Vermont Poet and Photographer Communes With Nature to Confront Most cancers in New E book

On a winter morning in early 2022, simply earlier than daybreak, Julia Skonicki slipped off the bed; wrapped herself in layers; known as her canine, Rizzo; and stepped out into the woods close to the Hyde Park house she shares together with her spouse. With snowshoes strapped to her ft, she moved by way of the silence — anxious, sleepless and newly recognized with breast most cancers.

“I went to the woods to shed fear / To embrace unease and release it,” she later wrote in an untitled poem that seems alongside roughly 70 others in her not too long ago self-published e book, Awakened: a journey in poetry and pictures. The e book chronicles how Skonicki, 44, linked with nature by turning to poetry and images — all the time “my preferred avenues for processing,” she mentioned — as a solution to navigate her expertise with most cancers.

At the time of her prognosis, Skonicki had already spent the earlier two years grieving: the deaths of two shut associates, then her father, who lived with most cancers for the final three years of his life. “I went to the darkest place in my mind,” she mentioned of her personal most cancers prognosis. “I really thought I was going to die.”

But morning after morning that winter, she stored occurring walks, passing snowdrifts and half-frozen stretches of river, considering questions akin to What’s my function on this world? and If my life is nearly over, what can I get pleasure from and be taught whereas I’m right here?

Nature, she mentioned, started to talk again.

“I swear, the universe would present me with answers, no matter what I was going through,” she mentioned. On one morning, when looking for steering about how her most cancers journey was evolving, she recalled {that a} towering pine supplied a quiet reminder — one which grew to become a poetic fragment displayed in her e book: “‘Remember,’ said the tree, ‘it’s a long game.'”

Skonicki’s remedy and restoration course of unfolded over two years, together with two main surgical procedures, fixed medical appointments, and an preliminary interval of shifting diagnoses and second opinions that she known as “pretty messy.”

“That really changed my life a lot, being under the microscope for so long,” she mentioned of her expertise as a affected person. Throughout, she stored strolling within the woods, carrying her telephone to doc what she noticed — crops, sunsets and our bodies of water. Later, at house, she wrote poems to course of what she felt.

Many of these poems discover a gnawing sense of fear and supply reflections on loss and alter. An untitled poem written on the final day earlier than starting a long-term course of Tamoxifen, a hormone remedy typically prescribed to breast most cancers sufferers, reads, “Last day without this drug / For the next five to ten years // Last day of no side effects / Last day of fertility / Last day of a natural body / Last day of this chapter.”

Other poems specific emotions of gratitude and braveness and a newfound consciousness of her physique:

Initially, Skonicki, who works because the director of growth and communications at Lamoille Family Center, did not intend to share her poetry or pictures. “It was just my personal therapy,” she mentioned. But someday she began posting them to her Instagram web page, and the response shocked her.

“People flooded my inbox, saying ‘I can relate to this,’ and ‘I’m so glad you shared,’ and ‘Your vulnerability is helping me be vulnerable,'” she mentioned.

The messages impressed her to compile her poems and pictures right into a e book, a lot of which she did whereas resting in mattress, feeling considerably healed however nonetheless fatigued. At a e book launch at Stowe’s Northwood Gallery final month, dozens of individuals approached her after the studying to share tales of their very own hardship, grief and restoration.

In one other untitled poem in Awakened, Skonicki writes that her expertise with most cancers “allows me to seek connection in painful vulnerability.”

“Everyone we know has basically experienced cancer through their own health or through someone else, and it’s something we don’t talk a ton about,” she mentioned.

She’s discovered that many individuals do not know the way — or when — to open up about their ache. “You don’t want to ruin someone’s day when they look like they’re having a good time,” she mentioned. “But for someone like me, that doesn’t ruin it — it makes it better. I love that type of connection. I’m always looking to talk about the hard things.”