The Unexpected Gift: How Meditating Let Me Write Again

by Susan Barr-Toman

I was trying meditation out of desperation. I’d read that it could calm your thoughts and give you a sense of peace. My goal—to keep it together, to maintain functionality. My husband’s cancer had returned and this time it was terminal. The practice, as I understood it, was to focus on my breath for a period of time. I chose fifteen minutes. When I noticed my thoughts wandering, I was to acknowledge them, let them go, and come back to my breath. No matter how many times, just come back to the breath.

As I set a timer, I was fairly confident I could sit still that long. I settled on our bedroom floor and began meditating. A few minutes later I had a thought so powerful it propelled me across the room to the closed door. And yet, as I reached for the doorknob, I couldn’t remember what the thought was or where I was intent on going. I was so deeply entrenched in some narrative that my body became an unknowing puppet.

I was at a new level of distraction and for good reason. When I wasn’t ruminating about why Peter was dying, why we couldn’t make it stop, and what could we be doing differently, I was worried about what the future held, when would it happen, how would it happen, and what would happen to the rest of us then. For the most part I was operating purely on a need-to-be-done basis—ailing husband, distraught children, needy students—, all the while trying to prepare for the inevitable, which was impossible.

My body, too, was at the ready, hopping up at any sound—the ping of a text, the ring of the phone, the ding of appliances beckoning me to empty them. And it was ready to jump at anything in view—the pots and pans “soaking” in the sink, the tilted artwork on the wall.

Writing was the last thing on my mind. I could not stop to write. More accurately, my mind could not stop to write. When there was actually time to sit down in a quiet room of my own and get to work, the noise in my brain was way too loud.

This had happened to me before. Over the years, I had learned to be productive working from home, despite all the distractions. I’d managed to write a novel and publish it when my children were little. I taught writing in a few area colleges. But when my husband had cancer the first time, I stopped writing. It seemed I was incapable of creating in crisis. It was different then, in that I assumed there would be an end to treatment and if all went well we would return to normal life. And we did for nearly four years. In that time I wrote my second novel, started another. But now, the end of treatment would mean he’d run out of options. Now, when things were done, it would mean Peter was dead. Once again fear and grief shut me down. This time possibly for good. I didn’t write. I couldn’t write. I could barely breathe. Let alone count breaths.

But I kept at it–the meditating.

For months, I sat daily. Fifteen minutes at a time, I learned I could do nothing and it brought me relief. I could sit still and be aware of what my body was doing. For that brief period each day, I didn’t have to think about a thing, fix a problem, or figure out a situation. Just breathe. My thoughts were still whirling, but at least I wasn’t hopping up in a trance to perform a mindless chore. For the first time I was paying attention to the way my mind worked. And, yes, it was scary how quickly I tumbled down the rabbit hole, but I let go and came back to the present, using my breath as an anchor.

As the weeks passed, every once in a while during meditation I felt like I was floating on my back under a clear blue sky with the muted sound of water and wind in my submerged ears. Just for a moment or two, but such peace. Unexpectedly, I felt better throughout the day, calmer, more in control of my actions and words. I was functioning outside of panic mode. It turned out that, even under these challenging life circumstances, it was better being in the present moment. Because in most of those moments, things were okay. Then, one day, much to my surprise, I had the impulse to write.

I hadn’t written in months, not since my husband’s diagnosis, his prognosis. I’d abandoned the novel I’d been working on, leaving my character stranded, mid-chapter, on a college campus, wondering if she was losing her mind. How could I think about a novel when Peter was dying?

On this morning, something changed. My husband was at work, my children at school, and I sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee, the whole day in front of me. I wasn’t teaching that day, but there were papers to grade. There were always chores and errands to fill the hours easily. Instead, I sat drinking my coffee, avoiding making the smallest decision about how to proceed. Then, I noticed the photograph hanging on the wall was tilted, off balance, but I didn’t jump up to straighten it. Meditation had taught me not to react mindlessly. Instead I looked at the image, really took it in, something I hadn’t done in a while.

The photograph was one in a series my sister Sarah had created called “Some Very Short Films.” This one was titled “Dinner with Baba” and featured my mother-in-law along with my sister’s children and mine. My mother-in-law, I remembered, was a recent widow at the time the picture was taken. She was where I was headed. How did she survive? When I would ask how she was doing, she’d say she was fine. So many new things – the opera, the symphony, the ballet – to occupy her now that she’d moved to Philadelphia. She very rarely spoke of my father-in-law. I sensed a relief in her that she was free to do as she wanted without coaxing her husband to go out. How would I be? I knew I’d have no relief at Peter’s absence. I wouldn’t have a newfound sense of freedom. My mother-in-law and I were different people, with different husbands. But both widows in the end.

On the back of an envelope I began to write an essay about how she was after her husband’s death, an essay about my being a widow-in-waiting searching for how to be after my husband’s death. My mind was quiet as I returned to the day that photograph was taken. Instead of the fears or regrets that usually populated my mind, ideas arose, connections were revealed. I’d found a place of stillness in which I could see the bigger picture in the tilted picture.

The practice of mindfulness meditation helped me let go of what could have been done in the past to prevent my husband’s cancer and let go of my fears of what was going to happen after his death, if only for fifteen minutes a day. It gave me a place to just be. It grounded me firmly in the present with all its disasters and joys, so that I could truly be there with my husband in his final months as I witnessed him letting go, as he stopped working, driving, cooking. End-of-life hospice is to be in the present moment. The past is gone; there is no future. Just this moment, this meal, this look, this embrace.

Mindfulness also gave me the unexpected gift of writing, even in crisis, a way of being there for myself. A way to witness my own grief. A way to connect with all the widows who came before me and who would follow me. A way to create something outside myself.

Since my husband’s death, I’ve made meditation and writing my daily practice. This is how I am as a widow. This is how I survive. This practice sustains me, keeping me calm and grounded, as well as connected to my creativity. When I close my eyes and breathe, I create space for my imagination. Without it, it doesn’t matter if I have a room of my own or a cabin in the woods in which to write for a couple of years. Because without it, there would be no stillness, no quiet, no escape from the constant noise in my head. Just this moment, this practice, this breath, this word.

Susan Barr-Toman leads Mindful Writing workshops and retreats for the Penn Program for Mindfulness in Philadelphia. Her website is www.susanbarrtoman.com. Follow her on Twitter at @SBarrToman.