Lessons in What It Means to Be Alive

Interview with Liz Humphrey

Liz Humphrey just had her 33rd 21st birthday. I had to pause to do the math. Even while Liz has survived the shock of a cancer diagnosis and being told she had only months to live, she still has plenty of good humor and high spirits. Liz combined all the treatments and then surprised everyone by going back to work. She’s been a part of our T’ai Chi Chih and meditation groups for some years now, and we know she has been through some pretty horrific times and beatific times, too. Doing this interview is her way to share some of her experiences and insights with the rest of the TCC community.

Liz: I’m from Mississippi. I have two sisters and two brothers. They live in the area where the hurricane hit. Here I was having internal storms going on in August when the external storm was happening. My sister so loyal to me. In the last year and a half, she calls me daily. She works hard, she’s a single mother, and she has a child who is a single mother. If she’s guilty of anything, it’s doing too much for too many. She was the one who said I had the strength to get through this.

VFJ: I think I would have doubted.

Liz: You believe you have the strength, but then you also have to realize again the control or lack of control. And so my argument many times was, if I have this strength within me, and if I’m aware, then why didn’t I know what was happening, and why couldn’t I do something about it. So I had to work through that.

VFJ: Was there an answer to that question or not?

Liz: Yes.

VFJ: What was it?

Liz: The answer is learning to be still. The answer is within us. The strength is given by a much greater power, whatever you want to call it. There are so many lessons.

VFJ: I’m hoping you will share some of these lessons with us.

Liz: I was telling my sister that I was really nervous about doing this, because the more I understand, the less there is to say. She said, you’ll do fine. Remember that you have miracles to share. She’s the one to say what I’m supposed to know about myself.

VFJ: It’s a gift to have a sister like that—A person like that who knows, who can say things like that, so that you aren’t alone feeling this way or that, wondering.

Liz: I feel so blessed. Everywhere I’ve turned, it’s been a blessing. My sister, too, it just broke their hearts that this is happening to me. I was never sick, nothing ever wrong with me, I was the oldest sister. When it happened, it was like, they wondered, why you? I was able to understand quickly, that for some reason, it was my journey. That is what life is about—our journey. I didn’t die, and the reason is that my work is not done.

VFJ: Are you supposed to know what that work is?

Liz: You know what? I love that one, too, because there may not be any answers to all of these questions, but that doesn’t mean we stop asking the questions.

VFJ: I think that’s really accurate, that the questions are an end in themselves.

Liz: That even applied at work. After my surgery and treatment, I went back to work, only to find that they’d given my job away. What happened to my job? How come I’m not in my position? What’s going on here? I got to the point where I said, I want answers. I deserve answers. And then the answer came. I can ask all the questions I want; it doesn’t mean there’s going to be any answers, but it doesn’t mean don’t ask the questions.

VFJ: Well, at work, they probably took your position away because they figured you were coming back.

Liz: Exactly. Not real complicated. They thought I was dying. And then when I didn’t die, well then, I must be coming back disabled. Or I must not have all my senses. And I was working real hard at my senses. I was able to tell them a few things, such as, brain tumors aren’t contagious.

VFJ: Were they avoiding you because of that?

Liz: Yes. I just made too many people nervous.

VFJ: That must have hurt.

Liz: It hurt, it was shocking. A lot of it had to do with … there is someone I worked very close with to this day, and would say hello to me with a group of people, and said that she’ll come by to see me, and she hasn’t. I realized that what she did, or what happened, or what went on when I wasn’t there, and whatever part she had to play in it, she knows, and she has to deal with her heart. Now do I know? No. Does it matter? At this point in my life, no. But there are people fighting for my position perhaps, didn’t think I did a good job, who knows? Probably all of the above. We’re all human. People are people. That’s what was great about going back to work also. Let it be. Then they had to find out that I really had all my brain cells… they were like, “Do you remember….?” I remembered more than they wished I’d remembered…. because I remembered the truth.

VFJ: The truth being …?

Liz: … that the service was going to go under reorganization to begin with, and I was told what my job would evolve into. When this person told me that they had hired somebody else, I reminded her that was what my position would evolve into. She said, no I didn’t.

VFJ: So rather than just saying, Hey Liz, welcome back, we didn’t think you were coming back, but now that you’re here, here’s your job. They didn’t say that.

Liz: They couldn’t do that and I don’t know why. I kept saying, I am an adult, things happen, and life goes on, whether I’m in it or not. You had to do what you needed to do. But no one could tell me that, because they went a little bit too far in assuming that I was going to die. The way I look at it, they accepted what Justin guided me in not accepting. Were you there at the hospital the day Justin was there? Justin was there when the doctor walked in, and the doctor said, we’ll do this and we’ll do that. This was after the surgery. You’ll need chemo, you’ll need radiation, etc., but chances are this tumor will come back and you will not live. He said 18 months was as much as anybody could live. Justin told me that night not to accept it. He told me again about how the doctor said that he himself would live no more than five years with his heart condition.

VFJ: So that worked for you?

Liz: So much is all in our minds, what we want to accept, what we don’t, and what we can accept. Justin had difficulty with me going back to work.

VFJ: He said you shouldn’t?

Liz: He said to retire, and to retire now.

VFJ: Why was he so adamant?

Liz: Nurses work too hard and I don’t need to be doing that. I tried to explain that I wasn’t that kind of nurse, that I do different things. The next day when I came back, he started again. I said, Justin, but I’m going to be retiring. Oh, when? he asked. By June. That’s not good enough. This was somewhere around mid-March.

VFJ: That’s very curious.

Liz: I’ll tell you what, it was so beautiful, April 1st, and we were having dinner. I had just gotten the last MRI results, and there was nothing there. Things looked very positive. I went down to end of the table where Justin was sitting and I told him. Justin, the MRI was clear. I’m doing really good. He looked at me, and it was amazing what he said. He said, we’ll talk about this again… three years from now. I’m sure I didn’t misunderstand him. When he looked at me, clarity was there. That was the first of April and he hasn’t brought it up since. He’s talked about asthma …

VFJ: Wow, asthma, because that was the first thing that was alleviated for you because of TCC.

Liz: Absolutely. And just Saturday night, I guess they had just taped him for the conference. He told me that he talked about me, but that he didn’t mention my name, and asked me if that was okay. And he says to me, are you going to the conference? I said, no Justin, I’m not. Then I asked, Justin, are you going to the conference. No, he said, I’m not going. See, I said, I have what I need in Albuquerque—you and TCC. I figured I was in for a lecture, but he just took my hand. He’s such a part of my life.

VFJ: Justin loves you.

Liz: He feels that I show T’ai Chi Chih. He also may be testing me.

VFJ: He’s testing us all the time, but you’ve had already the ultimate test. I mean you’ve had to look death in the eye and we haven’t done that yet.

Liz: It’s just okay, that’s the beauty of it.

VFJ: I guess I’m projecting now. I’d say if those people are not treating you as … even as they treated you before.. they’ve written you off. Do you really want to spend time with people who misrepresented your existence when you were there, before and after.

Liz: Well, when you’ve been to the mountaintop—what’s that saying?—where do you go from there? You come back down. [whispering] You come back down. If you’re not dead, it means your life on earth is not done. I tell you what, that was a hard part about going to work, too, is for 10 solid months, everything in my life changed, and yet I was so protected. I had family love at home, family love away from home, family love from TCC people, and family love from some people from work. There was so much love. I remember one girl came up to me one day and she said, “I am so glad to meet you. I prayed, and here you are.” And I’m thinking, oh, I don’t remember her name. She said, you don’t know me. I’ve never met you. I wasn’t here when you first came. But you left love for so many people that I prayed that one day I’d get to meet you. I thought oh my God!

VFJ: Hello!

Liz: I’m proof to people that you don’t have to buy the package deal if we don’t want to. I got a card from Becky Busching that said, Never let the odds keep you from doing what you know in your heart you were meant to do. That has been so strong to me. I didn’t buy those statistics. I was able to say, no thank you, I don’t accept those. And as Justin would say, only One knows our numbers anyway. So, I’ve been on lots of journeys in the last year.

VFJ: It was one day to the next that everything changed.

Liz: Yes, everything. Just when you think you have control of everything. Do you remember Ram Dass, how he had a stroke?

VFJ: Yes, his book Still Here, after his stroke, and then there was the movie called “Fierce Grace.” Did you identify with that?

Liz: Oh, yes, left and right. He said even though the words wouldn’t come, the concepts were there. I could identify with that. It was another’s soul’s story. He said too that his job was not done, and that’s why he is still here. And then you have to be careful defining “jobs.” As my sister says, just being, and sharing with people, may be the job. I go to the cancer support group at the hospital, both as a nurse and as a participant. I talk with them.

VFJ: They must be very inspired then, that you are a nurse and part of the group.

Liz: I talk to some of the patients, who might say how discouraged they are, how sick they feel. Maybe that’s why my hair hasn’t grown in on that side, because I show it to everybody. I really have been there, and it’s okay, whatever they feel they need to do.

VFJ: I remember way back, you were saying at dinner that you were having these memory lapses and you couldn’t figure it out, and I said, well, that’s just menopause, Liz, it’s happening to me, too. But that wasn’t it, it was something else.

Liz: And I went to the doctor, who agreed and wanted to give me hormone replacement therapy. But I also had headaches, and I never had headaches, and I had earaches. I was supposed to catch a plane and I knew that my ears would kill me if I didn’t. That’s the problem with us nurses—we self-diagnose all the time. I went in and told them I was having earaches and that I needed some antibiotics. A week goes by, the antibiotics aren’t working and it’s time for me to take my trip, and I’m having pain like crazy. They decided they’d better do an MRI. That was on a Wednesday and I was supposed to fly out Thursday morning. And that’s when they wouldn’t let me leave the hospital. You know, Justin talks about the play within the play, but I knew they’d gotten the wrong person for this play. This wasn’t my play. Wait a minute, you’ve got the wrong person here, I’m on my way to Mississippi. My best defense mechanism is denial, and I do it well.

VFJ: Denial is useful. Lord knows where we’d be…

Liz: …if we had to accept it all at one time. Everybody said I was calm and making decisions. I don’t remember. I came out of surgery and couldn’t see. I had to wear a patch for so long. It was hard, not being able to read. I felt what was important to me had been taken from me. But I was doing T’ai Chi Chih. The surgery was Monday and I went to rehab on Friday and that’s when I first did TCC. They didn’t know what to do with me. My vital signs were fine, I wanted to boss them around in the ICU, and so they got me out of there real fast. [laughing]. Then the insurance wouldn’t even let me stay in rehab. But it was hard to have an eye patch and be behind of walker and have your family come in and see you all beat up like that.

VFJ: But you didn’t hide yourself at all as I recall

Liz: But at first I wanted to. Rick, my husband, said, “Look at the people out there who live daily this way. You just have to have the patience. This is going to pass.”

VFJ: All this happening to you really brought out the love in people. You’ve been doing T’ai Chi Chih, and also meditating for some years now, but also agreed to the mainstream treatments.

Liz: Absolutely. It is the whole circle. Some said don’t do this, don’t take that… but it was all of it—the chemotherapy, the radiation, to the timing of it, to the surgeon, the surgeon’s hands, plus the love, the t’ai chi chih, the meditation, the compassion—it’s all of it. It taught anyone who wanted to be a part of my life that our lives are connected. What impacts one also impacts others. To me that was one of the things to realize, again this oneness, you really can’t separate anything out. If you’re able to let go of that ego, we’re just all in this together. I personally believe in a soul. I used to believe that we were all these bodies and we were at different levels with our souls. But we’re all spirits and we have these bodies that carry these spirits while we’re here on earth.

VFJ: Were you surprised by your openings of understanding? Was that a gradual thing?. There’s a certain knowledge about you. It’s not about any book learning.

Liz: Absolutely, it’s a feeling. The words are hard. There’s a difference in knowing and experiencing. How it’s opened, I don’t know. I believe that goes back to my inner strength, the feeling of vulnerability became less.

VFJ: We also imagine that we have time, that we are going to live forever, always looking out to the future for things to happen, not really living for today. So we’re not really a person, but a projection of a person in a future that never comes. But you having to face it from one minute to the next might have just jolted you into that Reality that the rest of us find elusive.

Liz: Yes, but it’s more about accepting, wherever in life. I believe there were times in my life when there were openings, but for whatever reasons—out of fear, maybe—like they say, if you’re not ready. I remember a nurse one night after the surgery—I was in pain, and she decided that some of my pain might be anxiety, so instead of giving me more narcotics, they gave me something for anxiety. I remember the nurse coming and sitting and telling me the story of when she was skiing, and basically how she came close to death, and how that changed her life. She’d made an assumption that I was fearing death, and I realized, no, I wasn’t fearing death, because there was no death there. I didn’t believe I was going to die. I never did believe I was going to die. But everything was so open. There was no life and death; it was just open. The hardest part for me was not that there was death, but there was lack of control. This is supposed to be my play, and this was not the part I wanted to do. But, this is my part, whether I like it or not, and how I accept it. The sensitivity, the openness, I don’t know why, but it was just there.

VFJ: I remember when the tsunami hit, before your diagnosis, you couldn’t stop crying. It was like you had a tsunami of empathy.

Liz: Miracles are everywhere, like stars everywhere. Being able to be with Justin, his meditation, listening to him, understanding oneness. It’s all the same. We don’t have to make choices. All of that thinking, we don’t have to think. It’s all within us. So much acknowledgment.

VFJ: Well, you’ve certainly been an inspiration for us all. That’s part of your journey, too, to teach us.

Liz: We all have our roles (laughing).

* * *

Liz and I were belting out the old McCartney tune after meditation one night. We decided that “Let It Be” is a pretty good mantra for living life.

[INSERT QUOTE HERE: Paul McCartney (“Let It Be”), 26 lines beginning “When I find myself in times of trouble”]