By Peggy Sturdivant

If I had to choose two hours per week that provide me with richest range of experience, from belly laughs to sheer delight in words, the venue might seem unlikely: Cancer Lifeline. Occasionally someone winces when I mention facilitating a writing class there. “That must be so hard,” they say.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Although we keep a box of Kleenex on the table while those who choose to share their writing, it’s just as likely needed to wipe away tears from laughing so hard. Nowhere else can I hear former nuns make ribald puns, women able to laugh at the obtuseness of surgeons or men able to joke about the side effects of cancer treatments enhancing their feminine side.

Once upon a time (40 years ago), there was a woman undergoing chemotherapy who realized that the emotional support component was lacking in the aftermath of diagnosis and treatment. At her kitchen table she brainstormed what would really be helpful, starting with a 24-hour telephone ‘lifeline.’ The literature can speak to all that has transpired in four decades, with programs now in 15 Washington counties, thousands of clients helped with financial navigation and ever changing services.

But Cancer Lifeline for me is a beautiful facility near Greenlake, where some folks remember sweeping the floors as an early PCC location. Once a week I take poetry prompts upstairs to the healing arts room that looks out on a rooftop garden. The class is called “Writing for the Moment” because the purpose is just to write whatever spills out.

Around the table are people who have never considered themselves writers, and those who have always kept a journal. Along with just about everyone else in the world they fit Cancer Lifeline’s mission to optimize the quality of life for all people living with cancer. There is a 30-year breast cancer survivor who as a grade school teacher wasn’t allowed to tell her students or their parents about her disease. Another woman has lost two siblings to cancer and two best friends in the space of two years yet she always has us laughing with her delight in her grandniece. A prim looking volunteer who has “worked” the line for more hours than anyone other volunteer wrote a bare-breasted Rio piece that we all still talk about.

I pass out the prompt. We write. We share. And somehow every single time the sum of all the parts creates a whole that transcends individual pieces and creates a work of art, suspended for the moment before we resume our busy lives.

Five years ago the NW Collage Society took some of these writings and their members chose works to use as inspiration for collage. Cancer Lifeline’s facility always features an art exhibit with a requisite opening reception. I will never forget that opening night. The framed works prompted by our spilled words were stunning creations. Then, as though we were adoptees being met by overjoyed parents the collage artists found us, “You’re my writer,” they said. They had been living and working with our words for weeks, if not months.

Since that first show, the NW Collage Society has wanted to do it again. Whereas back in 2007 there were perhaps 20-some works total this time 68 pieces are mounted next to the written words on every available wall space at Cancer Lifeline’s Dorothy O’Brien Center. What gets written weekly by participants, the oral creation is now a collective visual creation, suspended not just for the moment, but sturdily on the center walls through June 24, 2013.

Cancer Lifeline offers classes, support groups and workshops on nutrition, exercise and artistic expression. But the listings only hint at what happens between people who meet with their hearts open, and sometimes absolutely nothing to lose by being more honest than they knew was possible, and yet safe. Connections happen quickly.

Everyone who has experienced cancer in any way realizes that it’s lifelong. There is a before, during and after; each phase creates lifelong effects. A certain need may have priority during treatment, others later. Those later needs often revolve around connecting with others who may have had a similar experience.

There’s no way that I can do justice to what happens weekly, but I can invite you to glimpse its power through the collage exhibit that is being mounted right now. Each piece is beautiful and rich.

Don’t wait for a further prompt.

The Spring Art Exhibit at Cancer Lifeline will be on display from April 8 – June 24th, with the opening reception from 6-8 p.m. on Thursday, April 11th with writers and collage artists in attendance. Cancer Lifeline’s Dorothy O’Brien Center. 6522 Fremont Avenue N. Seattle. 206.297.2100. Open M-F, 8:30-5. www.cancerlifeline.org

Follow Ballard News-Tribune on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ballardnewstrib

And Twitter at http://twitter.com/ballardnewstrib