Catherine Simpson and her body had gone through a lot together over the decades, but when a cancer diagnosis upended her life, she was forced to reflect on her body, and contend with the fact that something she always believed she was in control of wasn’t quite so. A brilliant and thoughtful book, Catherine spoke to BooksfromScotland to tell us more about her story, and new book One Body: A Retrospective.

One Body 
By Catherine Simpson
Published by Saraband

Could you tell us a little of what to expect from your book One Body?

One Body: A Retrospective looks back at what it has been like growing up and growing older in this body, tempered by my recent experience of breast cancer. It is honest and at times graphic but also funny. Life is both light and dark and I try to represent this in my writing. A review in the Irish Times said it was written with ‘characteristic bluntness … grace and dark humour’, which was lovely. I grew up in the Sixties and Seventies and came of age in the Eighties, which were overtly sexist times. In One Body I look at everyday experiences back then and examine the impact they had on how I treated my body – the tanning, perming, plucking, shaving, slimming, the sexual harassment, the catcalling, the body shaming and the endless self-criticism. I think my memories will resonate with many people.

What drove you to write about such a personal topic? How did you find the process of revisiting your journey through the lens of one body?

One Body is a weaving together of my experience of cancer with a reassessing of past times. The bits about cancer were written as I went through the experience because I couldn’t find the right book to read at the time. All the books about cancer I found were too sugar-coated and ‘brave’; I wanted to record the reality of it. I knew if I left it until afterwards, I may feel compelled to write a ‘brave’ account too. In examining the experience in detail, as it happened, it helped me to deal with the existential terror of a cancer diagnosis. As the months wore on, I realised that the cancer experience was making me reassess how I’d treated my body in the past; how very hard I’d been on myself. I realised how dysfunctional my relationship had been with food, how in thrall I’d been to ‘what a woman should look like’, how I’d spent my life chasing ridiculous standards of ‘womanhood’. Some of these reflections made me laugh at their sheer absurdity, while others made me angry.

You take readers through your journey with cancer in the book, from diagnosis to the remission, and navigate how you had lived with a ‘false sense of security’ and how your body is not fully in your control. How did your experiences change how you view life?

Pre-diagnosis I think I believed that if I followed all the rules of exercise (Walk 10,000 steps a day…) and diet (Eat your five-a-day…) then I would live forever. As absurd as that sounds, I believed that I had it all under control; that if I chopped enough veg, tossed enough salad and did enough yoga I would never die. So you can imagine my dismay when I was diagnosed with cancer at 54 and had the privilege of good health whipped away. I wasn’t who I thought I was – the shock was total. I had always been driven to be ‘productive’ and suddenly I was too tired to do anything.

The experience made me accept that life is much more random and less predictable than I had thought, that time is the most precious thing we have and it is important to know when to slow down and be grateful and when to speed up and get things done.

You say, ‘Shame seems to me to be a constant companion when you live in a woman’s body’, and recall instances where talking about what happens to a woman’s body at different stages is seen as taboo, e.g. around (early) menopause and more. Why do you think there’s a reticence to talk honestly and openly about our bodies and what we go through?

I think shame is passed down through the generations. As I grew up, bodies were never discussed although I knew that many things were ‘private’ – so private, in fact, that I did not have words for them and therefore they were unspeakable. Unspeakable things are veiled in shame. I have written about many difficult things for the first time in One Body – sexual abuse, unwanted pregnancy, early menopause – but as I found the words to write about these things, I felt the shame evaporating.

I hope this silence has been broken for my daughters and I think it has.

As I write in the book:

‘I stumbled upon a copy of Claire Rayner’s The Body Book in a charity shop and gave it to them while they were still at primary school. The cover showed two naked cartoon children standing in a cartoon pastoral idyll and gave clear details about puberty, conception, childbirth, life and death. My mother was wryly amused to see one of my daughters, then aged seven, write her letter to Father Christmas asking for a ‘Professor Snape Potions Lab’ then, after posting the letter up the chimney, go back to reading about vaginas and penises.’

What do you think can change in speaking candidly about our bodies and experiences more often?

In speaking candidly about our bodies, we feel less alone and isolated. It enables us to ask for help when necessary and not be stifled by shame. It creates a fellow feeling with other silenced women. However, not all women support talking freely about our bodies, there is still a feeling among some that we should grin and bear it, that menopause (for instance) is something all women go through and should be kept private. But I am not one of those women. In fact, I have just been contacted by an early reader who says: ‘As a 52-year-old woman I feel seen through all my life stages.’ I cannot tell you how happy that makes me feel.

Our bodies are evolving and constantly changing, and you note how your experience gave you the chance to ‘rethink’ your own body. How has that rethinking gone? What has changed for you in your relationship to or view to this?

It’s hard to shake off attitudes of a lifetime but if cancer doesn’t do it then nothing will. Nowadays I try to be kinder to myself. I let myself rest if I need to. I never eat anything just because it is ‘low-cal’ or ‘lite’. I try to take a step back before I say ‘yes’ – is this really something I want to do? Is this how I want to spend the one precious life I have? Likewise, I think carefully before saying ‘no’ – is this an opportunity to learn something, to do something for the first time that I will enjoy? I know not to take anything for granted and to appreciate this skin I am in.

What do you hope people take from your book?

I hope people will get a different perspective from the book. Maybe they will reassess how they have treated their own bodies over the years. I hope people will be kinder to and more forgiving of themselves. Maybe people will feel freer to talk about things they have previously kept hidden.

I also hope they get a good laugh from the book – looking back at the Seventies and Eighties is jaw-dropping even for someone who lived through it. How did we not see how ludicrous it all was?

One Body: A Retrospective by Catherine Simpson is published by Saraband, priced £9.99.