To go directly to the blog, go to www.cancerbrokeallmypencils.com.
My name is Marilyn Herasymowych and I am the co-author of 16 books on leadership through learning. I am an applied research consultant, and a founder and managing partner of MHA Institute. My interest lies in developing healthy and creative communities of learning that are capable of generating novel forms of knowledge. Using a scientific perspective, I work with my husband and business partner Henry Senko to research emerging theories and methods, in order to develop user-friendly tools that people can apply in daily work.
Before I was diagnosed with cancer, I was a person who never believed that I would be ill. I was an energetic and optimistic person who had a plan to be healthy right up to the end. Up to my diagnosis, I had many people in my life who had been diagnosed with cancer, including dear friends and family members. Some of these people continue to fight and live with cancer to this day. Many have died as a result of having cancer. But until I experienced cancer first-hand, I didn’t really understand what having cancer meant, or what living with cancer would do to transform my life.
As soon as I was diagnosed, I started writing about what was happening to me. Writing was one thing I loved to do, and it would be writing that would be my most helpful therapy in dealing with the curveballs that cancer would throw at me. In November 2009, while I was recovering from chemo treatments, I invited Emily Tipton to come to Edmonton to attend a course taught by Valerie Mason-John called Life into Fiction. It was at this course that Emily and I would decide to write a book together on this experience. In June 2010, at Valerie’s course called Unlocking the Muse: Meditation and Creativity, we asked Valerie to help us to write our book.
Valerie suggested that we start by writing a blog, and asked us to think of a title for this blog. Emily and I agreed, and we decided the blog would be called Cancer Broke All My Pencils. This title came from a conference that Henry and I had attended in the late 1990s in Ottawa, at which Douglas Cardinal spoke about his work and how he dealt with change. In the mid-1960s, Cardinal, a famous Canadian architect of international renown, saw the future of architecture in the computer – specifically the computational power of computers. In order for him to continue using his organic curvilinear designs on a larger scale, he would need the help of software that was not yet invented, software that Cardinal himself would help to develop and then beta test, software called computer-aided drafting and design or CADD for short. Cardinal would need one more thing. He would need his architectural and engineering staff to embrace this new way of working.
But his staff did not easily accept this change. They were far too comfortable with their drafting tables and pencils. So, Cardinal removed all of the drafting tables from their offices and broke all their pencils. It was like Cortez, who burned all his ships while in the middle of conquering the Aztecs, thereby preventing a retreat to Spain. Like Cortez, my experience with cancer would burn all of my ships, and like Cardinal, it would break all of my pencils. There would be no way back to the way it was. And like Cardinal’s staff, I would not easily accept my new situation. I too was very comfortable with the life I had been living before being diagnosed with cancer. I would stubbornly hold on to everything I thought my life was supposed to be, including how it was supposed to be after cancer treatment. It would take me over a year to finally realize that the experience of cancer had broken all of my pencils. There was no way back to my previous life. I would have to build a completely new life and way of living with cancer.
This is my story.