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My son is the most tender, loving being. But he’s also so irreverent and ironical and crazy and fun. That’s what I needed. My granddaughters are my heart. Coco is going to be 17 soon, and I was afraid I’d be the person who brought sickness and sorrow and death into her life. But she took such beautiful care of me. She was so loving.
Q. Much of what you write about in your memoir is really frank: not just the physical manifestations of cancer and its aftermath, but the ways you tried to lose yourself and numb your pain as a younger woman. Was it freeing to be so honest and curious? Do you feel less concerned now about how others see you?
It’s hard to describe the experience of this. It really came out of my body — the book wrote me. It went to the ground in me. When I started, it was 200 pages longer. There was no way not to tell the specifics or the truth in order to go wherever I needed to go. It’s only now that I feel that I have anything to say again. It is like a rebirth.
I started traveling pretty soon. I went to Congo two weeks after [ending treatment]. I wanted to be there for the opening of City of Joy. I don’t feel driven at all any more. I don’t feel my body’s a machine. I feel very connected to my body. In the last year, when I was tired, I slept. I eat well. I do yoga. I’m moving with my body instead of against it.
Q. How often do you travel to City of Joy? Can you see the difference it is making in women’s lives in Congo?
I was at City of Joy in February, and I’ll go back in August. I stay for a month each time. It’s owned and run by the women of Congo. It’s so incredible to witness how young women come in. How they’re trying to learn to love the children they have at home. It’s such a beautiful place, with bouganvilla and roses and goats and bunnies. We graduate 90 girls every six months.
Q. What continues to fuel your passion for activism on behalf of the world’s women in the face of the enormity of the work to be done?
Look at One Billion Rising. We put out a video call to action, and it happened, in 207 countries!
Q. Do you feel you know more about the meaning of love and caring than you did before?
Our notions of love are based on this patriarchal capitalist structure. I realize that I have this amazing life of love, and it’s really up to me to value that and cherish that. I feel this gratitude I don’t know how to express. My friends and I have each other’s back. We take care of each other, we push each other. If another romantic love came around, I wouldn’t say no. But when you come this close to dying and you survive, something happens. Every day is a bonus. I don’t feel afraid the way I used to. Every day, I get what a gift it is and what a privilege it is.
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