TRANSLATING MEDICAL RESEARCH TO ART | Heal Through Time Journal
Heal Through Time — the project forever title.
Transcending through knowledge and factual substance, to a more emotionally channelled project in light of a personal narrative and going through the deep emotions of grief for oneself, that became the main focus of the project.
But not always, as there were, especially in the beginning, many bumps along the road.
It was hard, starting something so new that no one knew how to go about it. I didn’t, which in a sense, as I tried to overgeneralize the context of something so personal to me, I was in denial of my true thoughts and feelings, not willing to put it on paper or explain it in a way that conveyed any sense of vulnerability.
It’s as if the whole world is telling you that this project is something you have to speak about, but uncovering hard truths to yourself makes it so much harder. On top of that, the frequent amount of attention and responses are so different from person to person, it’s overwhelming and hard to navigate.
Wolfgang Tillman (2020). “Lüneburg. (Self).” Photograph. MOMA, NY. Shot on iPhone, 2022.
I started with finding a plethora of secondary research and literary knowledge, such as understanding what cancer is, what the process of grief is, how there are different types of processes and how they all intertwine. Then I got deeper into personal stories from other people (my personal take: top recommendations to those who love to read) —Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies (A Biography of Cancer), and Joanne Cacciatore’s Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief.
Though this is just the tip of the extensive research I did on hand, the various resources I found, either books, medical and literary peer-reviewed articles, helped redefine the process of grief and cancer to me in a broader sense and some with more specificity. However, I admit,
I made a mistake.
I gain immeasurable knowledge, and initiated conversations based on other people’s experiences and factual knowledge, but the most important thing I ignored—my personal past experience. I should’ve been focusing and internalizing my own emotions and forgot even the reason why I started this project.
Vulnerability = the ability to explain
Thankfully, I rerouted with a catalyst before it was too late—my friends and family, those who walked with me through everything for the past 4 years, they discussed the meaning and the intentionality behind the project with me, most frequently asking me “why are you so afraid?”
It’s true, I was afraid of facing my own fear of response or rejection, but wouldn’t everyone be afraid if they had to be this vulnerable in a situation that not everyone may understand?
After seeking more for myself and testing the waters while I read, gained knowledge, and internalized for my own feelings for my situation, I remembered that I kept a journal with me during that time, and looked back on my writing and things that I wrote to myself. To my surprise, I found the couple drawings during then, that helped me finally process what exactly happened to me, how I felt, and what I tried to do in the moment.
At the time, these drawings depicted the multiple emotions expressed and felt, including the fluidity between them. That’s when I learned, no matter how many books or articles I read to understand the situation at hand, I cannot understand it better than to truly comprehend my own experiences and my full story.
I sat down with myself, finally, after a conversations with close friends and loved ones, helping me acknowledge my past in a deeper and more intuitive lens. I was able to fully explain my situation to my professors and peers, and told them exactly why I needed to tell this story. Why it was so important to me. It’s not for the fact that anyone would care, but it’s because I care and I believe that there should be a community for such people, a place that people would ultimately care.
After truly being able to express myself in the most sincere way, we had a couple assignments along the way to get us started with the project. I went to interview people who were versed in this subject matter, such as cancer psychologists, and others who pertain to the subject matter. It was interesting to see the different takes, especially because cancer is a broad subject. I gained much insight to the things explained to me, and on some level, even finding it relatable!
Georgia O’Keefe. 1952-1954. “My Last Door.”. Foundation Beyeler, Riehen, Switzerland. Shot by iPhone.
Just to give you some context, here are some of my takeaways:
people calling themselves names and blaming themselves about such occurrence is a normal
having cancer is like being hit by lightning, a very rare occurrence that usually happens only once
not everyone likes to be called a survivor
not everyone likes the cancer commemoration months or ribbons, it can sometimes act as trigger instead
people can be fine for a period of time, but when anniversaries or some telling situation brings up memories, the process of grief arrives again
it’s not a failure if someone’s not feeling gratitude every day after
media portrayals are mostly false depictions
it’s important to note that everyone has different experiences and different reactions, to not overgeneralize anything pertaining to it
These are just a few points to list, but I’d like to thank everyone’s time for sharing with me their professional experience, personal experience, and their stories.
And one last thing…
“I think that’s how I think of cancer, which is on the surface, everything feels very dark and dim. But if you really peel back those layers, there’s hope and promise. And sometimes, people will actually say, ‘my life is better for having gotten sick, because it brought my family and I together’. That takes time to see that, right? No one can see that in the moment—it’s awful, dark, dim and distorted.” — AYA Cancer Psychologist (NYC)