Recently I was able to see the wonderful one-woman play In the Body of the World by Eve Ensler.

Courtesy of BroadwayWorld.com, some important background:

Ensler was diagnosed with stage III/IV uterine cancer in 2007, just as she began her work with rape victims in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rather than temporarily retreat from the horrors she was fighting there in order to concentrate on her own healing, she spoke with her contacts daily. Together they worked to help each other. They transformed their pain into power and chose to live and not merely survive…

One of Eve Ensler’s first points in the play is about somatization. How she defined it in her 2013 book of the same title:

Somatize: how the body defends itself against too much stress, manifesting psychological distress as physical symptoms in the stomach or nerves or uterus or vagina…It turns out that somatization is related to hysteria, which stems from the Greek cognate of uterus…Uterus = hysteria. Hysteria –a word to make women feel insane for knowing what they know…

Ensler flinches at the misguided notion that hysteria is not an appropriate response to such phenomena as the high incidence of violence against women across the world.

Or to her own history of trauma. For 10 years Eve Ensler saw therapists in New York who didn’t seem to adequately validate the effects of childhood sexual abuse by her father. When one finally did, it made all the difference.

And when Ensler was afraid to undergo the intrusion of chemotherapy against her body, this same female therapist offered a different way of looking at it. The following are her words (taken from the book):

‘The chemo is not for you, It is for the cancer, for all the past crimes, it’s for your father, it’s for the rapists, it’s for the perpetrators.  You’re going to poison them now and they are never coming back. Chemo will purge the badness that was projected onto you but was never yours. I have total faith in your resilience and the magical capacities of your body and soul for healing…Welcome the chemo as empathetic warrior.’

Whether or not this is something that would work for you or me, it’s exactly what Eve Ensler needed to hear in order to proceed. (Note: In the theater piece Ensler implies that this therapist had become her “friend,” but without further info I don’t feel qualified to comment on whether any boundaries were broken.)

Part of Ensler’s process post-diagnosis was ruminating over the many possible reasons she could have gotten cancer. Among them: having an abortion, marital failures, bad reviews—even good reviews. And lots and lots of the diet drink Tab, she added, drawing hearty laughs of recognition (as many of the play’s other lines did as well, by the way).

But, as Decca Aitkenhead, The Guardian, reports, a different conclusion is reached: “Ensler believes she got cancer because her body became literally sick of the compulsion to keep proving herself. ‘I had to prove I wasn’t stupid, I had to prove that I was somebody, I had to prove that I could do it all on my own. And I think I had gone as far as I could go. I thought, what is the point of this – am I going to do this for ever? Am I going to prove myself to death?'”

When the play was going into its initial production in Cambridge, MA, Lisa Mullins, All Things Considered (WBUR), spoke with the playwright, now six years cancer-free and equally proud that City of Joy in the Congo also thrives. Eve Ensler’s words of appreciation follow:

…I am grateful that cancer stripped away what had to be stripped away in me. So I am living now with so much more peace, with so much more happiness, with so much more connectedness to people, with so much more openness. And that is as good as it gets here. If, in fact, we are here to learn how to love, which I think is what we’re here to do, to learn how to truly, truly, deeply love and really give ourselves and serve and be generous and be connected, cancer was the best teacher I ever had.