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Now I Lay Me Down to Fight: A Poet Writes Her Way Through Cancer
In stirring verse and essays, Katy Bowser Hutson chronicles her battle with breast cancer and the complications of faith amid such a fight. Accentuated by the art of Jodi Hays, Katy's words lead us through the realization of cancer, the experience of chemotherapy and a mastectomy, relentless rounds of radiation, the uncertainty of ongoing treatment, and what comes after survival. She writes in resistance to sickness, of wrestling toward Cancer is an overgrowth, a Tangling and strangling legitimate life.
Chemo is a killing, a burning
Burning down to ashy carbon, indiscriminately
But cancer, did you know that I am a poet? Through it all, she shows what it means to struggle in a battered body and to pray to a God who is near to the broken. Join her in this consideration of mortality and witness her persisting trust in God's unseen ways.
Chemo is a killing, a burning
Burning down to ashy carbon, indiscriminately
But cancer, did you know that I am a poet? Through it all, she shows what it means to struggle in a battered body and to pray to a God who is near to the broken. Join her in this consideration of mortality and witness her persisting trust in God's unseen ways.
- GenresPoetryHealthNonfiction
81 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 14, 2023
8 people are currently reading
1640 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
May 15, 2025
This book helped me, briefly, to find my own words again, which might be the best gift possible.
I was not prepared for the radiation poem to be as harrowing as it was. Hello anxiety over future treatment phases. But…
It made me happy to see a poem written about one of my medications. And I laughed out loud at the poem written about the not-so-laughable chemo side effects.
One of my favorite sections:
“Now I lay me down to fight
Rest in God with all His might
I have no claim upon tomorrow
Today is joy, and war, and sorrow.”
I was not prepared for the radiation poem to be as harrowing as it was. Hello anxiety over future treatment phases. But…
It made me happy to see a poem written about one of my medications. And I laughed out loud at the poem written about the not-so-laughable chemo side effects.
One of my favorite sections:
“Now I lay me down to fight
Rest in God with all His might
I have no claim upon tomorrow
Today is joy, and war, and sorrow.”
January 12, 2019
Read Harder 2019: Collection of Poetry, Self-Published, <100 Reviews
When I bought this book via Hutson's Kickstarter, I didn't know I had breast cancer. In fact, the cancer might not have even there as "cancer" back in July, but I now know it was lurking in my body, waiting to go rogue. So my experience of reading this book during a season when I was meeting my oncologist for the first time, scheduling appointments with surgeons and waiting for my chemo medication to arrive was different than I would have anticipated back in July. That's kind of how cancer is - it turns your expectations and your sense of control on its head.
I found these poems comforting and challenging. Comforting because it was so reassuring to realize I'm not alone in feeling the emotions that roll through my body. Comforting because Hutson reminded herself and me of the truth that I am not alone, even in my own body. Challenging because she went before me and writes about things that will be a part of my story, but aren't here yet. Challenging because she writes of the finish line moving and I've heard from another friend that's one of the hardest things: thinking the finish line is near and then learning you have to keep going.
Hutson captures so well the way cancer is forcing me to live closer to my own mortality:
"Body, soul, listen up:
This is the same damned deal as before.
You've always had a death sentence.
You've always had the same odds.
You didn't know what they were,
But now someone has given you a vague lottery ticket
pulled from a front car tire,
Pulpy and pitted.
But, for all you know,
you could still get hit by a drunk driver,
Struck by lightning
Fall dead of an aneurysm..."
(Excerpt from "En Route to Canaan/Jericho")
Since my diagnosis, I have had thoughts of how close my death really is. As I drive my car, I'm more aware that I could make a wrong turn or look away for a second or be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This has always been true, but there's something about your own body attacking you that makes it all much closer to the surface.
I will keep this book nearby in the days, weeks and months ahead of me. I will need their strength and courage when my own well runs dry.
I highly recommend this book. It is honest and hopeful and real. I have had so many people offer me gifts in this season of my cancer: flowers, books, candles, a listening ear, a meal for my family, a text to check in. Katy Bowser Hutson's book has given me the gift of knowing I am not alone in this fight. I hope to have many years ahead of me to share this book with others who need it in their own journey.
When I bought this book via Hutson's Kickstarter, I didn't know I had breast cancer. In fact, the cancer might not have even there as "cancer" back in July, but I now know it was lurking in my body, waiting to go rogue. So my experience of reading this book during a season when I was meeting my oncologist for the first time, scheduling appointments with surgeons and waiting for my chemo medication to arrive was different than I would have anticipated back in July. That's kind of how cancer is - it turns your expectations and your sense of control on its head.
I found these poems comforting and challenging. Comforting because it was so reassuring to realize I'm not alone in feeling the emotions that roll through my body. Comforting because Hutson reminded herself and me of the truth that I am not alone, even in my own body. Challenging because she went before me and writes about things that will be a part of my story, but aren't here yet. Challenging because she writes of the finish line moving and I've heard from another friend that's one of the hardest things: thinking the finish line is near and then learning you have to keep going.
Hutson captures so well the way cancer is forcing me to live closer to my own mortality:
"Body, soul, listen up:
This is the same damned deal as before.
You've always had a death sentence.
You've always had the same odds.
You didn't know what they were,
But now someone has given you a vague lottery ticket
pulled from a front car tire,
Pulpy and pitted.
But, for all you know,
you could still get hit by a drunk driver,
Struck by lightning
Fall dead of an aneurysm..."
(Excerpt from "En Route to Canaan/Jericho")
Since my diagnosis, I have had thoughts of how close my death really is. As I drive my car, I'm more aware that I could make a wrong turn or look away for a second or be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This has always been true, but there's something about your own body attacking you that makes it all much closer to the surface.
I will keep this book nearby in the days, weeks and months ahead of me. I will need their strength and courage when my own well runs dry.
I highly recommend this book. It is honest and hopeful and real. I have had so many people offer me gifts in this season of my cancer: flowers, books, candles, a listening ear, a meal for my family, a text to check in. Katy Bowser Hutson's book has given me the gift of knowing I am not alone in this fight. I hope to have many years ahead of me to share this book with others who need it in their own journey.
July 16, 2019
Powerful and raw. Katy Bowser Hutson is fully human and gave me a window into God’s powerful presence in the ravages of cancer.
January 30, 2024
Yeah, I definitely cried multiple times.
This potent little book of poems and essays is so honest and real.
This potent little book of poems and essays is so honest and real.
Read
May 23, 2025Not a cancer person, but recently inducted into cancer world by loving and caring for a cancer person. This was the final push to read this collection that’s been on my TBR list since I first listened to Katy Bowser Hutson’s phenomenal episode of The Habit Podcast four or five years ago (where you can hear her read some of these precious poems aloud).
I am honored to have had this peek into how Katy met great suffering with honesty and grace and curiosity. I pray to have the grace to suffer as she did: looking doggedly for the glinting gleams of hope along the way. I think we are all the better for learning to live this beautiful, terrible, clear-eyed, hopeful honesty.
She loves language an awful lot; I’m grateful to get to enjoy it with her. She writes Jesus with terrible beauty; I hope He is as she sees Him.
I am honored to have had this peek into how Katy met great suffering with honesty and grace and curiosity. I pray to have the grace to suffer as she did: looking doggedly for the glinting gleams of hope along the way. I think we are all the better for learning to live this beautiful, terrible, clear-eyed, hopeful honesty.
She loves language an awful lot; I’m grateful to get to enjoy it with her. She writes Jesus with terrible beauty; I hope He is as she sees Him.
December 25, 2023
Summary: Poems and essays tracing one woman’s cancer journey and how she encountered God amid the brokenness of her body.
You are going about your life. Attending a writers workshop. Caring for children. Looking forward to the return of a husband who has been on the road. Then you notice alarming symptoms. And the world turns over in a day as you learn you have inflammatory breast cancer, a particularly deadly form of breast cancer. Within a week you’ve begun chemotherapy.
This, in outline is the beginning of Katy Bowser Hutson’s breast cancer journey. A poet, Bowser invites us into her journey through short essays and poems. A survivor, she bears scars of body and spirit from peripheral neuropathy to the ever present possibility of recurrence.
Her treatment involved intensive chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, and radiation. Her poems take us through the fatigue of chemotherapy in which you fight by resting and letting the chemo kill. She grieves the loss of hair. Hutson writes that she will “cipher meaning/Siphoning liquid beauty that seeps from the edges/Into a tiny vial.” Poetry is her resistance. She acknowledges the ugliness of the treatment and the strange paradox that this may give her her life. She thanks God for everything from herceptin to those who surround her with love while her body is being devastated. In “Potty Mouth” she vents against all the indignities of a digestive tract wracked by chemo.
She takes us through her process of coming to terms with the loss of the breasts that caught the eyes of boys and nursed her children. She gives us a glimpse of her thoughts on the eve of surgery and after recovery. At times, all she can do is send words “running across the page.” Amid it all she notes that a benefit of cancer is that people tell you they are glad you’re alive. They don’t usually do that.
Then radiation. Daily bursts of radiation five days a week for six weeks. Like sunburn, reddening, inflaming, and blistering skin and introducing a new type of fatigue. A daily routine with caring people inflicting a new form of hurt…until its over and you are really done with treatment, nine or so months after you began. And then another year for your body to recover to a new normal. And then the finish line moves for her as she has ovaries removed to suppress the estrogen that feeds her cancer.
She writes of her struggles with God and her sense that God comes near the broken and brokenhearted. She describes the living of a kind of death to know resurrection. Throughout she renders honestly both the struggle with what she is facing and the place of surrender to which she comes.
I am the husband of a fourteen year survivor of a different form of breast cancer. While no two cancers or cancer journeys are the same, there was so much that rang true. My wife’s treatment process was similar to Katy’s: chemo, surgery, radiation. I relived my wife’s journey as I read, and perhaps it is good not to forget. She captures the devastation cancer treatment wreaks upon the body. The old saw is that “to kill cancer you need to mostly kill the rest of you.” She captures the duration of treatment that most who haven’t been through it don’t understand. She expresses the ups and downs of spiritual life and the exhaustion that says “all I want to do is rest” and says that is OK. All this in a little book of 86 pages.
This is a book that helps someone going through treatment to know he or she is not alone. It helps caregivers understand what those they love are going through. But the group this book may be especially helpful for are those who have a friend who has received a cancer diagnosis and they have not known someone close to them with cancer. Katy Bowser Hutson helps readers wrestle with the mortal danger of cancer and the bodily indignities of treatment and the “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” that is the spiritual journey of many.
____________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
You are going about your life. Attending a writers workshop. Caring for children. Looking forward to the return of a husband who has been on the road. Then you notice alarming symptoms. And the world turns over in a day as you learn you have inflammatory breast cancer, a particularly deadly form of breast cancer. Within a week you’ve begun chemotherapy.
This, in outline is the beginning of Katy Bowser Hutson’s breast cancer journey. A poet, Bowser invites us into her journey through short essays and poems. A survivor, she bears scars of body and spirit from peripheral neuropathy to the ever present possibility of recurrence.
Her treatment involved intensive chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, and radiation. Her poems take us through the fatigue of chemotherapy in which you fight by resting and letting the chemo kill. She grieves the loss of hair. Hutson writes that she will “cipher meaning/Siphoning liquid beauty that seeps from the edges/Into a tiny vial.” Poetry is her resistance. She acknowledges the ugliness of the treatment and the strange paradox that this may give her her life. She thanks God for everything from herceptin to those who surround her with love while her body is being devastated. In “Potty Mouth” she vents against all the indignities of a digestive tract wracked by chemo.
She takes us through her process of coming to terms with the loss of the breasts that caught the eyes of boys and nursed her children. She gives us a glimpse of her thoughts on the eve of surgery and after recovery. At times, all she can do is send words “running across the page.” Amid it all she notes that a benefit of cancer is that people tell you they are glad you’re alive. They don’t usually do that.
Then radiation. Daily bursts of radiation five days a week for six weeks. Like sunburn, reddening, inflaming, and blistering skin and introducing a new type of fatigue. A daily routine with caring people inflicting a new form of hurt…until its over and you are really done with treatment, nine or so months after you began. And then another year for your body to recover to a new normal. And then the finish line moves for her as she has ovaries removed to suppress the estrogen that feeds her cancer.
She writes of her struggles with God and her sense that God comes near the broken and brokenhearted. She describes the living of a kind of death to know resurrection. Throughout she renders honestly both the struggle with what she is facing and the place of surrender to which she comes.
I am the husband of a fourteen year survivor of a different form of breast cancer. While no two cancers or cancer journeys are the same, there was so much that rang true. My wife’s treatment process was similar to Katy’s: chemo, surgery, radiation. I relived my wife’s journey as I read, and perhaps it is good not to forget. She captures the devastation cancer treatment wreaks upon the body. The old saw is that “to kill cancer you need to mostly kill the rest of you.” She captures the duration of treatment that most who haven’t been through it don’t understand. She expresses the ups and downs of spiritual life and the exhaustion that says “all I want to do is rest” and says that is OK. All this in a little book of 86 pages.
This is a book that helps someone going through treatment to know he or she is not alone. It helps caregivers understand what those they love are going through. But the group this book may be especially helpful for are those who have a friend who has received a cancer diagnosis and they have not known someone close to them with cancer. Katy Bowser Hutson helps readers wrestle with the mortal danger of cancer and the bodily indignities of treatment and the “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” that is the spiritual journey of many.
____________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
July 21, 2023
In this collection of poems and essays, Katy Bowser Hutson shares insights from her journey with cancer. She wrote the majority of these poems while she was battling breast cancer, and she has written the essays with five years of hindsight, sharing context for the poems and reflecting on the ways that her writing and faith helped her endure through such a difficult time. This book is a short read, with plenty of white space and abstract artwork interspersed on some pages, but the poems pack a heavy punch, exploring many facets of the author's physical suffering, emotional distress, and stark confrontation with mortality.
Now I Lay Me Down to Fight: A Poet Writes Her Way Through Cancer is unlike anything I have ever read before, and I really enjoyed it. The author captures vivid personal moments and portrays complex experiences through metaphor, and the poems strike an excellent balance between being profoundly personal and offering up words that express other people's experiences and feelings, too. Some of the poems are very specific to the author's circumstances and family, and others reflect universal existential questions and general details about being sick, exhausted, and profoundly worn down.
Now I Lay Me Down to Fight will be a great blessing to other women fighting cancer, and I appreciate how Hutson shares the particulars of her story while acknowledging that she can't possibly know or speak to everyone's circumstance. Individual experiences will vary, but she helps give voice to others' fears and struggles, and I found this book truly remarkable. This poetry collection will be helpful to people who are fighting cancer or looking back over their cancer journey, and this is also a great book for loved ones and medical teams to read to better understand what cancer patients are going through.
I received a free ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Now I Lay Me Down to Fight: A Poet Writes Her Way Through Cancer is unlike anything I have ever read before, and I really enjoyed it. The author captures vivid personal moments and portrays complex experiences through metaphor, and the poems strike an excellent balance between being profoundly personal and offering up words that express other people's experiences and feelings, too. Some of the poems are very specific to the author's circumstances and family, and others reflect universal existential questions and general details about being sick, exhausted, and profoundly worn down.
Now I Lay Me Down to Fight will be a great blessing to other women fighting cancer, and I appreciate how Hutson shares the particulars of her story while acknowledging that she can't possibly know or speak to everyone's circumstance. Individual experiences will vary, but she helps give voice to others' fears and struggles, and I found this book truly remarkable. This poetry collection will be helpful to people who are fighting cancer or looking back over their cancer journey, and this is also a great book for loved ones and medical teams to read to better understand what cancer patients are going through.
I received a free ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
November 4, 2023
The particularity of suffering always matters, and in this case, Katy Bowser Hutson writes about the particularity of her cancer's required triathlon of chemo, double mastectomy, and radiation. Naming the pain matters because it is an act of image-bearing, an act of creation. It allows her to name the precise pain to herself, to God, to others. And in doing so, she offers others an insight into her particular suffering as well as giving voice to heart-rending cries that so many others know. Some suffer as they, too, struggle through this same triathlon, and some suffer as they struggle to care for others who are struggling through.
The gift, though, is that her naming so often names the pain of suffering--and that audience far exceeds the particularity of cancer. Her words gave me words for my own pain, though the source of suffering is drastically different. Her words gave me words of hope because her hope is from the same Source. Her prayers and cries and laments gave me words for my own, became my own words.
In Cancer, Poet, she writes,
"If in this year's ravaging I eke an ounce of beauty
It will outweigh all of your ashy remnant.
I can paste it on my footsoles
And stick me to the incinerated earth
Where I will wait for the rich loam
Tear soaked and fertile, to live.
This is what poets do, cancer."
Cancer is the named pain. I commend this book of poetry to anyone who knows cancer or who knows pain. The source of the pain may change but the named suffering and hope are words for all of us.
The gift, though, is that her naming so often names the pain of suffering--and that audience far exceeds the particularity of cancer. Her words gave me words for my own pain, though the source of suffering is drastically different. Her words gave me words of hope because her hope is from the same Source. Her prayers and cries and laments gave me words for my own, became my own words.
In Cancer, Poet, she writes,
"If in this year's ravaging I eke an ounce of beauty
It will outweigh all of your ashy remnant.
I can paste it on my footsoles
And stick me to the incinerated earth
Where I will wait for the rich loam
Tear soaked and fertile, to live.
This is what poets do, cancer."
Cancer is the named pain. I commend this book of poetry to anyone who knows cancer or who knows pain. The source of the pain may change but the named suffering and hope are words for all of us.
November 10, 2023
The title of this book says it all, Now I Lay Me Down to Fight: A Poet Writes Her Way Through Cancer. A mother of young children. A sudden diagnosis of aggressive breast cancer. Chemotherapy. Mastectomy. Radiation. Katy writes through all of it. In the preface she says, "There is a magic, a medicine to putting words to terrible things. I wrote through all of it: to face fear, to say it out loud, to pray, to fling it all away from me. I wrote most of the poems during cancer treatment. The essays, as well as one poem, are written with the benefit of hindsight, five years later. My hope is that my writings cross path with someone who could use these words. Every cancer story is different. Maybe there are moments in here that resonate, that help. I hope so."
Katy's beautiful, particular, honest writing is a gift. If you need a companion for your own fight, or you want to understand what a friend or family member is going through, this book is for you. And for me. For all of us.
From the foreward by Tish Harrison Warren, "When facing the darkness of our mortality and fragility, we need theologians, but also–and more so–need poets. We need those who help us to notice any hint of light in the darkness. We need faithful men and women who with pen in hand act as spelunkers, plunging into the dark caves of human experience, exploring what we would rather avoid, and telling us what they found there."
Katy's beautiful, particular, honest writing is a gift. If you need a companion for your own fight, or you want to understand what a friend or family member is going through, this book is for you. And for me. For all of us.
From the foreward by Tish Harrison Warren, "When facing the darkness of our mortality and fragility, we need theologians, but also–and more so–need poets. We need those who help us to notice any hint of light in the darkness. We need faithful men and women who with pen in hand act as spelunkers, plunging into the dark caves of human experience, exploring what we would rather avoid, and telling us what they found there."
November 20, 2023
The poems--about living through breast cancer treatment--are beautiful and powerful. As with all good poetry, the particulars about a specific person and specific events and a very particular disease are precisely what make the poetry in this collection so universal and applicable to all our situations and relationships.
Having been familiar with this author as a gifted songwriter, I was expecting the lyrical beauty of the poetry. I think what caught me by surprise (in a good way) were the moments of humor and the raw vulnerability and her willingness to let the moods and subjects choose the forms.
Having been familiar with this author as a gifted songwriter, I was expecting the lyrical beauty of the poetry. I think what caught me by surprise (in a good way) were the moments of humor and the raw vulnerability and her willingness to let the moods and subjects choose the forms.
December 4, 2025
I loved this! My mom bought me a copy as I’m finishing up breast cancer chemo- in my own triathlon. It really got me how she said some joy’s can only be felt in sorrow. That’s so true. I felt very seen and heard reading this book. I haven’t decided if I’ll keep it forever or gift it to another patient.
April 6, 2025
i am in tears as i finish this book. i drug it out as long as i could, and now that i am done i know i will revisit it often. i have not had cancer, thank God, but i still related deeply to many of these poems. i will be giving this book as gifts.
January 7, 2019
Wow. Powerful. Poetry written during a year of breast cancer treatment that retains humor and life-embracing purpose in the midst of terror and pain. Highly recommended.
January 10, 2019
Beautiful beautiful little book of poems written during treatments for breast cancer. Timely as I'm walking through that path with two women who are dear to me. Hutson's words are wonderful.
January 17, 2019
Love Love Love
Open Hearted
Moving
I plan give to anyone I know who's going through Cancer treatment.
Open Hearted
Moving
I plan give to anyone I know who's going through Cancer treatment.
January 29, 2020
This book is stunning. Fellow cancer-person here. I cried on almost every page and wanted to highlight every word. Absolutely beautiful.
October 6, 2022
I’ll return to this gem as I progress through treatment. 💖
December 15, 2023
A remarkable collection of poems (and a few essays) written during breast cancer treatment. They are frank and moving, and occasionally dryly funny.
December 16, 2023
This was so raw and honest. Really opens your eyes to cancer experience. Beautiful
February 1, 2024
I let this small book sit awhile. Then, last month I got my own diagnosis. Out of the blue. Katy's book now means more to me than ever.
It is a companion book. Prayers, please.
It is a companion book. Prayers, please.
March 1, 2024
Beautifully written by an even more beautiful soul.
April 16, 2024
Please, please, give this little book to every cancer survivor and sufferer you know! They will find a friend who gets it all and permission to fight their fight.
April 21, 2024
At times, quite powerful.
June 11, 2024
"Where you, cancer, copy furiously,
I fumblingly create.
You cannot erase me."
Such a meaningful book of poetry at a timely point in my life. I'm so thankful for Katy Bowser Huston's resilience.
I fumblingly create.
You cannot erase me."
Such a meaningful book of poetry at a timely point in my life. I'm so thankful for Katy Bowser Huston's resilience.
February 6, 2025
I’m a breast cancer survivor also; I related to this too🤩… fight, fight, fight !
November 14, 2023
I enjoyed the first edition of this book, but the essays added to this edition bring even more depth and meaning to each word. I feel as if I have read a novel, with glimpses of each step on the author's journey.
This book is about cancer, but more than that, it is about being human. Whether we are fighting cancer, chronic illness, depression, or insomnia, or just grieving the big ole mess in our world today, these poems speak to the pain and joy we find throughout the struggle.
This book is about cancer, but more than that, it is about being human. Whether we are fighting cancer, chronic illness, depression, or insomnia, or just grieving the big ole mess in our world today, these poems speak to the pain and joy we find throughout the struggle.
January 7, 2024
Breast cancer runs in my family. While each cancer journey is unique, I’ve witnessed some of what Katy Hutson writes about. I appreciate the rawness and unedited descriptions of how hard it is to battle cancer. I love her honesty in not making the chemo tiredness, nausea, diarrhea, radiation burns more palatable.
Too often “suffering well” means putting a burden on sufferers to curate their stories so onlookers can spiritually bypass the discomfort of facing their own mortality and dependence and avoid wrestling through their own doubts about the goodness of God. This is not that sort of book. We need more honesty and acknowledgement of the bodily experience of suffering even while clinging to God. This is exactly that kind of book.
Too often “suffering well” means putting a burden on sufferers to curate their stories so onlookers can spiritually bypass the discomfort of facing their own mortality and dependence and avoid wrestling through their own doubts about the goodness of God. This is not that sort of book. We need more honesty and acknowledgement of the bodily experience of suffering even while clinging to God. This is exactly that kind of book.
September 9, 2022
A stunning collection of poetry by a breast cancer survivor. Honest and heart wrenching. I sobbed in the most cathartic way!
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews