Bone: Dying into Life

by Marion Woodman

On November 7, 1993, Marion Woodman was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Here, in journal form, is the story of her illness, her healing process, and her acceptance of life and death. Breathtakingly honest about the factors she feels contributed to her cancer, Woodman also explains how she drew upon every resource-physical and spiritual-available to her to come to terms with her illness. Dreams and imagery, self-reflection and body work, and both traditional and alternative medicine play distinctive roles in Woodman's recovery. Her personal treasury of art, photographs, and quotations-from Dickinson to Blake to Rumi-embellish this unique chronicle of a very personal journey toward transformation.

Genres: Memoir, Psychology, Nonfiction, Spirituality, Self Help, Health, Death

274 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Marion Woodman was a Canadian mythopoetic author and women's movement figure. She was a Jungian analyst trained at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich, Switzerland. She was one of the most widely read authors on feminine psychology, focusing on psyche and soma. She was also an international lecturer and poet. Her collection of audio and visual lectures, correspondence, and manuscripts are housed at OPUS Archives and Research Center, in Santa Barbara, California. Among her collaborations with other authors she wrote with Thomas Moore, Jill Mellick and Robert Bly. Her brothers were the late Canadian actor Bruce Boa and Jungian analyst Fraser Boa.

Reviews

[M. Jane Colette · Rating 5 out of 5]

OMFG. This book seduced me, transposed me, transformed me. I want to lie at Woodman's feet and weep. I want to go back in time and have her be my analyst. I am ready to forgive Jung for being an anti-Semite and think he's a genius again, if Woodman and Bone are the result of his work.

This book is... yes.

I am so grateful to have read it.

And I am now going into all of her other work... the binary dualist outmoded nature of Jungian analysis be damned.

[Guy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bone is the fascinating story of Woodman's inner struggle to fully join life, lifted directly from the transcript of her diary. It begins with her diagnosis of cancer of the uterus and it's final resolution, via ending her career as a Jungian analyst and the discovery of another pain-causing and disabling tumour found in her sacrum.

Her inner dialogue resonates with my own, as it will surely with those who have struggled — are struggling — to become conscious of the unconscious barriers that seem to be keeping us from being fully alive. And several times, perhaps even many times, small but lovely synchronicities with my own life resonated while reading it.

Her journal includes quotations from various writers, in particular poets such as Dickenson and Blake, and they are lovely to read as well.

Now, for a taste of the book, from 1995, near the end:

March 6           ... I am aware of my capacity for denial, but I think I am better. Still, I must acknowledge something is strange in my behaviour. I am incapable of obeying a clock, I who was once so punctual. [Yes! This has become my 'fate' too, in recent years!] I am not confused though I may appear to be. I tell people I will meet them at a certain time, but then I cannot hurry. I know I am going to be late, but something in me does not care. I am doing my best and can do no more. I may not get there at all. I feel no guilt, no remorse. I'm on different time. "What is not brought to consciousness comes to us as fate." — CG Jung.

March 8          Edema is heavy again. When my body fills with water, I dream of troops manning all the posts against the enemy who is pounding at a plate-glass door. Plate-glass is cut-off from feeling — able to watch life, unable to feel into it. Whatever strength is in me takes up water (unconsciousness) to protect agains the enemy (life itself). Goo image for autoimmune breakdown: Body becomes enemy to itself. Sooner or later, I hope that plate glass will shatter: Swan Maiden will sacrifice her impossible ideals and accept Gypsy with her luscious love of life. One comes out of the Light to meet the Other coming out of Darkness. Sometimes I hear Little One laughing when I write sentences like that. I suspect she is a very old crone.

March 16-17          Went alone to the university symposium on cancer and diet. Didn't learn much. Repeat, repeat on green and yellow vegetables. Green tea is good, also wheatgrass and vegetables of the sea...

All emphasized the importance of diet. Irony! What I'll remember most about the conference was the fabulous coffee and muffins.

March 21           Simplifying becomes my total focus. I'm noting how anxious I become when I fail to simplify or cannot simplify because of what starts happening around me — phone, TV, letters, ad infinitum. I believe that failure to simplify could lead me back to cancer because I would lose touch with my life vibration — my tone that sustains my life force. ...

The more I listen to my soul, the more clearly I hear the truth of other people, of animals, birds, the universe. A unified field! ...

I must stay in touch with whatever keeps me focused on the still point — the place of exact harmony in body and psyche. Simplify life to that point where the dance can happen — the dance between consciousness and the unconscious. So long as I constantly allow other things to interfere, I will never find the moments in each day to reach those listening points of harmony — those seeing points of perception. Concentration that can focus on the moments must come first or the others do not follow. I tend to think I'll get everything in order and then. No, no no! That's not it. Listen to Mozart first, come into harmony first, then the clutter will fall away unnoticed.

Clarification is very important now because I know the dance is not happening. The swans have flown into the sunset; Gypsy is alive. But consciousness and the unconscious are not dancing together. The unconscious is ready to step into life; consciousness knows I can move into health, but dares not leap into the unknown. I cannot walk.

And it made a delightful read aloud book with my partner.

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

A difficult journey through the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Wonderful quotations throughout, and while her Jungian way of expressing and understanding her experience and challenges was foreign to me, I found her effort to come to terms with a serious illness and all its demands very enlightening and useful to track in its details. Amazed at the deep and wide circle of her friends/family, as well as how she somehow kept going to gatherings and giving speeches and seeing analysands, etc. I also appreciated her ongoing attempts to reconcile body, mind and spirit in a period of such drastic change, especially as the treatments contradicted her belief systems - and her "simplify" mantra struck a resonant chord with me. One oddity: she kept talking about her diet as consisting of "green and yellow vegetables" - without ever mentioned WHICH vegetables (which as a foodie & vegetarian I found frustrating) - and also reported several times the delight she takes in eating McMuffins at McDonald's . . .

[Brynne Betz · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usual, Woodman lures me into her rich, soul-centered life...and even whilst she thinks herself dying. Amazing woman, the one person I would most like to have dinner with if I had to choose. This read grew from her journals and shares her personal journey thru cancer. Great gift for any woman going on or having gone that path and who hungers for feminine insight. Highly recommend.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful pose. Written in the style of journal entries. The author is obviously a literature lover and there were many references and quotes throughout that encouraged me to make a list of more "to reads". As someone who has experienced a cancer journey myself, much of this resonated in a truly deep and meaningful human way. Many of these thoughts were my thoughts throughout my process but put succinctly in a gorgeously poetic way.

There are good questions here for talking to your doctors, but mostly there are good questions to ask yourself about life and death. Read if you are on a cancer journey and ok with questioning the way you want to live and if you are ready to read someone else's experience. Also read if you are not going through this, but are a student of the complex human experience and you love good writing.

[Bilgi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marion Woodman's journey through cancer gave me an understanding of what cancer is giving and taking in a human's life, physicaly, psychology and spiritually. Now I know better how to approach someone with cancer.
The book is not only about cancer, but about life, death and rebirth.
Before reading the book, I recommend to watch "Dancing in the Flames", a documentary film on Woodman's life (directed by Adam Greydon Reid).

[Numberbox · Rating 2 out of 5]

Trouble getting into this one, so skipped to the end after page 59, basically jumping a full year of Marion’s entries. Too deep into Jungian analysis and personal details of little relevance for me. Enjoyed the format, with quotes and diagrams in the margins (brilliant!), and the Southern Ontario context. Previous reader had left a newspaper clipping on Marion’s obituary as a book mark. Sweet touch.

[Autumn]

I'm having a difficult time rating a dying author's personal diary. There were thoughts about illness in this that hit pretty close to home and I'm glad she shared her story. Thought provoking quotational gems were strung throughout. I recommend especially to those facing and dealing with life changing health issues.

[Anita Ashland · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a journal of Woodman’s experience of having cancer. She was at the forefront of seeking out body work and other alternative treatments back before it was as common as it is today.

“I believe Jung’s idea that the body carries the conflict that the psyche cannot consciously endure.”

A must read for anyone chronically ill and interested in Jungian insights.

[Genevieve Drutchas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ardent fan of her Jungian books. They affected and changed me and shaped my worldview and my view of myself and others and our culture. Reading this personal account of her cancer and aging experiences humanized her and made her a more tender and real person for me. I have so much gratitude for her honesty.

[Jenifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could not finish it. Got about halfway through and her struggle with science and all the Jungian stuff was just too muggy for me.

[Colleen Faustino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this, so easy to read. A little peek into the Day-to-day world of MW and how she navigated both entering cronedom and a potentially life-threatening illness. Beautiful.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gains much from the literary allusions.

[Nadosia Grey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting story of Woodman’s interactions before, during and after cancer. The very smart Jungian interpretation distinguishes this memoir from many others. I wish I knew more about Jungian archetypes to fully appreciate its beauty.

I found Ross’ parts really interesting as I am a fan of his scholarly work. The afterword was stark, but truthful.

There were many lovely quotations from works which related to certain entries of how she was feeling and things that were going on in her life. Shelley’s “Adonais” was the one I loved most. Overall a good epistolary memoir which is unconventional in the best of ways.

[Emma]

I'm going to mark this as read although I only read a bit of it. I just find I'm not in a cancer-memoir kind of a place right now.
In the bit I did read I did find it interesting that upon hearing her diagnosis she immediately makes a list of the ways in which she might have brought it on herself. Being a feminist Jungian psychologist it's ways like not honouring the feminine, and so on. Interesting that she feels she brought it on herself, since this puts her in a camp with certain Christians who feel that illness is a sign of a lack of faith. It was a curious connection.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another mysteriously moving book by my favorite Jungian Analyst, Marion Woodman, with inspirations like this one: "Pitching aside the clutter in my life, knowing my own voice and my own time for my own needs." And this one: " Cronedom is freedom from the complexes that cut off my own voice."
Or my favorite one, " The answer will present itself; provided you don't insist upon certainty."

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Marion Woodman’s journal of her experience of uterine cancer, so it’s heavy going at times — sometimes from the intensity of her experience, sometimes because no matter how much Woodman I read, there are places where she loses me in her talk of Sophia and William Blake and Emily Dickinson and, and, and.

[Tonya · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had a hard time understanding what the author was talking about most of the time. She has some spiritual beliefs that I know nothing about. I did enjoy the quotes, and hearing about her experience with cancer.

[LINDA ISHIKAWA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marion Woodman once again hits the mark. She is so giving of herself allowing us to look in to her souls journeu through grave illness. She spare no
Measure of her pain. We too cn not avoid the stark
Reality of 5he illness she is traversing

[Rain Jewelle Martin]

spell-binding and original. Autobiographical material. Heart felt.

[Idiosyncratic · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book right after I was diagnosed with a serious illness - enormously helpful. (However, if you're not a Jungian, it won't make much sense.)