Allison Sweet Grant on The Psychological Weight of Cancer

Totally Booked with Zibby

Zibby Owens interviews author Allison Sweet Grant about her new poetic memoir, Lump. The episode delves into Grant's experience navigating a

Key takeaways

Allison Sweet Grant's book 'Lump' originated as a personal journal to cope with her cancer diagnosis at age 40.
The pandemic context significantly impacted her treatment, as her children were home from school during her chemotherapy.

Main topics

Breast cancer journey
Poetic memoir 'Lump'

Notable quotes

Life feels like a plum left ripe on the table.

Conclusion

A deeply moving conversation that highlights how creative expression c

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Welcome to Totally Booked. I'm Zibby Owens. I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show and learned endless amounts about storytelling, reinvention, and life itself. Because when you talk about books, you're really talking about life. So get ready to hear from today's best authors, the best-selling, and the not-yet-discovered. Come find your next great read and the story behind it. Enjoy. Speaker 2 (0:26) I absolutely loved Alison Sweetgrand's book, Lump, a memoir in eloquent reflections. It's beautiful. I read a few poems, as you'll hear in my episode with Allison. And by the way, this was her first podcast for this book, which happens to a lot of authors. And I hope you enjoy it. Here's a little more about Allison. Allison Sweet Grant is the author of the young adult novel, I Am the Cage, about the psychological toll of medical trauma. She is the co-author of two children's books, The Gift Inside the Box and Leaf in the Fall. She has been published in the New York Times, The Atlantic, and People magazine. Allison is a former psychiatric nurse practitioner with dual master's degrees from University of Michigan. She lives with her husband and three children just outside Philadelphia. Lump is her first work of nonfiction. By the way, Allison is married to Adam Grant, who has been on this podcast and whose books you may have read as well. I think, is this my first married couple on the show separately? I don't know. perhaps. Anyway, enjoy our episode. It's very meaningful about her breast cancer experience and emotional. Speaker 1 (1:33) And I almost cried. Speaker 2 (1:34) Welcome, Allison. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked to talk about Lump, a memoir in ineloquent reflections. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you, Zibi. Speaker 1 (1:44) Thank you so much for having me. I'm just thrilled to be here. I'm almost embarrassed by how... Like, Speaker 2 (1:51) effusive I've been about my love of this book. I loved it so much. Allison, it's so good. I was like crying reading it. It's beautiful and I haven't stopped recommending it or talking about it or anything. So thank you for sharing your experience with us in this beautiful way. Speaker 1 (2:09) Well, thank you. I mean, you have... gone above and beyond in helping me to spread the word about this book. And I'm just so grateful. And it was so unexpected. And I just really have been overwhelmed by your generosity. So thank you again. No problem. You know, sometimes like a book just hits you. And I felt Speaker 2 (2:26) like that with this book. Why Speaker 1 (2:28) don't you tell listeners what Lump Speaker 2 (2:30) is really about and when you knew it was going to be a book and just all of the backstory of it and what happened with you? Speaker 1 (2:37) Yeah. Well, Lump is basically a poetic memoir. It's the story of my experience with breast cancer, which I was diagnosed with at the age of 40. I did not know it was going to be a book. It really started out sort of as a journal. I write a lot of poetry and I was doing a lot of writing while I was sick. And it really was just a collection of my own thoughts. It was a way of processing the difficult experience that I was going through. I did not have any plans to pull it all together. But once I did start doing that, once I decided, hey, maybe there's something a little more cohesive here, it came together in a really personally moving way. And I just felt like this is something that maybe other people can relate to. Maybe it might. touch a nerve with somebody else who's going through this really hard thing. And it all kind of fell together really easily after that. Do you mind if I read a poem or two? Is that okay? Of course. Okay, here. I'm Speaker 2 (3:42) just going to read one or two so that everyone else can hear what I am thinking about. I mean, here, Speaker 1 (3:48) so everyone else can hear why I love the book and what Speaker 2 (3:52) I meant when I... Whatever. I'm just going to read it. Okay, this one's called A Pause for Consideration. Rather quickly, something starts to slip away. The idea of a future, fuzzy, amorphous, but distinctly there until it's not. Life feels like a plum left ripe on the table. Tomorrow draws you to the window like your neighbor's pool, sparkling undisturbed on a bright day. I see the foggy exhale of an ice pop just before it starts to melt. You don't have to touch it to feel the cold. My son's laughter leaks from the next room. I collect it into small piles upon the counter. I welcome his open mouth kisses, his pillowcase teeth, his lunch candy breath, carefree on my cheek. Come kiss me, little man. Let me be your mama while I can. Oh my God. Speaker 1 (4:39) I'm going to Speaker 2 (4:40) cry. Speaker 1 (4:40) I should have had you read the audio book. That was Speaker 2 (4:44) really beautiful. Speaker 1 (4:46) Yeah. I mean, going through breast cancer and particularly going through breast cancer during COVID, which is when I was diagnosed, my kids were all home from school. And it was a very different experience than I think it would have been had they been in regular school at the time. And so much of what I went through was really shaped by having my children next to me throughout every moment. And that poem is just one small sample of that. Speaker 2 (5:16) Would you mind talking about when you found out you had breast cancer and then how you even told Speaker 1 (5:22) your kids after that? Sure. Well, I discovered a lump a couple weeks into the beginning of the pandemic. And I waited stupidly because everything was shut down, but more so because I was terrified. Because when you find the thing that you've been told your whole life, not to find. It kind of, there's sort of like a fight or flight, fawn, you know, type