Pat Pilkington - The Golden Thread: A Quiet Revolution in Holistic Cancer Care

The Golden Thread

A quiet revolution in holistic cancer care

Pat Pilkington, MBE

Jessica Kingsley Publishers
London and Philadelphia

Love is all that exists from Emmanuels Book: A Manual For Living Comfortably in the Cosmos by Pat Rodegast, copyright 1985 by Pat Rodegast. Used by permission of Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved

The North Ship from The North Ship by Philip Larkin is used by permission of Faber & Faber.

The Man with the Blue Guitar from Collected Poems by Wallace Stevens is used by permission of Faber & Faber.

This book was written by the late Pat Pilkington but edited and published after her death. Every effort has been made to check dates and references within the text, but the publisher apologises for any inaccuracies, and will endeavour to put them right in any future editions of the book.

First published in 2015, 2017

by Jessica Kingsley Publishers

73 Collier Street

London N1 9BE, UK

and

400 Market Street, Suite 400

Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA

www.jkp.com

Copyright Pat Pilkington 2015, 2017

Foreword copyright Caroline Myss 2015, 2017

The cover image is for illustrative purposes only, and any person featuring is a model.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying, storing in any medium by electronic means or transmitting) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the law or under terms of a licence issued in the UK by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd. www.cla.co.uk or in overseas territories by the relevant reproduction rights organisation, for details see www.ifrro.org. Applications for the copyright owners written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eISBN 978 1 78450 445 8

To Tim Tiley, without whom none
of this would have happened

Contents

The Golden Thread

Introduction by Penny Brohn Cancer Care

Pat Pilkington dedicated thirty-four years of her life to our charity, which she founded with her dear friend Penny Brohn when Penny was first diagnosed with cancer in 1979.

This book explores her unique spiritual vision and tells of the care that she personally provided to those affected by cancer and their loved ones up until the month of her own death in August 2013.

Within the pages of this book she weaves the story of the history of the centre with her personal quest for the spiritual Golden Thread that enthralled both Pat and her beloved husband Christopher. Pat married Christopher in 1954 and began what she described as life as an ordinary vicars wife: a life that was to become anything but ordinary. Pat and Penny pioneered the Whole Person Approach that is at the core of the work of the charity today, however in this book she shines a spotlight in particular on her own spiritual journey.

Our vision today at Penny Brohn is to provide life-changing, whole person support to everyone affected by cancer. We see every person as a whole, made up of mind, body, spirit and emotions. We respect each person and their differences and this includes respecting different approaches to spirituality and those who have no faith. This was also reflected in Pats own working practice, she did not care what the person in need believed in she reached out from a position of compassion to meet them where they were. We continue to work with these values at the core of our approach.

Our unique combination of courses, tools and techniques includes lifestyle measures such as healthy eating, physical activity, ways of managing stress and emotions, supporting your spirit and a range of complementary therapies. Our programme is designed to work alongside medical and other cancer treatments and to be a useful and integrated resource for people in their journey with cancer. The services offered free by the charity are explained in full after Pats story, on page 147.

Pat and Pennys influence continues to frame the discussion and enquiries that underpin our services and keep us rooted in our history and the original vision of the charity: that all people affected by cancer get the support they need to live as well as they can.

This book offers an opportunity to discover how the charity came into being and to explore with Pat her spiritual path a tangible golden thread that shone through every aspect of this inspirational womans life.

Michael Connors, Director of Services at Penny Brohn Cancer Care

Foreword by Caroline Myss

Ive been asked to write many book forewords throughout my career, but none for a dear and remarkable friend who was dying as I wrote. Were it not for the fact that Pat told me that she was ready to go home and that she knew she would be with her beloved late husband, Christopher, I would have been too shattered to undertake this task. Even as Pat said those words to me, I remembered that Christopher had told her the same thing just as he entered the early stages of his own terminal illness. Entering the final stages of ones life consciously, no less cheerfully, may well be the most remarkable testimony to a life fully lived in the power of love and grace.

There are so many wonderful things that I can say about Pat, but I will begin with this fact: Pat Pilkington lived a life that is worthy of being remembered as well as being studied. Pat became a Sage, a Mystic, and a Healer. She never stopped refining her inner spiritual resources, always polishing her perceptions of love, life, God, and evolving humanity.

As someone who has been in the publishing, editing, and writing field for over thirty years, I can tell you that all memoirs are not alike. That is, when a person settles into the formidable challenge of recording his or her lifes story, that individual has to organize a selection of facts and events. What is the story about their life they wish to tell? Some people want to record their adventures and others their trials and tribulations, or their love affairs. Few people, in other words, can include every single detail. A theme, a golden thread, must be chosen around which the individual gathers specific memories, events, and dates in order to relay the one significant message for which they want to be remembered.

The theme of Pats life her golden thread has always been one of service to humanity and the refinement of love, faith, and spiritual truth. In fact, she had no choice but to write a spiritual memoir. The same can be said of Christopher. Their marriage was a true union of heart, mind, and soul threaded together. Every one who met them in some way was blessed, whether they knew them for a day or for years. Pats constant focus was, What do I need to do? How can I help? What needs to be done? Who needs attention?

Their life story was also an illustration of how faith and love move mountains to cooperate with human effort. Mind you, I did not say that faith and love made things easy but Pat and Christopher somehow knew how to cooperate with the will of the Divine. The power of faith and love are the interwoven themes that Pat chose as the threads of her memoir, though I honestly do not believe she consciously intended for that theme to present itself. Rather, while Pat is describing one event or one challenge, she writes so confidently about love and the nature of the spirit that her life and her wisdom seem to be one and the same thing. Somehow, she has managed to communicate the power of love and her profound beliefs in a way that only inspires. And, although devoted to the Christian path, Pat was simultaneously genuinely accepting of the truth in all other spiritual traditions. I have rarely met a human being who so lived the message of, Love one another as I have loved you. If it can be said that a person can breathe love, then such was true about Pat.