Beginning in the Only Place There Is

Welcome to my new Substack — the start of my musings on cancer, healing and the path of awakening in these wild, complex, consequential times.

I’ve sat with this blank page for days now, wondering where to begin. The truth is — I don’t know. So, I’m starting here, in the only place that ever truly exists: the present moment. It feels poignant that I was up before dawn and finally called to write — once again in that liminal place I’m learning to inhabit between the dark and the light.

This new blog, Making Beauty from Mud, takes its name from a teaching by the late Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh: “No mud, no lotus.” It’s a phrase I’ve carried with me for over 15 years — a reminder that beauty isn’t something we find in spite of mud, but something we can create from it. Time and again, the most painful and challenging experiences in my life have cracked me open in ways I couldn’t have imagined — making way for deeper clarity, liberation and a fierce kind of love I would never have chosen, and also wouldn’t trade. This latest chapter — navigating the recurrence of colorectal cancer and undergoing intensive treatment — has anchored me even more deeply in this teaching, with newfound humility and reverence.

I’m writing this blog for a few reasons:

• First, I want it to be in service to others walking through their own dark nights — whether that’s health journeys, the loss of someone dear, or simply the grief and uncertainty that life most certainly brings.

• Second, I hope it offers resonance and grounding for those navigating cancer diagnoses — including colon cancer, which is becoming alarmingly more common for people under 50, like me, and especially those for whom treatment poses life-long consequences on fertility.

• Finally, I’m writing this for myself: because bearing witness to my own experience, and allowing myself to be witnessed by others, is in itself a form of medicine. There is something deeply healing about offering one’s raw truth with no need to hide, fix or resolve it — of embracing that there is magic in the mess.

Over the past six months — since the recurrence of my cancer and start of treatment — my spiritual practice has become the most transformative aspect of my healing, alongside the vast ocean of love and support I have received from my community. Learning how to inhabit a larger sense of myself and deeper sense of belonging has become the central terrain of my experience: a place of reckoning, of refuge and of revelation. It’s here that I’m finding the most profound tools for navigating cancer — all the fear, discomfort and uncertainty that comes along with it — and where I’m discovering, again and again, the beauty and potential woven through every moment of our human experience.

What you’ll find in this blog are not medical updates or treatment plans — though those threads may certainly weave through — so much as deeper reflections about what I’m learning on this journey. What ultimately ends up making its way onto these digital pages feels as unknowable and evolving in this moment as the path ahead remains for me.

That said, themes will likely include what I’m learning about:

• Alchemizing grief and loss into pathways of healing, by meeting sorrow with compassion and allowing it to open us to wholeness.

• Deepening intimacy with the truth of impermanence, and embracing it as a doorway to peace rather than a source of fear.

• Shifting into non-judging awareness to free ourselves from fear-based stories, and to find steadiness in the present moment.

• Surrendering resistance to life as it is, in order to access the strength and spaciousness that come from true acceptance.

• Exploring the inextricable interconnection between the health of our bodies and the health of our earth, including how personal transformation is the foundation for planetary transformation.

Having spent much of my life working at the intersection of climate, justice and systems change, I see echoes of my body’s unwellness in the unwellness of our world — and I feel, more than ever, the profound link between personal and planetary healing. The themes I’m living and learning through cancer feel not only relevant to but essential for how we navigate this moment in human history. My experience is personal, yes, but it is also part of something much larger: a collective initiation into a deeper relationship with the unknown — and with our living world.

Since my initial diagnosis in 2023, I have sourced tremendous strength from a deep, unwavering sense that I am not going through this journey just for myself. This knowing is one of the primary reasons I feel called to begin sharing my writing more widely, thanks in large part to the encouragement of my beloved community.

This image was the first I ever took and shared following my initial diagnosis in 2023, lovingly filtered with rainbows and sparkles by my dear friend Amanda in front of the medicine garden she planted for me.

For the record: You don’t need to have a spiritual practice for my forthcoming musings to be relevant in your own life. At their core, they’re simply a reflection of what I’m discovering about how to be human and maintain some semblance of peace in times of deep uncertainty. For me, my spiritual practice has become the soil out of which these writings grow — how I’m learning to stay present with all that is constantly changing, and to meet the unknown with a deeper trust than I ever thought possible. These practices are no longer abstract concepts to me. They have quickly become essential tools for both staying present and meeting each new unfolding as it comes; and sometimes, even in the hardest moments, discovering how they open a quiet doorway to peace.

Thank you for reading, and for signing up to be part of this journey with me. I’m so grateful to walk this path with you by my proverbial side — not just for my own healing, or yours, but in service of a deeper, collective remembering of what it means to create more peace in ourselves as a foundation for peace in the world.

If there is anyone else who you think might enjoy or benefit from my musings, please feel free to share this with them.

With that, I close by officially publishing and including the link to a song I re-wrote and recorded in 2023 at a rock-bottom moment in the first chapter of my cancer journey. Credit goes to Fia, who wrote the original. I may opt to include musical accompaniment to my written musings along the way.

With love, and gratitude, in service,

Shana