How I Finally Stopped Compartmentalizing my Feelings

People react in different ways to disrupters: worry, fear, searching for answers, talking to everyone, talking to no one, denial, compartmentalization. Is there a right approach? A wrong one?

I walked these familiar school halls for nineteen years, but this time it’s different, surreal, focused, insular. It’s 2:27 p.m. as I head to my last class full of spirited high school sophomores and juniors. At 2:14 p.m. I answer a call from the gynecologist with the results of the four needle biopsies to learn that three of them reveal hard-to-detect lobular carcinoma. I have breast cancer once again, but it’s a different kind this time. He tries to reassure me that its non-aggressive nature will probably only require excisions. (How wrong that would be!) The phone call ends ten minutes later, and I try to collect myself. What should I do, go to class or absorb the news? Since there’s no time to find a sub before my 2:30 class, I stand up, straighten my clothes and, books in hand, resolutely head out the teacher core room into the bustling hallway.

Walking down the hall as I have done thousands of times, I think this is the strangest out-of-body walk I’ve ever had. I blend into the routine, but my life is flipped over in an instant. I wonder about students who experience similar feelings in the hallway. I push down the door handle of the classroom and the news I just heard. A memory from 17 years ago flashes through my mind of defiantly pushing down the door handle of the Tarzana Hospital where I was about to have my first biopsy in 2002, feeling certain that this was a waste of the doctor’s and my time. Those were the former days of invincibility. Today’s door handle depression lacks that defiance and certainty. Teaching the class is a robotic blur; I’m in charge, but not really; I operate by instinct, and can’t report later on what we discussed.

After school, I reflect on this moment with a colleague who lost her college-age son a few years ago. She tells me that her grief the first year was so ever-present and palpable that she simply went through the motions of teaching. She could not report the specifics of her teaching, only that she somehow got through that year. I suspect what got her students through that year was her loving, kind, and magnanimous spirit mixed into the relentless sadness.

Compartmentalizing my feelings continues for a time as I decide how much information to share with the students, tie up loose ends, and prepare to leave two weeks before the end of the school year—and my teaching career--in the midst of final oral presentations and final exams. Wanting to finish well, I push myself until 6 p.m. the day before surgery, at which point I take up my colleagues’ offers to grade extra work. Students patiently stand in line for hours the last day to complete missing assignments in spite of my warnings and emails to parents.

I would be remiss not to add how supportive, loving, and caring my students are by offering hugs, prayers, meals, gifts, cards, and other tangible signs of love. At first, I question how much to tell them, but once I hear Joni’s Eareckson Tada’s words of not wanting to waste her breast cancer recurrence, I decide to disclose what’s going on. Since our school’s philosophy is that teachers are the “living curriculum,” it seems appropriate to share my news and how my faith helps me, that Christ’s physical resurrection offers hope and that I believe I will beat this thing--“kick a**.” The students are kind and caring. Some bring meals later, others flowers and cards; one boy leaves a gift basket with candles, a floral English tea cup, and tea on my doorstep along with a hand-written note. I’m moved because it looks like he, not his mom, authored this kind act.

Fast forward two months after the surgeries and related complications; I’m recovering from surgery and the dreaded chemo is underway. I’m still stoical, unable to fully process what’s going on. My son asks me at one point why I sound happy when I have cancer. I guess I’m using my mental energy to cope right now.

Then one day the robot stops, the ice melts, and feelings start flowing like the Yellowstone headwaters in late spring. I begin writing about my experiences and can’t get the words down fast enough. Tears flow freely, tears of pain, sadness, and thanksgiving. It may sound strange to say but I feel a stronger connection to my own life, to myself, my family, and friends. Something deep within me is stirring to life, something rich and raw. I stop compartmentalizing.

The last time I had cancer two of my sons were teenagers and one was in elementary school. I was worried about them. This time, they are worried about me. I cherish the tight bond with my family, their love, questions, and listening hearts. There is so much support from our social networks that I feel my heart expanding to receive the love. This is a gift of pain.

People react in different ways to disrupters: worry, fear, searching for answers, talking to everyone, talking to no one, denying, compartmentalizing. Is there a right approach? A wrong one? Probably not, so I should be more tolerant of people’s different reactions. They don’t need me to minimize their pain, teach them a lesson, or solve their problems.

In her excellent personal account of dealing with a stage four cancer diagnosis at age 34, Kate Bowler singles out the “Solutions People, who are already a little disappointed that I am not saving myself. ‘Keep smiling! Your attitude determines your destiny!’” one says, “and I am immediately worn out by the tyranny of prescriptive joy” (118). That last phrase catches my attention because there’s a lurking dismissal of pain in the admonition to be better. Don’t put that burden on another person. I saw a sign last week which said, “Attitude is everything!” No, it’s not; it’s something, but not everything.

Compartmentalizing is a stress response to a significant disrupter. If a reaction becomes a habit or lifestyle, it’s time to reflect and ask myself questions. Why do I compartmentalize? What am I afraid of, unwilling to face? What steps can I take to yield to the pain, to accept my situation? It’s best to move to acceptance, integration, and transformation and to do it as often as necessary. That’s when pain transforms us, makes us better, not bitter, a blessing to others in pain, to everyone.

Source Cited:

Bowler, Kate. Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved. Random House, 2018.

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