With all this in mind, I’m moved to offer the notion that great work is an expression in which the author or artist or expresser is changed for having expressed it, is transformed for having encountered and released it. If and when this happens, it’s inevitable that the work will be of use to others, in the same way that fire gives off heat.

So, you see, a funny thing happened on the way to surviving cancer. Without my permission, and with no decision on my part, my way of being as a writer was transformed. I woke on the other side, no longer driven to create something that never existed, but drawn now to bear witness to what has always been. I realized I’d been a make-aholic, a creative, even talented ball of energy whose worth depended on doing. But when I found myself awake in the struggle of a spirit expressing its trail, I began to find my worth in being. I had begun the shift from a life of achievement to a life of expression.

At first, without my drive, I feared I had lost my creativity. But over time, I came to understand that as a turbulent river finds its way to the sea, I had lost some of my noise and force, but had found more of my calm and depth.

From this unexpected depth, all my endeavors appeared to be connected. Both the artist in me and the spirit in me were finding expression through each other. By writing about others, I could learn about myself. Then, by writing about myself, I could learn about others or the other way around. Now, it seems that characters and voices and aspects of the self are just lenses for unfolding the mysteries of life. For characters are just extensions of self, known and unknown, and each face of self is just another character. Fiction, poetry, nonfiction: I’m coming to see that all the genres are just different brushes used on the same canvas.

Ultimately, my experience as a poet and a cancer survivor forced me to enlarge the notion of autobiography to encompass an ongoing dialogue with the dynamic Oneness of Life from which we keep learning what our particular contribution is to be in our time on Earth.

Whether we’re exploring the lives of so-called fictional characters, or whether we’re giving expression to the fabric of our suffering in so-called nonfiction, or whether we’re plucking the harp strings of the inner world in the music of our poems—in each effort, we’re adding to the emerging myth of our people, drinking from the same common well at center that has fed every generation.