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Natale’s Creation

by Joyce Jaecques (who told this story at All Faiths last year on Breast Cancer Sunday)

Hi, Dr. Robinson. And all that are here today. Thank you so much for inviting me to share on your breast cancer awareness Sunday.  I am thankful to be able to talk today about breast cancer awareness.  It is often be said that “what effects one of us effects us all.”  Recently, I have definitely found this to be true amongst our family. Though we each have our own subjective individual experience, it is our joys and pains which unite us together in this human condition.  The cancer journey highlights a dualism, because it solitary journey of the individual combined with communal or familial journey. It is a strange dichotomy to face this disease alone and yet with others. I would like to walk upon the bridge of shared experience which this disease forces us to cross.    

Today, I would like to relate to you the most amazing story of my youngest child Natale.  But before I can tell her story I need to give a little background of my own story so that hers can be better appreciated and understood.

  Last Halloween, almost one year ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  After consulting with several doctors it was decided, after much agonizing, that I needed a Radical mastectomy followed by chemotherapy.  Since I knew that I would soon lose my hair and I wasn’t sure if I would live to grow more hair again, I expressed my fear, and sense of humor by dying and cutting my hair numerous times in just a few short months.  I was bleach blonde for a day (only one day,--it was horrible on me); then honey colored blonde; then Lava Red, then Strawberry Blonde and finally Auburn/Woodpecker tressed.  After the mastectomy in January, I still had some hair about 1inch long dyed woodpecker red.  I was feeling well enough to go out with my husband. So he took me on out my first post-op date.  My mother stayed with the four children while we went out for a nice dinner. At dinner, my mother called and said in the most excited voice, “Wait to you see what your daughter did!” “Which daughter?”, I asked .  “Natale!” At first I thought it was some sort of behavior problem. She can be feisty. “What did she do?”  I asked.

My mom baited me with, “You’ll just have to wait to you get home to see!!!  It is wonderful!”

Before I describe what I saw let me bridge over now from my story to Natale’s.  Natale was just turned five when I received my diagnosis of stage IIIc breast cancer. She cried the first night we told her but; except for an occasional comment about my hair she gave no signs trauma. My illness had not seemed to have affected her, or so I thought.  When I came home from my date there was the most sophisticated message (a symbolic bridge built for me and all to see) waiting for me from my daughter.  On the kitchen table, On top of an acrylic art container sat her favorite Barbie beautifully posed. She was beautiful but she had been changed into me!!!!   She was no longer Barbie. She was mommy. The first thing I noticed was the long waist-length hair had been cut to the stub.  She/I was almost bald. Then I noticed that Natale had very carefully painted a rainbow with glitter glue on my head (my Barbie head).  It made me realize how much my physical changes had indeed affected her. Now I remembered that each time I had cut or colored my hair, she would say “Its okay mom you are still a beautiful mom.”  You look like a boy/ girl but you are beautiful.  You are the most beautiful mom.”  At night when she said her prayers she would say I love my beautiful mom even though she is bald.”  Through the Barbie/me She was not done communicating to me or symbolically expressing me  ---Now, let me tell you what she did to the body, my body.  I saw something that made me cry.  Over the right breast, Natale had painted a red spiral which completely covered the right breast.  That red spiral was symbolic of our pains.  It was my physical pain ( the wound healing from surgery).  It was her emotional pain because I could not hug or hold her to my breast.  And, It was my emotional pain too, it was the red spiral of loss in not being able to hold my baby and the emotional loss of my breast  which had nursed her.  Natale painted my arms, legs and torso with various designs and colors.  This was her way of depicting my crazy personality.  When I’m in a depression I often appear quite happy, energetic, maybe even manic.  I’m not, for me it is how I fight the battle for control of my mind.  It is for me a battle and a choice of will to have spunk and a sense of humor.  Natale had understood my costuming. I was wearing the craziest outfits and hats.  My style or choice of clothing during this time could be described as the “The Cat in the Hat” meets Joan Crawford.  She captured the dramatic meets silly and surreal perfectly. 

Natale’s symbolic creation of me was a work of art that reflected an amazing experience and process which had taken place within her.  It was the communicative bridge.  At five she didn’t have the verbal flexibility to communicate her tacit experienced knowledge.  It was only through art that she could adequately convey all the issues which concerned her soul.  She, like all humans needs to communicate and thereby express her reality symbolically. Human kind is so amazing in our ingenious ways of communication.  Natale, in her creation of me, was able to effectively, symbolically express and convey pain, change, beauty and feminine identity. Through art (though she was only five) she could express so much more than her limited vocabulary could convey.  The words and complex, abstract ideas which relate to her experience will take years to fully emerge; yet the patterns and ripples of their workings on her body, mind and spirit have already been expressed as she creates her reality.