Welcome to Liminal with Jennifer Steil

Award-winning author and ovarian cancer wrangler Jennifer Steil talks writing, reading, recurrence, and remission as well as life in the fertile territory of Inbetweenland.

Jennifer outside of Church Cottage, in Clifford Chambers, Stratford-Upon-Avon, where Hosking House Trust granted her a monthlong writing residency just before her cancer diagnosis in 2022. Photo by Wendy Harrison.

Liminal was the word that always made the most sense to me as a title for this newsletter. Yet I hesitated, worried it might be too academic or arcane. I searched for something else. Inbetweenness? Threshold? But all my searches led me back to liminal. Nothing else feels suitable. Thus, a brief definition, excerpted from the Oxford English Dictionary:

Liminal, derived from the Latin word limin, threshold:

“Characterized by being on a boundary or threshold, esp. by being transitional or intermediate between two states, situations, etc.”

This inbetweenness is where I live, and the area I am most interested in exploring as a writer. It’s also a space in which many of us dwell, some of us fleetingly, some of us forever. This newsletter is especially for those of you navigating this fertile space between countries, cultures, illness and health, identities, sexualities, religions, languages, and homes.

I grew up in the United States, have both British and American nationality, and have lived in Yemen, Jordan, England, Bolivia, and Uzbekistan. I’m currently in France, where we hope to stay. Ever since I left the US in 2006, I have been a chronic border-dweller. The many lives I’ve lived and stories I have discovered in other countries have inspired everything I have written.

Yet it was another country that brought me to the creation of this newsletter: Cancerland. A place where the ground constantly shifts underfoot, on paths that do not allow a view of what lies ahead.

In early spring 2022, I was diagnosed with stage 3C high-grade serous ovarian cancer. For four years I had been going to my doctors with all the classic symptoms, severe abdominal pain, bloating, exhaustion, etc., and was continually told it was “just menopause.” Not until I finally saw a female doctor did she order the blood test that led to my diagnosis.

At the time, we were living in Tashkent. My husband was serving as the British ambassador to Uzbekistan and my daughter was in school there. As the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office felt that healthcare in the country was substandard, I was required to undergo treatment in London.

There were several problems with this. I had nowhere to live in London. I didn’t want to go through treatment more than 3,000 miles from my family. And I could not live alone. This last problem had become apparent after my first chemotherapy caused me to blackout on the bathroom floor alone in a friends’ home. Not until I regained consciousness was I able to ring for an ambulance.

I sent out a plea for help. And miraculously, it arrived. A series of strangers offered me their homes; friends donated money to cover the cost of my husband and daughter flying back and forth to see me; and best of all, eight friends from different parts of the world flew in to take turns looking after me.

After 18 months of chemotherapy and major surgery, I was declared in remission and returned to Tashkent, where I was able to receive maintenance treatment from an Uzbek oncologist. Ovarian cancer, as many of you may know, is similar to a game of what-a-mole, in that it has an unfortunate tendency to keep popping up. And mine did, a mere seven months after what I thought was my last chemo. I am now in chemotherapy again, in France this time, where I have the luxury, as I did in London, of free healthcare.

The genesis of this newsletter is a vast collection of journal entries I posted on the Caring Bridge website to let friends and family know how I was doing. I started off writing medical updates, but couldn’t help expanding what I wrote to cover a much broader territory. Enthusiastic readers have suggested I find a way to share these stories more widely, so here I am.   

I won’t go into statistics here, but my chances of longterm survival are slim. This is information I struggle with daily. I have a 14-year-old daughter I want to see through adulthood. A husband with whom I’d like to age. With this sword of Damocles hanging over my head indefinitely, how can I lead a meaningful life, whatever is left to me of it?

While I will explore that idea here, I will also share the stories of the remarkable people who appeared to help and house me during my illness. I almost called this newsletter Showing Up, as I want to talk about how these people showed up for me. Despite my illness, I also want to be able to show up for other people. I would like this newsletter to be a creative conversation in which we talk about ways to live as well as ways to write.

How can we all find new ways to show up for each other, ways that matter? How can I show up for my daughter when I can’t get out of bed to make her breakfast? How can I show up for my husband on days I can’t find my way out of the dark? These questions matter to me now more than ever.

Thus I will talk about my illness and my experience of it, but I also want to talk about other people, other countries, and the stories that help me get through each day. My writing life is impossibly intertwined with my illness. Writing is, in a major way, how I am getting through this. So is reading. Talking with and mentoring other writers is a joy. I will recommend books and other works I love, offer insights on the writing life, share links to my work, and respond to commenters. I’ll even occasionally invite a guest columnist. I find myself resisting the idea of too narrow a narrow focus, wanting to leave room for talking about books and writing, about life.

I would love for you to join me in conversation. Most of the weekly content will be free, but paid subscribers will have access to additional features, including being able to comment and talk with each other and with me. I’m new at this platform, so I hope you will be patient with me as I continue to figure out how to make best use of it. My goal is to form a community of people who can engage, support, and inspire each other. Tell me your stories!

(This introductory post is in the About section, but I felt it would also be a useful overview of what you can expect from this newsletter, for those of you who may not get to the About tab right away!)