where do we find healing

Navigating cancer through the lens of therapeutic environments

Geographies of space and place have long been recognized as a key factor in shaping human health. In 1992, Wilbert Gesler named “therapeutic landscapes”: places where people seek relief and restoration from illness and stress. Since then, research on therapeutic landscapes has grown to include physical spaces ranging from green and blue spaces to everyday places, as well as nonphysical spaces, including artistic, cultural and spiritual environments.

I was diagnosed with Papillary Thyroid Cancer at 17 years old and underwent first a thyroidectomy and then radioactive iodine treatment. Six months after my diagnosis, my mother was diagnosed with Stage III Breast Cancer at 47 years old and underwent a mastectomy and three rounds of radiation therapy. This project centers around reflecting on the healing of myself and my mother, and understanding how to aid that healing further.

I asked my mother: Where was your sanctuary? Where did you find healing during your recovery and treatments? Where do you feel most healthy and supported? She shared therapeutic environments outside the realm of the hospital room and cancer treatment clinic: she found solace in the shower, her walks by the ocean, and her journal. At her darkest moments of uncertainty, she found consolation shouting for answers to the ocean and watching tarot and oracle card readings on YouTube. She found healing in the places where she could most hear her own voice, unimpeded by family and medical professionals. When I shared this with her, she exclaimed “Точно!” [Exactly!]. She finally felt heard.

Her voice mattered so much because she did not have much of it during her treatment. My family, organizing around my father and me, took authority over her treatment decisions. As a pawn of the bigger system, I blindly advocated for what was written in diagnostic medical records, neglecting her autonomy over decisions of life and death.

So I drew inspiration from my mother’s therapeutic landscapes, which lie outside of the Western medical system, and created a personal oracle card deck of the places where she finds healing. This was in part inspired by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, whose oceanic oracle decks “every day set the tone for my deep listening.” I illustrated two decks of 11 cards, because my family’s angel number is 11:11: one for my mother’s therapeutic environments and one for my own.

For myself, healing centered around nature. When I first heard my diagnosis, I asked to be driven to the ocean and afterwards to my childhood church, where instead of going into the chapel, I took off my shoes and prayed on the small plot of grass outside. During radioactive iodine treatment, quarantined in a plastic-covered hospital room, I would sit on the ground near the window and take in the warmth of sunshine. I first felt healing when I went outside and felt wind on my face. And I feel healing when sitting on top of my roof, looking at the moon.

My mother and I found healing in different places: in the spiritual spaces of reflection for her, and in the physical spaces of nature for me. I believe this is the beginning of my personal healing journey outside the realm of Western conventional medicine, and I hope that this project can inspire and heal more in the future.