Knowing Bodies: Traveling in Bali and through cancer-touching eternity, learning to let go

When Cecilie Scott is diagnosed with breast cancer after her first stay in Bali, years as a "stump rancher" in the Cascade foothills and the words of Bali's holiest mountain have already set the course of her healing journey. Now she returns to Bali to learn more from the Balinese-acceptance of uncertainty, reliance on community, and the art of weaving the sacred into the fabric of everyday life. Her memoir tells the story of ten years when braiding cancer into her life seems the only way to keep it from unraveling. Her husband survives prostate cancer, two dear friends face breast cancer and sarcoma, she experiences breast cancer from mammogram through mastectomy and beyond, and she finds work online with women cancer survivors. This is a story of learning to live and love as a knowing body, knowing that body, and holding the knowledge that vulnerability is a condition common to all who live upon this earth. Those years were enriched by two visits to Bali, one with a student group and one as a solo traveler. She turns to Balinese art and shadow-puppet theater to help her face our shared mortality. She draws upon dreams, myth, and science, placing the breast cancer epidemic within the growing awareness of environmental risks. And she considers cancer research and treatment within the politics of medicine in the U.S., traditional and alternative.