Creative healing

As a talented professional musician, Daniel Island resident Elizabeth Murphy has always been able to express her emotions through the strings of a cello or the keys of a piano. But a recent unexpected battle with breast cancer would provide yet another creative outlet for Murphy – poetry. And once the words started coming, they didn’t stop.

 

“The past couple of years, every morning I would write down three things I was grateful for, even if it was my coffee!” said Murphy. “I started looking for gifts that were presented to me every day.”

 

And while most would not consider a cancer diagnosis a gift, Murphy was determined to find beauty in as many moments as she could. So when she discovered a lump in her breast in October of 2019, it was “game on,” she said.

 

“I started writing poetry,” continued Murphy. “Over a period of three days, I wrote couplets, 167 lines about cancer. And it was basically a rant. Some of the first ones were especially just angry.”

 

But then, as she walked the beautiful and inspiring landscapes she so loves on Daniel Island, she decided to focus more on the 

positives.

 

“It just flowed out,” recalled Murphy, who would often pull out her phone while walking to write down the words as they came to her. 

 

All total, Murphy has written more than 230 poems (and four short stories) documenting her experience and other moments along the way. Most of her creations have one-word titles, like First, Sleepless, Battle, Purpose, Escape, and Awake.

 

“I stay until darkness falls,” she writes in a poem entitled “Earthbound.” “Watching the interplay of light and dusk; no longer earthbound my spirit glides just above the water’s surface; like the pelicans soar close to the sea; seeing my face in its deep silky thread; while the reflection of the stars behind me becomes eternal.”

 

Murphy’s recovery from invasive breast cancer began with chemotherapy treatments, but the side effects caused neuropathy in her hands, which made it difficult for her to play music. In addition to her role as a Realtor for Carolina One, she performs as a cellist in the Charleston Symphony Orchestra and the North Charleston POPS! So she had to take a break from her passion while she healed. Murphy later had a lumpectomy, including the removal of several lymph nodes.

 

“When they took it out, there was nothing left, no cancer anywhere, so the chemo did its job!” she said. 

 

Following the lumpectomy, she had radiation and another surgical procedure as a preventative measure. Physical therapy helped her regain her strength and return to life as normal. Murphy credits her physicians and other care providers at Roper Hospital Mount

Pleasant, MUSC Hollings Cancer Center and Durst Family Medicine, as well as her Carolina One family, for bringing her through to the other side. 

 

“I just feel so lucky and so grateful,” she said. 

 

Those sentiments often found their way into her poetry, a love that she remembers dabbling in first in high school. Being able to write was as much a part of her recovery as the care she received. Being alone at this stage in her life, with the exception of her two adult daughters, Caitlyn and Lindsey, poetry became her companion. 

 

“It became my salvation,” said Murphy. “It was amazing therapy.”

 

Murphy’s mother also had breast cancer, which gave additional meaning to her prose.

 

“These poems became super important to me on so many levels,” she said.

 

Murphy is now back to playing music, which has been a part of her life since she was 10 years old. It’s been an illustrious career that has enabled her to travel the world, she noted, with incredible shining moments – the 14 years she spent working with the award-winning musical group REM (she plays on some of their biggest hits – such as “Everybody Hurts” and “Losing My Religion”), multiple performances in Broadway shows with the likes of Richard Chamberlain, Yul Brynner and Tony Curtis, or the 400 times she performed with Phantom of the Opera. An especially memorable moment occurred in 1988, when she was performing on the Atlanta Symphony European 12-City Tour in East Berlin, before the fall of the Berlin wall. 

 

“We got a 25-minute standing ovation,” recalled Murphy. “I still get chills thinking about it…That performance – people should have those kinds of experiences. You can see what it does for people. It saves people’s souls.”

 

Murphy also works with underserved children in North Charleston, providing free string lessons and mentoring, which she describes as “one of the most important and rewarding things I have ever done.”

 

Now in her early 60s, Murphy might soon be retiring from her musical engagements, but the experiences she has had throughout her career, including her cancer recovery, have all been good life lessons.

 

“I have persistently performed my entire life and always practiced,” said Murphy. “I never gave up. I got disappointed and didn’t get things I wanted sometimes, but I never gave up.”

 

“These taught me more than anything,” she added, gliding her hands over the binders of poetry she has carefully organized. “They’re about everything.”

 

Perhaps her own words say it best, as these passages from her poem “Renewal” reveal.

 

“Breath of life; Breath of fresh air; I finally breathe again…All vistas are spread before me; With the richness of choices and application; The gift of being more than enough; And finding the new journey; With every step a miraculous renewal.”