Interview with musician and writer Jo St Leon

Today’s special guest is musician and writer Jo St Leon. We’re talking about her personal growth collection of essays, The Light in the Darkness: Musings on Living with Cancer.

During her virtual book tour, Jo will be giving away a $15 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit her other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bio:
Jo St Leon is a musician and writer living in Hobart, Tasmania. Receiving a cancer diagnosis in 2016 prompted her to transition from being a full-time musician who loved to write to being a full-time writer who loves to sometimes play the viola. She shares her house with two very pampered felines. She loves reading, cooking, swimming, and yoga.

Welcome, Jo. Please tell us a little bit about your book.
The Light in the Darkness is a must-have companion for anyone living with a serious illness or caring for a loved one with such an illness.

With this collection of reflections and personal essays, I share my experiences, darkest moments, and greatest joys. I tell of the journey from fear and denial to acceptance and a determination to live my best life. I share my deepest thoughts and feelings, always with my characteristic blend of wry humour and wisdom.

The Light in the Darkness is the book I wish I could have found when I first received my cancer diagnosis.

What inspired you to write this book?
I didn’t originally set out to write a book. I started by writing isolated articles as they occurred to me. I had looked for a book like mine when I was first diagnosed, but couldn’t find one (although I’m sure there was one somewhere). I found lots of books that told me what to do (confusingly, all their recommendations were different, and often contradictory), but none that just sat with me and shared the feelings. So after writing a couple of articles it occurred to me that I was writing the book I wanted to read.

Excerpt from The Light in the Darkness:
Cancer is supposed to change everything—sufferers are supposed to devote their lives to their condition, and thanks to both their illness and their treatment, they are supposed to feel terrible. This has not been my experience at all. Since diagnosis I have felt progressively better apart from one serious, slightly alarming episode. Much of the time I don’t actually feel ill at all. For now, I am contented and have a good quality of life. Friends remind me that in the eleven years before I was diagnosed, I really did suffer—but somehow it feels as though if I could put up with it and carry on working it can’t have been that bad.

Cancer is not a competition, and one person’s experience does not invalidate another’s. What is important is not comparison but sharing discoveries and learning. I have tried in these pages to become a friend to those who are walking a similarly scary path. And cancer is always scary.

Regardless of whether your prognosis is terminal or curable, you will have to carve out a new normal for yourself. Trying to carry on exactly as usual, as I did, masking fear with humour and trivialising the concern of others, is a form of denial. After all, it was some form of the old normal that helped get us into this mess.

Cancer is shit. Always. But it does bring blessings in its shitty wake. If you are reading this book, you likely have cancer yourself or have someone close to you who does. By sharing my path with you, I hope you might occasionally say, ‘Oh yes!’ or ‘Oh, that really is a thing!’ Although my level of well-being is mostly good, I have dealt with all the fears that come with more ‘normal’ cancers—the fears of death, of what will happen if I can’t work, or look after myself, or take care of my cats. These fears are very real and can haunt a person’s waking and sleeping hours. I must remind myself sometimes that Sézary is by no means a fraudulent or insignificant cancer; there will likely be suffering aplenty in my future. My temporary status as a medical miracle does not rob me of my voice.

This is not a How to Overcome Cancer book. There are so many of them out there written by people who are way more knowledgeable than I. I have great faith in my medical professionals, but I don’t leave it all to them. I need to take some responsibility for my own wellbeing. At the outset, I experimented with many things, and I have learned that one person cannot possibly do them all. Self-care is important, but for me it was and is important to maintain some semblance of a quality life as well. Whatever choices I have made in this regard are mine alone. I am not recommending or prescribing them. Everyone’s choices will be different.

What exciting story are you working on next?
My second book is well underway. It’s completely different. It’s working title is Conversations with Robin Wilson. Robin is probably Australia’s foremost violin pedagogue—he has an astonishing number of truly outstanding students. This book is about his earliest musical experiences, his training, his pedagogy and the philosophy behind it, and his ideas about where music sits today in a world ravaged by climate change, war and the pandemic. I also have a couple of creative nonfiction journals I’d love to appear in, and I have a long-cherished ambition to write crime fiction.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I was a very shy, geeky teenager. I read voraciously, and I played the viola. I didn’t really speak very much at all. So my main inspiration to write came from Virginia Woolf—her essays, rather than her novels. I just loved her voice—her turn of phrase, the rhythm of her words, and the incredible sense of her character that shone through them. I wanted to be able to create a voice like that, both on and off the page.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Well, I’ve probably been boring you for quite long enough, but there is just one more thing. I find the process of writing totally absorbing. Hours flash by in an instant, meals get forgotten (I know, amazing much?), friends get ignored. It’s this immersion that lets me know I’m on the right path.