Through art, writing yoga, she helps others heal.
Pamela M. Roberts
A week after Pamela M. Roberts received the news that she had breast cancer she attended her weekly writing workshop and began putting words on paper about her experiences.
“Some evenings I would get to the workshop and feel like my head was about to explode with all the fear and everything running through it,” the Shelburne Falls resident said.
“Not only was I able to release the fear, anxiety and grief I was feeling, but it transformed into something that had value.”
The positive feedback she received 20 years ago from others in the workshop that her writing was “brave” and would help them if they were ever diagnosed with cancer, prompted her to attend a school of healing arts for four years in New York City and Ithaca.
Trained in energy healing and ordained, Roberts in 2003 began leading writing workshops for people with cancer in conjunction with the Northampton-based non-profit, Cancer Connection.
Since then, Roberts, 64, has devoted her much of her time to many projects that allow her to share her experiences and help others cope.
Among others, she serves as program director at Forest Moon: Celebrating Cancer Survivorship, a Vermont-based organization, which offers free workshops, classes and retreats for people affected by cancer.
In addition, she established “1 in 8: The Torso Project,” described as a collaborative art project that seeks to foster healing and public awareness about breast cancer.
“I think each person when they get a cancer diagnosis, which is shocking and scary, head off on a healing path and I just put one foot in front of the other and this is where I ended up,” Roberts said..
One of Roberts’ biggest fears was that she would not live long enough to raise her two children, who were ages 10 and 6 at the time of her diagnosis.
Today, her son Thomas, 30, who has physical disabilities, leads a program at area schools for others with similar challenges, and daughter, Victoria, 25, is a dancer and movement teacher in Brooklyn.
Roberts was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer and had a mastectomy, She also underwent chemotherapy, and made changes to her diet by cutting out caffeine, alcohol, sugar and red meat. She enjoys her work with Forest Moon and the torso project in which breast cancer survivors decorate a torso cast from their body.
“I do a lot of different things and they’re so nourishing and feed me so much. It fills me up,” she said. “I remember that cancer is lonely even though you have people around you who care for you and want to help you.”
The memory of that loneliness continues to inspire her to help others.
“I am meeting people at a time and place when they are wanting to try new things and maybe be more open to going deeper and address some of the core issues that we all have as human beings, whether you’ve had a cancer diagnosis or not,” she said.
“There are deep spiritual and emotional issues about living, so I find that really rewarding to hang out there with people in that place.”
Roberts turned to yoga as part of her healing and became certified and now teaches it at the Greenfield YMCA to women with breast cancer.
She is also a trained volunteer for Hospice of Franklin County and for the past six years she has led Spirit of the Written Word as a bereavement writing group there.
Her work with the torso project is rooted in the physical changes that occurred from her breast cancer treatment.
She did not have reconstructive surgery after her mastectomy and she had several biopsies performed on her other breast.
So when Judith Fine's Gazebo in Northampton ran a contest in 2002 to raise money for underinsured and uninsured women affected by breast cancer, Roberts got the idea to create a plaster cast of her torso, which she decorated and submitted to the “show your bra” contest.
She won honorable mention. At the time she also was aware of the statistic that one in eight women during the course of their lifetime will be diagnosed with breast cancer.
Finding the statistic “startling,” Roberts decided to bring attention to the prevalence of the disease and asked seven of her female friends who did not have breast cancer to make and decorate plaster casts of their torsos, which were put on display at a gallery in Greenfield.
“People came to the show and were really moved by it,” she said. “I realized this could be developed into a workshop for women with breast cancer.”
A “1 in 8: The Torso Project” exhibit, featuring embellished plaster cast torsos made by area breast cancer survivors and their female family members and friends, is currently on through April 29 at the Salmon Falls Artisans Showroom in Shelburne Falls.
There is a reception for the exhibit on March 16 from to 4 p.m. (snow date March 17) with music by Loren Feinstein, and a “Reading and Ritual” program on April 20 from 3 to 5 p.m.
Each toro is accompanied by the woman’s story. The exhibit, a collaboration of Forest Moon and Cancer Connection, sponsored by Baystate Health Foundation’s Rays of Hope, includes a mosaic torso that Roberts fashioned using smashed china.
Not all of Roberts’ time is devoted to these programs. In her spare time she takes her son for walks in his wheelchair and with his service dog through Shelburne Falls, enjoys reading memoirs and loves to swim in the summer.
“I am in good health today and am grateful for everything I have and accomplished,” she said.
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