Viva Brighton Issue #52 June 2017

COMMUNITY
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From me to you
Letters for cancer patients
When Alison Hitchcock
met Brian Greenley
it turned out to be
the start of a remarkable
friendship…
I met Alison at a
yoga retreat in Goa.
We kept in touch
when we got home
and in June 2010 I met
Alison and another
friend from the retreat at a bar in London. We
were updating each other on our lives, so I told
them that I had been diagnosed with cancer two
days earlier.
Alison made a random promise. She told me
she was going to write to me to cheer me up. I
wasn’t holding out much hope that she’d stick
to it, but two weeks later a handwritten letter
landed on my doorstep. It was the first of over
100 letters she sent me during the two years I
had cancer treatment.
Her letters were not sympathetic or empathetic,
but an insight into her life, rather like a
diary. They were often funny. She became quite
good at observing life around her, and would
send me amusing anecdotes. I found them fascinating
and very entertaining.
When you’re dealing with cancer you long
for things to be normal again. Your daily
routine completely changes while everyone else
is getting on with their lives. What a letter does
is it reaches out to you. It connects you back to
the outside world. Alison’s letters made me think
about the life I’d had. While that made me sad,
it also made me more determined to get back to
what I was missing.
I started to show Alison’s letters to friends
when they visited, and they would all comment
on what a talent she
had for writing. I
passed on their comments,
and I think
that encouraged her to
pursue writing more
seriously. She was
accepted for an MA
creative-writing course
at Birkbeck University,
and spent the next 18
months writing stories and novels. Meanwhile, I
kept being well.
Our story was eventually turned into an hourlong
programme for Radio 4’s Listening Project.
It made us think there could be something
bigger to all this, and we decided to launch From
Me to You, to encourage others to write to friends
or family members with cancer. We run workshops
to help people get started, and we also offer a
forwarding service where people can choose to
donate a letter to a stranger with cancer.
Often people just don’t know what to do to
help when someone is ill, but I think writing a
letter is a great start. It’s very different to a text
or email. You can say things in a letter that you
might feel inhibited saying face to face. It also
gives the recipient a choice about where and
when they read it.
People come to our workshops not knowing
what to write or how, but we’ve yet to have anyone
not leave with at least two sides of writing.
Not everyone can write humorously, but most
people can write about their daily lives, and often
that’s what works best – writing about everyday
things, making a life that’s been turned upside
down feel normal again. Nione Meakin
Visit frommetoyouletters.co.uk for details of the
next Brighton workshop or to get involved
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