HEALING FIELDS
Five years after her own diagnosis, Sophie Trew, 29, is determined to change how we talk about cancer – she’s started with a summer festival
Changing the conversation about cancer
The prospect of death makes us want to live more, and there’s something about dancing barefoot on the grass that makes me feel so alive. It’s a balmy summer evening and I am with a thousand fellow festival-goers gathered around a bonfire in a field in Surrey, moving to the sound of 200 drums beaten in unison. Neon pink wigs conceal heads made bald by aggressive chemotherapy and glitter sparkles on cheeks where earlier there may well have been tears. Many of these revellers were sitting in a doctor’s office not so long ago, hearing the word that no one wants to hear: cancer. But, this weekend, we’re saying it out loud – and we’re celebrating life in all its unpredictable glory.
Still barefoot the next morning, I walk to a talk on the main stage about improving quality of life post diagnosis. Later, I’ll chair a panel of cancer ‘thrivers’, discussing what they do to remain well years after diagnosis. Beneath a leafy canopy in the workshop space, attendees dip into ice baths, practise yoga or have healing shiatsu massages. With nature as a backdrop, for one uplifting weekend, leading thinkers from the worlds of meditation, yoga, science and medicine come together to discuss cancer. This is Trew Fields, my ‘cancer awareness festival’, the first in the world – but, if you didn’t know it, you wouldn’t have guessed what brought this group of cheerful people together.
Attendees, too, are as diverse as the types of cancer that affect them, but all want to empower themselves beyond diagnosis. Some have even spent their final weekend here, laying on the grass with their loved ones. Last year, a six-year-old boy got up on stage and sang This Is Me. I emailed his mum a few months later and she told me he had died, but that the memory will stay with her for ever.
We can’t all be cancer ‘survivors’, but here we’re ‘thrivers’ – living fully, despite this disease. When I was diagnosed with lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, aged 23, I never identified with the narrative about ‘battles’ and ‘survival’. Well-meaning acquaintances said I was ‘so strong and inspiring and should keep fighting’. But,
for me, I wasn’t inspirational for going through something I had no choice about. People can feel like failures if they’re not always ‘strong’. We have so many odd phrases about death because we’re afraid of it. We say those who die have ‘lost a battle’. But there are no winners or losers with disease. Trew Fields is a place to tackle taboos. The more we talk about topics such as death and disease, the less scary they are. Here, we talk about death then we dance.
I read that Carrie Fisher once said, ‘Take your broken heart and turn it into art.’ And that’s what inspired me to start the festival in 2017. Cancer gave me a renewed sense of purpose, a chance to redesign my life and send it in a new direction. I was fresh out of university and hoping to be a journalist. I went to Colombia and spent several months making a documentary about urban art in Bogota. Then I noticed a lump on my neck, which grew to the size of a nectarine. I felt like my life was just beginning and I wasn’t worried – people my age didn’t get cancer. I continued drinking and going to parties. Even the doctors were sure it was nothing to worry about: they thought it was tuberculosis from my trip. But after weeks of tests, the hospital called me and said I should come in and bring my parents. They told me I had two other lumps in my chest and one in my spleen. I was in shock. I had no idea what to ask, other than whether I would lose my hair.
I was plunged into chemo, which made me horribly sick. I felt as though every cell in my body had been poisoned. I couldn’t leave my bed without vomiting and, after six months, I was thin and weak. I knew my doctors were doing all they could to treat the tumours, but I wanted to know whether there was anything I could do to help my body weather the storm. I knew I had a lot of healing to do, so what could start that process? My doctor told me there was nothing. ‘Cancer is a lottery,’ he said. ‘Leave it to us to treat you.’ But when you’re in bed for the best part of a year, you have a lot of time on your hands. Research became my coping mechanism and helped me to feel that I played a role in my own health. I learned that cancer isn’t a complete lottery and that lifestyle and environment can have an effect, too.
I soon realised that rather than simply destroying the tumour, we needed to discuss how to change the terrain around it to help prevent it returning. I began looking into gut health and probiotics, supporting my immunity and nervous system with breathwork, meditation and things like medicinal mushrooms. In March this year, I was discharged from hospital. I cried tears of relief and paused for deep reflection – chemo eliminated my tumours, but I also played my part in nourishing my body back to health. Before cancer, I was asthmatic and could never have gone for a run without an inhaler. Now I don’t need one at all.
The experience made me realise that doctors and holistic practitioners shouldn’t be at loggerheads but working collaboratively. I wanted to create a space for them to come together; a festival seemed like the perfect setting. In 2017, I began planning the first Trew Fields. My friend Katie was unwell, having been diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer in 2015, aged 32, so I organised the festival in overdrive, desperate for her to be there. She didn’t make it, but 400 members of the cancer community came – and the event became her legacy. Since then, I’ve made and lost many cherished friends, and I can find myself thinking, ‘What’s the point?’ But they would have wanted to be here if they could, so I do it in their honour. I also do it for those who were being given their introduction booklets as I was being discharged from hospital. I love to think that, during challenging times, the festival brings hope.
I never became a journalist; I trained as a health coach, specialising in breathwork and meditation. At heart, I’m still the party girl I was before, but now I try to practise ‘mindful hedonism’. Often, those most afraid of death are most afraid of living, so we have to balance the things we know are good for us with the things that bring us joy. Cancer or not, we could all do more of the things that make us feel alive.