by Angelique L’Amour
I had the honor of meeting Angelique at the Dallas-For Worth Writers’ Conference. I attended her class on handling emotions while writing, and was inspired by her story of how she managed a cancer diagnosis and the resulting years of treatment while still raising her young family and writing. Angelique created a unique book (and two companion books) out of the experience called Chemo Cupcakes and Carpools, written specifically for individuals and families going through cancer. Read more about her experience, her enduring spirit, and her books below.
I have always written—I started keeping a journal at about the age of seven and was writing for fun a bit before that.
During junior high and high school I was always writing out my angst, sorrow, fears, joys, and about anything that confused or challenged me. Songs, essays, short stories came pouring out of me with great regularity.
I kept up my journal when I was acting and let it drift away and only kept my journal going a bit when I was in the days of being a new parent. But I was always writing fiction. Writing stories and working towards being an author of young adult and middle grade fiction.
After Being Diagnosed with Cancer, My Journaling Came Rushing Back
After being diagnosed with cancer in 2009, my journaling came rushing back as my closest ally.
It was in a different form however. Instead of the notebooks I always carried I began a blog called, “My Story Right Now.”
The blog was the impetus for the Chemo Cupcakes and Carpools trilogy for parents navigating the co-existing worlds of cancer treatment and parenting.
I wrote about my experience but also I got emails from friends and friends of friends and complete strangers asking me how I did it, what kind of help they would need and how to keep going. They found help through my blog but also wanted specific day-to-day guidance.
How Do You Manage Cancer, Parenting, and Writing at the Same Time?
That year both our daughters were playing on soccer teams, doing theatre, going to school and I was teaching Creative Writing and Literature at a local Catholic School. Needless to say I was busy.
Adding cancer surgeries and treatment to the mix along with feeling lousy I seemed to have a way to do it. I was exhausted but I got through each week keeping our family moving forward and without our entire lives becoming my cancer treatment.
And the people I heard from wanted to know how I did it.
I put that together in Chemo Cupcakes and Carpools and then as an added bonus created the two companion pieces.
Now I am working on a spiritual self help book—about faith and where I put my focus while I was going through my treatment and essentially my life.
I am a positive person but it isn’t a Pollyanna existence—we are all challenged in our own way. It is how we meet these challenges that makes us as people.
The More I Wrote About Being Positive the More I Was Positive
The blog began as a way to communicate with my family about my life and keep my mom and husband from constantly having to answer the same questions. I also have some friends that I didn’t want to put on a group email.
It grew into a place where many people went for help advice and guidance—many people I didn’t know came too. I wanted to make it a safe but honest place for people involved as a patient, caregiver or loved one. My goal was to keep it positive for all.
It helped me to keep positive as well. The more I wrote about being positive the more I was positive. I knew that my mind was my greatest lifesaver and I needed to keep it clean.
Writing is Something that Happens Daily
Writing chose me.
There have been other ways I express my art. I was an actress and singer for many years. I have always enjoyed designing and making jewelry and I knit. But I always write.
Writing is something that happens daily. Even if I am not working on my books I keep my journal up, the blog gets published and now that I am moving back into fiction, I write about my writing and the process.
I Wanted There to be Humor—We Have Enough Dark in Our Minds When Going Through Cancer
I always wanted to make the blog a safe space so I also made the book that way too. I wanted there to be humor and encouragement because we have enough of the dark in our own minds when we are going through treatment for cancer or any kind of challenge.
I also didn’t want the book to be only for the patient so I think there is some good information in there for families too. The two companions are to be used by everyone separately or together.
You know how if you tell someone your nightmare it loses its power? It is like that. If I wrote about my fears I also wrote about how I planned to meet them with optimism and bravery which then made me optimistic and brave!
When I Helped Someone Else, It Helped Me
I got encouraged by feedback. People sent emails or commented or told me in person that I was a light, I had amazing attitude and they all wished they could be the way I was. That encouraged me.
When I could help someone else I got helped myself. When I reached out in person or through writing and helped someone it helped me to keep going. Encouraging someone to face fear and not live in fear helped me to do the same.
I had ups and downs. I still do but when I write or I reach out to help another it gets me out of the down mindset. Writing the blog I never had self-doubt about what I was writing. Now that I am working on my spiritual self-help book I doubt all the time but then I remember my best friend saying, “I wish I could bottle your attitude.”
So I am writing my bottle of attitude.
I have to keep moving forward so that I can finish and help more people when they are going through something.
In Order to Help Others with My Writing, I Have to Write
Writing about things that are hard or were hard is difficult. I fight it all the time. I can get a good routine going with my rewrite but sometimes I just have to stop for a day or a few days or a week.
I have to honor myself and that I am no longer in that time period and that life and health is quite excellent right now. I don’t want to live back then, I did that already. But in order to help others with my writing I have to write.
So I am kind to myself. I still have one daughter living at home full-time—she is 16—so I do have hands-on mothering still to do. Along with a marriage to nurture and a dog and a daughter who is in college there is a great deal that can tear me away from writing.
With my fiction writing I don’t need a release ritual when I am done writing but when I am working on the spiritual one I have to take time to do something before I inflict myself on my family. Sometimes it is as simple as a walk, a shower or cooking dinner. Sometimes I have to go do something away from the house on my own.
Fiction Writing is a Form of Self-Nurturing
I have found my way to practical self-nurturing. Those rituals I use to change my state after writing were a huge awareness.
In the beginning I thought it was a cop-out or failure to avoid writing for a day or so. That is part of what writing fiction does. It keeps me writing and creating but in an imaginary world instead of my own past.
So when things get rough writing about reality I retreat into my characters’ lives instead.
What Parents and Families Will Find in Chemo, Cupcakes and Carpools
To be clear: the Chemo Cupcakes and Carpools book came out of the spiritual one. It was all in there but it stopped the spiritual book from flowing—I was trying to do too much in one book. So I separated them out.
That book and its two companions offer vital help to a parent or family going through cancer. Chemo Cupcakes and Carpools shows how to get from Monday to Sunday during treatment. Then there is a gratitude journal which will help keep people in that healthy mindset and the organizer which helps to organize the household.
It is a book of lists so when someone offers to pick up food the information is there or if you need to get ahold of the room parent at school the information is there in one place. When the primary parent is sick we realize how much is in our heads, how much parenting is innate from who liked peanut butter and jelly and who hates it to which practice is on which day.
They are hard to market in some ways but a perfect gift for yourself or others. People are buying the gratitude journal that are not cancer survivors. It has a broader reach than that. The original book is often bought as a gift.
The spiritual book I am hoping to publish in the next year or so. That one is written for a broader audience. It is about life struggle and works for anyone in a difficult time.
Writing Often Helped Me Feel More Committed to Myself
I am feeling more productive and committed to myself as a result of writing as often as possible. My fiction has also moved ahead in great strides. My first middle grade book is a mystery that has gone through many rewrites, one of which I am embarking on now. I feel productive and proud that I am completing things I started out to do.
I also learned a tremendous amount about self-publishing and now have a team in place for what comes next. If I self-publish the next book or I don’t, the truth is I am not afraid of it and I know how to begin.
Cancer is such a blow—it changes everything about your life for years and some things change forever. For a long period I couldn’t commit to anything as the finish line kept changing and I had complications upon complications.
It is nice to see progress being made in my life’s work.
Advice for Others Who Want to Write About a Personal Experience
Write it. Remember that an hour after you have been challenged you have more experience than the person just beginning and you can help.
Helping others helps you. Treat yourself kindly in the process. The only one setting your time limit is you.
Remember that you can do anything. Your mind is the most valuable asset you have.
* * *
Angelique L’Amour was born in Los Angeles, California. The daughter of author Louis L’Amour, she grew up in the household of a prolific writer where writing and storytelling were a way of life.
Common to the breakfast table were discussions of history, novels, poetry and politics. Vacations were opportunities for book research and so were spent hiking the land his characters traveled in the United States, Canada and Europe.
Angelique began writing for personal enjoyment as a child and went to college to pursue a history degree. She also studied at the University of Southern California in the School Of Journalism and while there wrote and published a volume of quotes from her father’s works. Published by Bantam Doubleday Dell in 1988, A Trail of Memories spent 16 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and became a Publisher’s Weekly bestseller for the year.
For more about Angelique and her work, please see her website, or connect with her on Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Chemo Cupcakes and Carpools: “You have Cancer.”
When a parent hears those words, like anyone, they are scared. For a parent the question on the heels of “Will I die?” is “What about my kids?”
These are the questions that have been asked of Angelique L’Amour, time and again, since her own breast cancer diagnosis in 2009. Friends and acquaintances have asked how to navigate the coexisting worlds of cancer treatment and parenthood and this book answers those questions.
Cancer survivors all want to live and all want to keep their family life as normal as possible when faced with the staggering number of treatments, surgeries and tests. Chemo, Cupcakes and Carpools is a way to help parents deal with their lives and their kids through chemo and it’s aftermath. This volume is a nuts and bolts guide to help organize and understand what they might need during treatment to help keep themselves and their families running smoothly.
Available at Amazon.
Keeping Your Gratitude Intact: One of the kindest things you can do for yourself is to find gratitude in your life. You can find something every day to be grateful for from small things such as lip balm to large things like a child’s love.
Keeping a list of things to be grateful for on a daily basis will help you keep focused on what really matters, and also help you hold onto your positive attitude. Keeping Your Gratitude Intact journal is a wonderful companion to Chemo, Cupcakes and Carpools, How To Go Through Chemo With Your Family, Your Marriage and Your Sanity Intact as well as the Keeping Your Sanity Intact Organizer.
Available at Amazon.
Keeping Your Sanity Intact: Every parent knows instinctively which kid likes peanut butter and jelly and which kid doesn’t. They know if their child has a stuffed friend to sleep with or soccer practice every Wednesday. When a parent is going through a health crisis that font of knowledge is not always readily available.
The Keeping Your Sanity Intact Organizer is the place to put that all information so everyone can help keep the family together during this challenging time. This is the perfect companion to Chemo, Cupcakes and Carpools, How To Go Through Chemo With Your Family, Your Marriage and Your Sanity Intact.
Available at Amazon.
A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L’Amour: For decades, generations of readers have shared their favorite passages of favorite Louis L’Amour novels and short stories: parents with their children, neighbors with their friends, executives with their staff and clergy with their congregations. They pass around dog-eared copies of the books, underlined and yellowing, recalling words that echoes in their readers’ hearts and minds long after the last page was turned.
Now, many of these selections have been collected in a remarkable volume representing some of the richest ore of the L’Amour lode: voices that heralded the settling of the frontier, of the man and women whose spirit and soul shaped our nation. In these words, Louis L’Amour describes the American experience, bringing our heritage to life, in ways no other author has.
No L’Amour reader has a more unique perspective on his work than Angelique, his only daughter. In an extraordinary feat for every Louis L’Amour fan, and in loving appreciation of her father, she has compiled A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L’Amour, drawn from her father’s best-loved works of fiction, including the Sackett novels, Last of the Breed, The Walking Drum and nearly two dozen others.
Available at Amazon and wherever books are sold.