“Have you tried meditating?” My therapist asked me nine years ago when I was coping with a new diagnosis. Yes. I had. With mixed results. I understood the benefits of meditation as well as I understood the benefits of flossing my teeth, which is to say, perfectly, and then ignored them. “Overthinking is my superpower,” I told him. “My mind races with so many thoughts; I’m not sure it’s possible to empty it.” 

Still, I accepted the downloaded guided meditations he gave me by someone named Dr. Joe Dispenza. I thought they were weird; I didn’t like Dispenza’s altered, space-like voice. But I liked the way he used science to make the case for meditation. I didn’t understand then that he was intentionally using that voice to tap into certain brainwave frequencies and get us beyond ourselves, into a different state of mind. So I tried Tara Brach, Kundalini, and Zen. As my friend Landon put it about his own practice, “If you really squint, you could call what I was doing meditation.” I felt momentary states of calm, but not much more. Then, the tumors pressing on my spine made sitting too uncomfortable to continue. I tried lying down and practicing, but I always fell asleep. I thought, Maybe I’m not trying hard enough. Maybe running or being in nature is my practice. Maybe I’m not meant to do it at all. I put meditation on a shelf and labeled it, “Useful Tool For Others.” 

When I found out last spring that there were new and growing tumors along my spine, I was anxious, worried about the kids, the unknowns of this disease, and its limited treatment options. I was living in stress and survival. I was also not sleeping, averaging 4-5 hours of disrupted sleep a night. And I was resentful of others for being healthy and being able to plan for their futures. On a good day, I didn’t think about the disease, but I was still discontent. I spent hours scrolling Zillow real estate listings, looking for a new house, or fantasizing about renovating our old one. I wanted a clean, fresh, unbroken life. 

A friend suggested I go to a Joe Dispenza meditation retreat to learn to renovate my insides instead. I told her I’d rather have a new kitchen. I didn’t like the looks of his retreats. Big, flashy, Tony Robbins-style conferences in convention halls devoid of character and fresh air. But as a mom with a rare disease and not many options, I was willing to do anything to heal. And recent promising scans buoyed me enough to risk believing in meditation as a way to amplify healing. So I signed up for a 7-day experience in San Diego. 

Day 1: I walked into the enormous hotel ballroom carrying my little meditation pillow. The space was lit up like a rock concert with a giant stage and five large screens. I turned around and walked out. I caught my breath while looking at the ocean out the window. I looked at schedules for whale watching tours. I wanted to be out there, on the water, not cooped up in a giant conference room for seven days. I made a deal with myself: “If you go back in there and try, just one day, then you can go whale watching tomorrow.” I booked a spot on a 10 a.m boat the next day. 

I made it through the first day, feeling pretty convinced that everyone was going to have a spiritual experience except me. I was also certain that this was a cult. Back in my room, I went down the rabbit hole of who is Joe Dispenza. Is he legitimate? I asked ChatGPT, expecting a one word answer. Chat said, “He’s a real person. Many people report that his practices help them with stress and focus.” Not helpful, Chat!

Day 2: These are not my people, I told myself as I walked into the ballroom. My people are discerning intellectuals and nature-lovers, yet everyone in my row of chairs was not what I expected: a middle-aged couple from Mexico, a young woman from Denmark, a gentle Israeli man, and two brothers from Mongolia. Claiming that I didn’t fit in was like walking into an airport and declaring, these are not my people. There were 2,000 people from 61 countries. All ages. All nationalities. All faiths. Some had traveled for three days to get there. I watched a son push his father in a wheelchair from ALS, a daughter hold her mother’s arm as she shook with Parkinson’s, and an older man take three tries to get up off the ground after meditating. I committed to come back after my whale watching adventure. 

Out on the whale boat later that day, we motored for an hour off shore, venturing into the wide, open ocean. The captain claimed that they had spotted gray whales and dolphins all week, but so far we hadn’t seen anything other than a few sea lions. I started to doubt my choice to leave the retreat and come here. What if we didn’t see any whales? 

Then, a spout of water, and another, and another. Four humpback whales surfaced near the boat as they migrated over 3,000 miles from Alaska to Baja, Mexico to have their calves, following the sun, stars, currents and earth’s magnetic field. Our boat followed along next to them for over an hour, listening to their breath, watching their flukes break the surface of the water, wave, and glide gracefully back into the sea. I thought, now I know why I came. The humpbacks were teaching me that beyond that worry-making machine of my mind, there is all this mystery and beauty in the unknown. 

Day 3 and beyond: I walked into the ballroom with curiosity and openness. I adopted a Mexican couple as my new best friends. That day, and every day afterwards, we did three meditations a day and listened to hours of lectures on physics and neuroscience. I wasn’t having a breakthrough or any spiritual experiences. So I kept trying harder. On Day 5, we woke up at 4am to meditate. I could hear Octaviano snoring next to me, but somehow I managed to stay awake. When Dr. Joe told us it was 9 o’clock and time to go to breakfast, I was in shock. How had I meditated for five hours? Well, we did alternate between sitting and lying down, but still. Before, with the sciatica from tumors pressing on my spine, I couldn’t sit for 30 minutes. 

Then I found out I was chosen for a healing experience at the end of the retreat. I was honored, but also conflicted. I was offended by the notion that if a person just believed enough in their body’s ability to heal, they could cure their cancer. So those who die from disease didn’t believe or try hard enough? It felt cruel. Yet at this point in my journey, I was open to possibility in a way I hadn’t been in a long while. 

When the time came for the healing, I was grateful, but overwhelmed by the idea of so much attention being placed on me. They told me eight meditators would sit in a circle and send me loving, healing energy while I lay down in the middle and received. What does that even mean? Receive what? My overthinking, skeptical brain was in full force. 

I lay down and closed my eyes anyway. Then the meditators designated as healers came into the room and gathered around. I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t feel anything. I had a strong urge to get up and give away my “healee” spot. It was uncomfortable to just lie there and receive. I wanted to do rather than be and give rather than receive. I thought, I don’t deserve this healing. There are others sicker than me. Yet I didn’t want to make a scene, so I stayed lying down, eyes closed. 

I kept trying to feel something. Then I heard an autistic child in the room make sounds, and instead of trying harder, I surrendered to the sounds I was hearing. It gave me permission to make sounds too. I opened my mouth and out came low rumblings that sounded like monks throat singing, then sobbing. I felt nine years of stress fall off my shoulders and lower back. I saw Cole and Hazel, Kurt, my dog, my brothers, my mom, my dad and loved them deeply. Next, I was floating in space through the stars less like I was in a spaceship and more like my body was a constellation. I was inside one of those star charts drawn by H.A Rey (The author of Curious George and also The Stars) and I felt full of gratitude for everything all of a sudden, especially for Curious George and for H.A Rey. The next sound that came out of my mouth was not a low rumbling or deep sobbing, but laughter. 

I knew clearly at that moment that I was going to be fine. I could hear a woman by my left ear crying too and I wanted to reach out to tell her it was okay, that we were all going to be okay. I also saw myself outside in a forest surrounded by teenagers and I was teaching them how to meditate. I was envisioning a future with me in it, and that felt amazing.

When it was time to open our eyes, I didn’t feel embarrassed that I had just sobbed and moaned in front of eight strangers, I wanted to see who they were and thank them. We sat talking for a while and all of us seemed changed for the better. When I spoke with the woman next to me who had been crying, she told me that she was a military vet who suffered from terrible PTSD. She said, “I don’t know what just happened, but all the anxiety and stress has completely left me.” All I could think was, if the two of us could have some kind of spiritual experience in a basement hotel ballroom, then anything is possible. 

Nine years ago, the diagnosis changed me. Three recurrences changed me again. In that moment on the carpeted floor, I saw myself as someone who was not afraid of the unknown, someone who didn’t live in survival mode, someone who slept deeply and well. After seven days of meditating on the unknown, I know that I’ve changed again, and it feels amazing. 

Now that I’m back home, the real challenge begins. So far, I’m waking up 30 min earlier each day to meditate. It’s not as easy to do alone, but my days go better when I do it. I still scroll through Zillow, but I’m writing again and ideas are coming to me faster now. It’s as if I rid myself of a whole lot of energy that was going toward worry and stress and released it for creativity. And last night, for the first time in months (years?), I slept for eight full hours. 

Whatever your practice is to find your center, keep going. I feel deeply that we’re on the right track. Just keep going. 

Love, 

Susie

(P.S. To support the non-violent protests and the exhausted people on the front lines in Minneapolis, we are offering a weekly meditation circle: Meditate for Peace & Justice on Mondays at 7ET/6CT/5MT/4PT, online. Stay tuned for more details or reply to this email that you are interested in joining us. There is no cost, and no experience is necessary.)

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If you want to try meditation on your own, here are some of my favorite resources:

• Tara Brach: Gentle, Calming Guided Meditations
• Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, brilliant book of talks by Shunryu Suzuki
• Vipassana Meditation courses & resources
• Joe Dispenza: Full Guided Morning Meditation on Spotify from July 2024 (38 min w/intro) -couldn’t figure out how to link it 😉

“It entails a different kind of return: arduous, uncertain, unpredictable, and alive. It is a return not to what was, but to what is, and what might be. It is a return not to who we were, but who we long to be.” –R. Sharon Anisfeld

It’s the time of year that calls us to return to school, to routine, to shorter, colder days. I am also facing another return: that of the chordoma tumors along my spine. 

Hearing last March that I had new and growing chordoma tumors throughout my body, mainly along my spine, knocked the wind out of me. Before, I had wanted to avoid a recurrence at all costs. Now it was here. Again. My third recurrence. I cocooned in the house to metabolize the news and the news from around the world, waking regularly at 3am, full of fear. This went on until my former student Chloë Zelkha, a rabbi, changed the word “return” for me in her phenomenal blog, Between Chaos & Light.  

Chloë wrote something like, “Return and repair are what cement the world together.” 

“Like sewing!” My friend Tania exclaimed. “To truly strengthen a seam, you go back over it, loop stitches over one another to make it even stronger, more resilient.” I hugged her tight, thanking her for reframing “return.”

The fabulous Chordoma Foundation helped me find a clinical trial out of Los Angeles. This is a Phase Two trial of already-approved FDA drugs, which means no one receives a placebo, the medications are proven to be safe and effective, and everyone gets treated. It involves an IV infusion of targeted chemotherapy and immunotherapy every three weeks, indefinitely, as long as my system tolerates the drugs, and as long as the tumors respond. After qualifying in April, I now travel every three weeks to Providence Hospital in Santa Monica, CA to receive state-of-the-art care from an incredible team of researchers and clinicians. 

I have had 7 treatments and so far, so good. I feel strong. I am not losing my hair. Sometimes I have crushing fatigue like, “Hi person-boarding-the-plane, do you mind if I nap on your shoulder?” kind of fatigue, but otherwise the side effects are manageable. The treatments are especially tolerable because I get to stay with generous, dear friends whom I met when I was twenty-five and their daughter’s French teacher. 

A quick word about clinical trials. They are no longer a last resort. They are key aspects of identifying and testing new treatment options that are becoming available at a rapid pace. The Chordoma Foundation has been instrumental in fast-tracking trials for someone with a rare bone disease like mine. These trials act like stepping stones into an unknown future and are the best way to manage a disease that doesn’t have an abundance of options. 

I choose to see clinical trials as sporty test vehicles at a large car dealership, waiting for us to hop in and go for a drive. One is bound to fit perfectly. Yet that doesn’t mean I am not still terrified of this disease and what it means. There is just too much uncertainty. I feel like the car I’m test-driving is great, but the headlights don’t work. I can’t see where I’m going. Worse, nobody else’s headlights work either. A semi-truck could be coming straight at me and I would never know.

None of us know, though, do we? One endearing thing about humans is that we’re actually terrible at predicting the future. It doesn’t look the way we thought it would look. Life doesn’t go the way we thought it would go. And yet we keep going, wondering how to love the world with its sorrow, heartbreak, and devastating realities.  

One way to love the world is to cultivate an unyielding radar for beauty. It’s difficult here on earth. It’s also beautiful. Each time I return to Colorado, I sleep for two days, work in a frenzy for four, then head straight for the mountains, often alone. My friends think I’m nuts to camp solo, but it’s medicine for me. I’m away from distractions and the darkness and I can step naked into the freezing waters of a Rocky Mountain river and take on its vitality. In the mountains, I am not patient #4. It’s a different kind of return- to my original self: silly and strong. I feel like I belong here as much as the elk, the fir trees, and the bolete mushrooms. 

In the mountains, I practice paying attention to wildflowers, birdsong, and finding ripe raspberries. Paying attention is a kind of accessible prayer for me and I feel like praying a lot these days. I stare at clouds reflected in the water and fish slicing through that watery sky. I climb to the headwaters of a mighty river, in awe that the water rises up from inside the mountain. “Mountains have insides,” I say out loud, shaking my head in disbelief at all the things I still don’t know or understand. 

Then one night I can’t find my headlamp and I am forced to walk back to my tent at the darkest point of the night. I’m walking without a headlamp, but somehow I can feel my way home. This leads to a simple understanding: I can do this. We can find our way in the dark, even when we have no idea how. I think back to the idea of test-driving a car without headlights and my fear of uncertainty and not knowing. Maybe I had it wrong. Maybe uncertainty is not as scary as I think. 

The scary part seems to live in the familiar, the knowing –knowing that my options to treat chordoma are limited. Knowing that the actor, Gary Sinise, buried his son last year with this disease. Knowing that the world news is going to get worse before it gets better. To love my life, I have to love all of it. 

It is in the uncertainty, in the not-knowing that doctors are discovering new treatments every day. In the not-knowing, light is both particle and wave. In the not-knowing, a river is born under rocks, inside a mountain. When I find my way back to the tent, I stand outside, slack-jawed and empty-handed under the stars. I remember that my god has always lived inside mystery. 

Last week, I finally felt ready to be around other people – in small doses. I was lucky enough to be invited to Katie Arnold’s Flow Camp at High Camp, a hut at 11,000 feet in southern Colorado with a handful of like-minded writers and hikers and yogis. In this stunningly beautiful place, I went from feeling fragile and broken to strong, patched up, and restored. Honestly, I felt twelve years old. I had dirty knees and elbows from lying on the ground, staring at Axolotl salamanders in a high-mountain fen. Here was an animal, once on the brink of extinction, now recovering. They have remarkable healing abilities and can regenerate limbs, but also eye, heart and brain tissue. I shook my head again at all that I don’t know or understand. Healing is possible. In this moment, surrounded by inspiring people and magnificent creatures, I realized that I’ve never lost conviction in our immense capacity to redeem, rebuild, and re-member the way forward. Return is not a death sentence; it is renewal. 

“Return to the strange idea of continuous living, despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty.”–Ada Limón “Instructions On Not Giving Up”

I want to leave you with a note about a lost word. Kathryn Grody (who has a remarkable one-woman show The Unexpected Third on right now in Philly! Go!!) recently introduced me to the little-known word respair, which first appeared in the early 1500s, but then inexplicably vanished from our vocabulary. She and I are bringing it back!  It feels much needed now. Respair is the opposite of despair and means “renewed hope; recovery from despair, anguish, or hopelessness.” Respair also evokes the French verb, “respirer” – to breathe. Maybe we can breathe our way through despair to hope and action.

I’m at the airport now, returning to Los Angeles for my 8th infusion, a lot less afraid than before. As Rabbi Anisfeld writes, “[Consider] it a return not to what was, but to what is, and what might be.” My scans in July showed the treatments are working – the tumors are stable, some are even showing signs of shrinkage. Wahoo!! The next scans are October 13th and 14th.

To map the future, I’m picturing my own hands sewing the frayed hem of my spine (and PacMan gobbling up the bad cells). I’m visualizing salamanders and sunrises. I also see all of you, waking each morning, determined to face with respair the difficult beauty of this world.

Love,

Susie

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Dear Brave Ones,

I’m in Santa Monica, California to take part in an exciting new medical study / clinical drug trial my Boston doctors recommended to stop the progression of Chordoma cells in my body.

Yesterday was Day 1 of an infusion of a combo of immunotherapy and chemo directed by Dr. Santosh Kesari of St. John’s Cancer Institute in Los Angeles. I feel tired, but overall great today. The plan is to return to California once a month for a 1/2 day treatment for at least a year. I shouldn’t lose my hair or even feel too bad, and the results for others have been super promising. The only help we need is visualizing my own immune system’s T-cells finding the hidden cancer cells and working like Ms. Pac-Man to gobble up those bad cells!

I’m also here with a purpose. I firmly believe that this trial and others like it will cure Chordoma in the near future. The landscape for a new patient is totally different than it was for me when I was first diagnosed nine years ago. Today they drew my blood, for example, to identify which targeted therapies could work specifically for my DNA profile! Trials like this allow us to learn a lot about different therapies and doctors can increasingly choose the right therapy based on the genetics of the person and their tumors. It’s not too big of stretch to imagine that we will crack the cure for several rare cancers in the next 5 years with customized treatment. So there is good news out there, after all!

One thing that is lifting me up: My Poetry-for-Peace Challenge on Instagram (@susierinehart). On Wednesday, April 30th, 8pm ET, thirty brave souls will perform a poem they learned by heart this month. If you’d like to join in and listen to some of the most stunning, delightful poems by poets such as Mary Oliver, Ross Gay, Ada Limón, Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Naomi Shihab Nye, and others, please let me know.

In challenging times, it helps to be on the lookout for beauty. I happen to find beauty in poetry (this wasn’t always the case, but it is now) and in YOU for choosing brave over perfect! 

Where do you look for beauty? What brings you delight these days?

Love,

Susie

This year, colleges are asking a question on applications that I’ve only rarely encountered before in my work as a College Admissions Coach: 

• “Describe a time when you strongly disagreed with someone about an idea or an issue.” (Harvard) 
• Describe a time when you engaged others in meaningful dialogue around an issue that was important to you. Did this exchange create change, new perspectives, or deeper relationships?” (George Washington U)
• “Please cite a specific conversation you had where a conversation partner challenged your perspective or you challenged theirs.” (Boston College) 

If colleges are asking applicants whether they know how to engage with those they disagree with, it means they are sounding the alarm; the ability to have challenging conversations with diverse viewpoints is a critical skill for success in university and beyond. 

When prompted, a few of my students came up with wonderful responses. One talked about how her rabbi facilitated a contentious conversation about Gaza. Another articulated his appreciation for the diversity of his cafeteria table and how he learns from the many, opposing opinions. Still another described an informal group she has formed with her English teacher and friends to talk about books and social issues over lunch. 

The problem is that most of my students were at a total loss about how to respond. They could not come up with a time when they disagreed with someone about anything important. The majority of my students confessed that other than a few class discussions, they have never “engaged others in meaningful dialogue.” With dinner table conversations down to 7 minutes because of sports practices, play rehearsals, work and other commitments, families have no time to talk about anything except logistics. And even though they are shouted at all day long by social media, teenagers just haven’t had much practice engaging with opposing viewpoints. Honestly, neither have we. 

Having challenging conversations is a muscle most of us adults have not activated lately. There is a feeling that the stakes are too high, so it’s safer not to engage. There is also the problem that we are talking past one another. With the deluge of misinformation or siloed information out there, we are literally not talking about the same thing anymore. We are too polite, too scared, too misinformed, and too disconnected from people who hold different viewpoints from us to disagree with others. So how can we expect our children to have meaningful, constructive dialogues?

Is it fair to even ask these kids about challenging conversations on their college applications? I think so. Discussions foster deeper understanding, promote critical thinking, and active listening, particularly to opposing perspectives. Colleges want to create welcoming campuses where students from every background feel comfortable expressing their opinions. Colleges also want to know, Will this student be able to disagree with someone in class, then brush their teeth in the dorm next to that same person at night? Universities understand that it’s essential for incoming students to have skills to disagree about complex topics on campus, and in life. 

Before becoming a college admissions and essay coach, I was an English teacher for a couple of decades. I was lucky enough to be able to teach free from the pressures of AP tests, so I could focus on the art of conversation with my students. Every single class was a student-led discussion about a common text that we read the night before. At first the students were terrible at discussions; the same two extroverts spoke for the whole period. Then, with feedback and facilitation, all the students learned to invite others into the conversation, ask clarifying questions, listen without judgment, and even change their minds on the toughest issues based on something one of their classmates said. What does this have to do with English? To become good readers and writers, students must practice being good thinkers. I believe that constructive dialogue is a lost art. It’s also the best way I know to understand others and ourselves better, not to mention create meaningful connections. So I’m bringing it back!

For my 10th and 11th grade students who work with me on their college applications, I’m going to be offering a “Breaking Bread” series, inspired by a similar series our local public radio station held on air. This will be an opportunity to share a meal (food is the ultimate connector) and discuss an article about a complex issue. The students come from different backgrounds and represent many different perspectives. That’s the good part. The tricky part is that we will be in different time zones so the meal part will be virtual, but they will have full permission to eat and drink while we discuss a new, short piece each month. I want to facilitate these challenging conversations as acts of hope. Maybe we can do a series for adults, too. I believe that if we learn to have courageous conversations across differences, we might do more than get into college. We might navigate our way to a future of diverse perspectives living peacefully together.

Love,

Susie

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There’s still time to sign up to be one of my students! Request a 30 min free consult HERE.