I was asked to provide a personal response to the following Virginia Woolf quote:

“I’m fundamentally, I think, an outsider.  I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It’s an odd feeling, though, writing against the current: difficult entirely to disregard the current.  Yet of course I shall.”

As a writer whose work is often motivated by environmental issues, this quote speaks to me directly in terms of the margins from which I write — and from which others write, as well.  I know that my ideas and those of my literary heroes aren’t always popular, because they push back against traditionally held American ideals.  Things like capitalism and exceptionalism, the rights and responsibilities of individuals verses corporations, guns and “scientific proof.”  It’s hard to question our traditions — because these ideals have taken many of us far, have rewarded some of us well… well, except for those people and places whose needs are at odds with our traditional American beliefs.

But it seems to me that our greatest truths don’t begin as commonly held beliefs.  Rather, they come from stories — stories of pain, of injustice that we labor to deliver so that the truth may be revealed. That we are all created equal, for instance.  There is still much work to be done on that.

The work is difficult, unsupported.  It would be easier to fold into one’s self and float, bobbing and weaving through the rushing water, propelled by conformity and the sound of its applause, along the path of least resistance.  Easier still to allow your direction and destination to be determined by the urgency and velocity of someone else’s values, of other people’s rules.

And yet.  A salmon will leave the ocean and return to its natal stream, whose salt-free waters will assault its cells and strip the skin right from its flesh.  And fourth generation monarchs will ignore the impulse to mature and mate, saving their energy instead for the long flight from as far north as Canada to Mexico’s southern tail — a journey whose distance and hardship defies all logic, but without which would define the end of its kind.

The work that we do is hard.  We shed our skins and bare our vulnerable selves, and for some of us, this pilgrimage can feel like death.  Or maybe it’s our birth.  Either way, we must continue to write our stories.  The survival of our kind depends on it.

Cover image courtesy of Ecowatch.org

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I, for one, feel relief.

At first, it didn’t bother me — the pinking of October, that is.  I have nothing against legitimate cancer awareness campaigns.  No ill-will toward the empowerment of those who have faced a diagnosis.  In fact, I think it’s important to call attention to the things that can bring us down, to the interventions that can help save lives.  I, too, have pledged money toward Race for the Cure, even purchased pink things in the wake of a friend’s mother’s diagnosis, in my clumsy attempt to make a difference.  Why not?  It was an easy thing to do.

And I though it embarrasses me to admit, I justified my passive support with the self-assurance that I was fostering camaraderie around the cause — funding team spirit for “a league of their own” — so that attention would be called to the sheer number of women facing cancer, and would motivate some change.  But with each passing year, the most noticeable change is the not the scientific promise of finding the cause or the cure, but rather the pervasiveness of the Susan G. Komen brand.  There’s a lot of pink, a lot of money, and still, a lot of people fighting cancer.

I know that for the recently diagnosed, there is comfort in numbers, comfort in knowing you’re not alone.  But as a society, we should be unsettled by these numbers.  We should be bothered by the way the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s breast cancer awareness campaign has begun to look more like Cancer Pride.  Cancer isn’t a difference to be celebrated and accepted. It’s still an awful disease.  (For more on the commercialization of breast cancer, see the documentary Pink Ribbons, Inc., based on the work of Breast Cancer Action and the late breast cancer activist, Barbara Brenner.)

But the pinking of October seems to have distracted us from this fact.  Instead, Pink-tober assures me that there will be pink M&Ms just in time for my daughter’s birthdays, and reminds me with cute little Facebook posts that I should “feel my boobies” to “care for my pair” — underscored with Pinterest pictures of adorable Mammo-Graham treats.

Pink-tober adorns NFL players with pink cleats and football gloves (an ironic act of support from an organization historically blind to violence against women), and celebrates the use of pink drill bits to frack for natural gas (courtesy of the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s partnership with Baker Hughes, whose jaunty ad boasts “doing our bit for the cure.” Get it? Never mind that fracking threatens air and drinking water with carcinogenic chemicals).  

In short, Pink-tober has taken a serious health condition — sometimes a matter of life and death — and reduced it to the parody of a South Park episode, or the whimsy of a tampon ad.  But what concerns me the most — beyond the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s misguided decision to hitch its moneymaking awareness campaign to outrageously inappropriate partners — beyond the hypocrisy of this brazen pinkwashing, it’s the normalization/celebration of cancer that has me so upset.

Why?  Because it suggests that we’ve given up on cancer prevention.  Invites us to accept its inevitability.

Last year I turned 40, which means that I was advised by my doctor to begin getting regular mammograms, to submit to the annual mashing of my girls.  A milestone for my breasts.

I remember their first milestone.  I was in the 5th grade, just budding.  Planning with my friends in hushed whispers during lunch — choosing which day we would all wear our training bras, which day we would practice being women.  We had already read Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret to introduce us to our fate.  A few years later, we huddled together in a friend’s basement, exchanging notes on who among us had gotten their periods.  Those who had reached the milestone answered questions for those of us who hadn’t.

I thought of those moments again this year — those moments when I watched others reach their landmarks so I would know what to do when I finally reached mine.  Judy Blume herself was diagnosed with cancer in 2012.  Another friend of mine was diagnosed last month.  And I realize now that I am one of a only few in my close circle of friends who hasn’t been diagnosed.  We are only in our forties.

It feels like that time in the basement, when my friends and I all sat in a circle sharing notes about what’s to come — like a scene from a Judy Blume novel.  Almost everyone has a story to share — except for me, because I haven’t gotten my cancer yet.

Take note: This isn’t the hope that is being advertised.  Please, think before you pink.  Reject the normalization of cancer, and the conflicts of interest in cancer campaigns.  Support cancer organizations that prioritize cancer prevention as high as their fundraising for “awareness.”  Remember, detection does not equal prevention.  They are NOT one in the same.   

Photo credits:

Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret Book Cover from www.amazon.com

Feel Your Boobies image from www.owningpink.com

Mammo-Graham images from simplethrift.wordpress.com

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