Be Well

On my journey into the unknown, I tentatively arrive at a horizon of hope.

Doctor Jane Goodall spoke to me last week in her ‘Famous Last Words’ on Netflix. I loved how she looked directly at the camera, with a spritely glint in her eye, while sipping whiskey. With intentional defiance, she imparted great wisdom to the masses.

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” ~ Dr. Jane Goodall

Her message was clear. It’s not OK to let apathy, negligence, or greed win. She also emphatically stated the active role of hope. “If people don’t have hope, we’re doomed.” She’s been consistent and committed to that belief for many decades, which makes her an incredible case study for leadership. Her words inspired me to continue on my own path, with hope. Watching her film encouraged me to watch the videos waiting for me from beyond the grave.

Last Words

Mark made over 30 videos before he died. He sat alone looking into the camera, or recorded private conversations with his closest family members, and with me. As a result, his last thoughts have been saved for those he loved. I have about as many videos of him from the last three months of his life as I do from the previous 46 years. The moral of that story is record yourself more in everyday life, please, because those who love you want to know how you look and sound now - believe me, they will thank you.

It’s taken me ten months to find the courage to open any video files of Mark. Last week I finally crossed that threshold. Each of his legacy videos is an act of pure love, incredible bravery, and exceptional integrity. I’ve only watched the ones he intended for me, which are numerous. Mostly he says what I expected him to say. Except now, a year after being made, every word has a different meaning.

His voice is a hand on my back. It’s a sound which reinforces me in each minute. A weird warped part of me needed to hear him say, “I couldn’t do what you do to make this life happen.” Somehow it has straightened my spine and lifted my head everyday since listening. Talking about our children, he validated, “They need stability. They need to know that you’re there, that they can lean on you and rely on you in a practical sense. Without that everything else is really, really hard. You can do this, I couldn’t.”

The secret in these films is that I’ve come as far as we could see. September 2024 was the beginning of the end. At that point neither of us could imagine life past September 2025. And yet here we are, here I am. He said to me,

“Go and do whatever it is that makes you happy. Use your instincts and trust them. Make mistakes and be OK with it. I’m with you - I support you. I love you - I trust you. You’ve got this - I know you’ve got this.”

The sad dignity in his voice and deep faith in his words will stay with me forever. I will never not need to hear those words. Who does’t need to hear them? Perhaps we all need to hear these words everyday. I found myself repeating them to my kids this week, when their days got really tough. As their little hearts began to quake, I whispered their father’s words into their ear on the way into school. I held their hand in bed and repeated what I categorically knew Daddy would say.

I’ve come to realise that my real husband, the strong, funny, hopeful man I married began to leave me in November 2023. He was clinically asymptomatic, and not his usual self. He began to go quietly, without even knowing it himself. He would tell me that he was losing energy easily, it was irritating for him. It became harder for him to enjoy himself, and that hurt us both. He repeatedly became debilitatingly ill, for seemingly no reason. Random diverse symptoms lasted for weeks on end, while his body fought a hidden disease. We knew he wasn’t ‘well’ but he wasn’t ‘unwell’, so we didn’t know what to call it. It was difficult to live with, and then it was diagnosed as cancer in April 2024.

His legacy videos showed a man with humble fear and resilient hope. The tone of his skin, the strength of his voice, and the look in his eyes tells me he’s going. But the truth is that I’m two years into our separation. Rather than making me sad, I feel very proud of how far we’ve come, and it’s given me a surprising tiny glimmer of longed for hope.

Hope

Hope is a fickle friend. Doctor Jane taught us that it’s an imperative for life. I’d also add that hope is an addictive, treacherous, delusion. “Love and light”, “thoughts and prayers”, are words which make me murderous. Too many people stay blinded to reality because hope is more comfortable than the truth. Time is wasted in an unwillingness to believe the facts. Treated carelessly, hope cultivates a resistance to what is, rather than a resilience for what could be.

“Dark days” is a euphemism for how it feels to live without hope. I would not wish actual hopelessness on anybody. But the opposite end of that spectrum, is just as dangerous. The rainbow brightness induced by hopeium, doesn’t pay the bills, wastes life, and ruins relationships. During his illness, Mark and I cultivated a value system together which we called “realistic hope”. It was an attempt to name the tension between what we wanted (hope) and what was happening (defeat). We committed ourselves to objectively assessing our reality, while trusting in the possibility of something better.

Another name for it would be faith. It was optimism, mitigated with truth. Necessary because without any faith in the future we’d have given up, which wasn’t an option because of our children. Denial of the truth and avoidance of our circumstances would have prevented us from being prepared. No videos would have been made, no wills would have been written. Instead, requests were made, action was taken, hearts were held, and hands were steadied. Hope wasn’t a state which we allowed to delude us, for the sake of our children, it was a condition that we actively chose because of them. We took the hard path. As Jane told us all, perhaps our personal story is not so different to the plight of the planet.

Worldwork

I often think back to a wisdom shared with me by the Palliative Care Consultant, in the hospice. She’d worked with the dying for decades, ushering thousands of people across the threshold. I have no doubt the words she gave me on the day before Mark died were intentional. “We die as we live.” What if we also grieve as we live?

Last week was grief work. I received the video messages and I allowed them to do their work in me. It was deep, unconscious, exhausting, and emotional - I was processing my loss, for me, in my life. Then this week became world work. I was called to take a stand at a party on behalf of the bereaved, I stood up for my son at school, I backed my youngest daughter when she tried to sabotage herself, and I directed my eldest child’s path forwards out of overwhelm. I received each challenge and chose to do the next ‘right’ thing, for the long-term. Not the easy thing, or the comfortable choice, but the ‘best’ according to my heart’s knowing.

This concept, called worldwork, was developed by Arnold Mindell in the 1970s. It’s an approach which assumes that our inner most selves also relate to a global field of events. It was developed as a process to help international communities create a future together, to rebuild relationships following war, trauma, and injustice.

In its simplest form it’s a feeling of yourself for others. It could be called an attitude of eldership. As an approach it combines ecology, psychology and social theory into a theory of change. Worldwork discerns what needs to happen next, for the sake of the group. When we take a stand for something that matters, we can each support all viewpoints and enable a better, more whole interaction. By bringing awareness into an experience, the feelings, facts, history and current power dynamics are included in that experience, to activate our underlying unity.

In this way, we are all change agents. When we take a stand we make a difference in our world. It happens in relationship with our families, partner, parents, kids, community, school, business, employment, or friendships. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, we send ripples into the universe. Worldwork asserts that each of us can do our best to keep our relational systems safe and healthy, so that everyone contributes. I’m willing to go a step further and say, I believe that this work expands consciousness.

Dare To Dream

Jane Goodall has been doing worldwork for decades, Mark did it when he recorded videos that he never wanted seen, I’m doing it now. Over coffee with a friend this week, when I vented about how hard the week’s been, she said, “You’ve never let yourself down through any of this. Through it all you’ve always been yourself.” It was a wonderful compliment, and a reminder that it was exactly what I meant to do from the moment Mark was diagnosed. If I lost myself on the way then cancer would win. I will not let cancer take both of us from our children. Like a celebrity Traitor, finding a shied buried in mud, this week my little gold badge for resilience got a shining moment on the small screen.

As a result, my heart allowed itself to dream for the first time in many, many months of hopelessness. My dream doesn’t sound ambitious, yet it’s the most formidable thing I’ve ever hoped for. Even the act of stating a vision for myself seems treacherously naive at this moment. And yet, without any aspiration I risk cancer taking its chance to win.

Therefore, I dare to dream. I want to feel stable and grounded for two more years. I hope to hold my head up through each day. I will walk forwards knowing that I am loved, can be love, and feel it all. I can choose how to moderately enjoy most of it, with a few significant highs that help me to have fun. I will not relinquish my health in the ways which I can control. I will feel proud of myself along the way because I have trusted my audacious heart’s truth as I go. This task will crave space to recover, and courage for yet another inevitable low as it comes. I commit not to succumb to fear, even when it is my reality. To be here now, is my dream for today and the tomorrow’s ever after.

To make the most of what I have in this life is both wishful thinking and a plausible reality. The challenge for all of us is to use our time well, to expand our consciousness, and perhaps get paid for it. As the good doctor said at the end of her film, “Try your best.”

Similarly, I’ve found myself no longer saying, “goodbye” or “see you soon” when I leave a room. Unintentionally I now find myself signing off with the words, “be well,” because I mean it. These are the last words I want to live by.