BookWire - Meet The Author - Susan Ryan Jordan

Neela Sakaria: Thanks for joining us Ms. Jordan. Let me start by saying I really enjoyed reading your book. It is very inspiring and uplifting.

Neela: THE IMMUNE SPIRIT is your first book, correct? Can you give us some background on how that came about? When and why did you decide to write it?

SRJ: This is my first book, yes. I've thought about writing the book for years, you know. And it became very clear to me that I should sit down and write something when I reached the 20th anniversary of my diagnosis for breast cancer. I said, you know, 20 years of surviving is a hopeful thing in itself for everybody else - because if I did it so can they, and so now I have to sit down and write this story.

Over the years I did a lot of reading about the cancer personality. I can remember when I was in the hospital in 1979, one of my doctors was Bernie Siegal. He had told me I was a classic breast cancer personality and a classic breast cancer survivor. So in those days, I wanted to know what the classic personality was.

He gave me a book on the day I was diagnosed in October of 1979 called GETTING WELL AGAIN, written by two people who had influenced him deeply. In fact they changed his whole outlook on the practice of medicine. The two authors were Carl Simonton who was a radiation oncologist and his wife who was a psychologist. They were fascinated by studying cancer patients who were turning up for yearly exams long after they were supposed to have died. So they said, what is it that causes these people to get well again, and others don't when the prognosis and diagnosis was the same for both sets of people. So they did a study, and what they found out was that certain people react to loss with great feelings of grief and helplessness while other people do not. They also discovered that certain people have had a tremendous emotional loss a year and a half or two before the diagnosis of cancer is even given. So they asked, are you this kind of person, have you had this kind of loss? These were the questions they were asking in this book that I took home on that afternoon. So I said, "I am, and I have." And they had this list of losses that a human being can endure. They equated the loss with a number of points in terms of stress. Death of a spouse is of course 100%. Divorce was like 80% and I had just divorced my husband of 17 years. I left my children with him, I had no job, my mother died and I was sure it was because of what I had done. I was overcome with guilt and loss and it all happened a year and a half before I was diagnosed.

So I said well, if I'm like this person, then I can get myself well. And this book challenged people to heal themselves and I said if someone else can do it, I can do it. So I did. And twenty years later when I started to write the book I said, I'm going to give that same message I got to others. So that's what made me write the book.

SRJ: Oh well you know, it is so true. When I talk to people who have overcome cancer, they will tell you the same things that I wrote about. They were people who lived for others, people who over the years gave bits and pieces of themselves away for approval, people-pleasers. And when these outside people or relationships are lost, there is no inner strength or self to fall back on because you've given it all away over the years. So the issue is to get yourself back, to find yourself again. That's what I set out to do and it took a very long time. I'm still working on it to be honest with you. It took me twenty years.

My book is a long look back at what kind of child I was, what kind of parents I had, who influenced them, what was going on in the world at the time I was little, and when my parents and grandparents were growing up. So it became a family history. I realized that I was a fearful person because I was raised to be that way. So I had to go back and address each little fear and my book is really -- I said I will just relay how I did it. So that's what I wrote and that's why I wanted to write it.

NS: In the book you talk about the differences between extroverts and introverts and how that can relate to cancer. Can you expand on that a little bit for our readers?

SRJ: Years ago, I used to think of an extrovert as the life of the party, someone who is fun to be around. That's true. The extrovert is the life of the party according to many of these psychologists. The extrovert is the person who lives outside of the self, who seeks approval from others, who wears a sort of persona or a mask for approval. That's why they're always fun to be around, basically they have to have people around them.

An introvert on the other hand, when I was growing up people would say, "oh she's so introverted" and it had kind of a negative connotation. But I began to realize, reading in particular Elida Evans who is just a remarkable student of Carl Jung, and she wrote a book in 1926 called A Psychological Study of Cancer. Anyway, an introvert is the one who is very secure within, who doesn't need a crowd of people, who doesn't need to put that mask on to entertain, who doesn't really care if he/she is fun to be around because the approval of other people just isn't that important to those folks. But the introvert is the stronger person.

And for me, I have been an extrovert, a classic extrovert. I mean I was even an actress for a while, you know? It has taken me years to realize that I did it because I wanted approval and I wanted to be somebody else. This is not to say that all actors are extroverts or wear masks, but for me, that was what was pushed me onto the stage in many ways. Because I had no inner self by the time I was 15 and 16 years old. So I wanted to find out who I was by playing these different roles and putting on these different personas or masks and being this typical extrovert. I could be different people all the time and people seemed to like me then, so I got approval then.

NS: And you talk about the studies the Simontons have done where they corrolate that "extrovert" mentality with cancer, correct?

SRJ: Absolutely. Once again, the extrovert lives for the approval for others, outside of the self. The extrovert will also find even a dream or a goal, for example a business. Living outside the self instead of very securely within, the extroverted person will say that "I am living for this dream or for this person." Well what happens when the dream fails? What do you have?

Somebody said to me just yesterday, I was doing a radio interview with somebody who said that their mother used to always say "Listen, if I'm giving away all the pieces of my pie, the only thing I'm going to have left is the crust." What do you do with that? It is so essential to have that strong sense of self. I think that's what the immune spirit is, that very strong sense of self. My grandmother had it and she was a tremendous influence for me, looking back. The more I wrote the book, the more I got to know her it seems. I always I adored her but the more I wrote about her the more I realized how strong she was within - a typical introvert.

NS: That was going to be my next question. It seems that the process of writing this book made you stronger and more aware of your own family history. Do you think this is true?

SRJ: Sure. One of the things that happens when you become a stronger person is that you realize that time is precious but truth is more precious than time. So, in an effort to know yourself and to reflect upon your life, you must study your life and the people in it with as clear and objective an eye that is possible. And when you think you've discovered those truths, you write them. Sometimes not everybody agrees with you, sometimes not everybody likes this new stronger person you've become. You take a different road, every cancer survivor does this - they change in very profound ways and become literally stronger selves. Sometimes other people in your family find that a very threatening business, you're not the you that they are used to, you're different and changed. They aren't comfortable around you and you have to go on alone then. I've had that experience.

SRJ: Every day, the way I deal with it, every day I say I have this life that I'm living that is beautiful and I hope that the people that I love are going to understand this new me. But if they don't, I have to forgive them and go on. Sometimes that's a daily kind of thought. But you do it.

It is probably the oldest adage that if you are not strong within, sooner or later you are going to find yourself weak outside. The body is such a direct reflection of the mind in ways that I think people are just now beginning to find out and it's just fascinating what's going on. Particularly in medicine now, there is a field of medical study called psychoneuroimmunology. Kind of a long title but psychologists, neurologists, and immunologists work together to study the ways in which psyche affects the body -- the way that the mind and emotions affect the nervous system. They're studying this, I mean this happens all the time.

Neela: Tell us about your personality before your diagnosis and before receiving the books that explained this mental and health connection.

SRJ: Absolutley, oh I was classic. I was raised to believe that it was selfish to ask for anything for yourself. Raised to believe that other people's needs were more important than my own, raised to believe that approval was everything. I grew up in this little New England town where if you didn't wear the right hat people thought you were funny and weird. I remember wearing a black beret once and people said "oh you're a bohemian!" and they way they said it you thought "God I don't want to be that." Conform or perish. If you didn't conform you were an outcast and that was very frightening for me, having been raised to please.

So I got married, had my children, lived for them, lived within this mariage that was an empty one. And all of a sudden I go back to school and my mind just exploded. All these new books that I could finally read that I'd been too busy to read for years and I began to see the possibility of my own freedom as a person on my own without being somebody's wife, mother, daughter. But then I didn't have the history, the cultural history, or the mental stamina to carry out my wish for myself and I got terribly sick. I mean absolutely my personality led me directly to that hospital bed. And I figured if I wanted to stay away from that hospital bed again, I better change the way I am. So I did. But everybody can do that. That's the hopeful message.

Neela: Are there people who would be more resistant to that type of healing? Do you think that when you found out about this ability of your mind to affect your health, you were the type of person that would be more open to this alternative type of healing?

SRJ: I probably was. I realized I had so much to live for and I wanted to live. So I was going to do anything, and that too is part of the survivor mentality.

SRJ: Nope. I figured I had nothing to lose. I'd been handed the death sentence and I said, nope, well maybe there is hope. Really because of that book. Here is this respected surgeon at Yale-New Haven hospital who is handing out this book where patients are being asked to heal themselves. So, I thought well if he thinks this is so important then maybe there is something to it. That's not even getting into all of the mental visualizations that I learned how to do and how to direct my own body to do what I wanted instead of feeling like I was powerless. That was my going to the gym, because of my husband Pat -- "this is how you will control your body, you will change the way your arm looks."

I think what you're trying to find out is the kind of person I went into the hospital as, and the kind of person I walked out as. I decided I was going to learn to live for myself and that I was going to find a way to give of myself without giving myself away. I have discovered how to do that. It's a daily effort sometimes, I'm sure it is for most people. There are constant demands on you and your time, and you're always trying hard not to hurt somebody's feelings but sometimes you have to say "Listen this is the way that I see this, this is what happened.

One of my family members absolutely refuses to read this book. She perhaps doesn't see my mother in the same way that I learned to see my mother, who was a tremendously fearful person. I walked into that hospital as a very fearful individual. I was scared to death of what people thought, terrified of what my happen, I felt that I had no control whatsoever over my life. And I walked out of that hospital realizing that I could control what happened as far as I am able. I am not going to worry about what other people think of me. My reputation has to do with what I think about myself. So the old me died.

Neela: Ok, I just want to shift gears a little bit and ask you more about the actual writing process. How long did it take you to complete the book from the time you started?

SRJ: It took me about 13 months. My husband is a writer so he was just wonderful in terms of saying to me, "you write every single solitary day. You get up in the morning, come home, sit down, and work until 1 o'clock." Some days it is going to be awful, terrible going. But that's when you stop and you put everything aside and go and do your chores and get up in the morning and do it again, because your sub-conscious is always working.

SRJ: Sure. It's a book about a woman, it's a true story, who had a very difficult childhood, a very lonely childhood. An animal helped her through a very terrible and difficult time. She grew up and decided that she wanted to give something back to all of the people who had helped her along the way and also to the animal in a sense, in his memory. She became what is called a "puppy raiser" for a group called Canines Companions for Independence. These are dogs that are training to help the handicapped.

She got her first puppy, named Samuel. And in the pictures you will see of Libby, my friend, and Samuel, it was hard to tell where she began and he left off because they were just inseparable. What happened was, she fell in love with him and he fell in love with her the way that caring humans and noble dogs will do. At the end of the year she gave him away to the next process of the training where he went on until he was eventually placed with a woman who was paralyzed. What happened was that she broke the dog's heart and broke her own.

I wanted to explore, first of all I wanted to tell the dog's story. I wanted every single voice in the book to be heard. He can't give voice and that's the point. I'm going to let the readers decide what they think. It's a powerful story, she adored this dog. She could not explain to him and every time he looked at her he was just full of heartbreak.

SRJ: Well, I have to present this in an outline form to them. When I was speaking with my editor about this, she bent her head down and began to cry. So, it's a powerful story and there is so much to be examined. How much do we expect from animals? How much should we expect? How animals really do bring love and loss into a human life. It's a real switch for me but I'm really excited about it. So I don't know, it depends which publisher wants it.

SRJ: Just that simply, people can come along and break your heart. But don't let them break your spirit, because without that spirit you're not strong. I think, probably today that is especially true for people who have lost loved ones in the September 11th attacks and for people who are fearful that the terrorists might have the upper hand. If your spirit is very strong and you are in control of your thoughts and in control of yourself, you are stronger than any fear. So that's what I wanted to pass along.