Surviving seasons of illness

Mennonite Mission Network

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Breast cancer. The diagnosis pounded in Diann Neu’s ears as she listened to her long-time associate and friend. She had come to Neu yearning for something to help her cope: holistic, feminist prayers and rituals.



The Seasons of Survival prayer packet offers focused prayers around the issue of cancer. Mennonite Voluntary Service volunteer Anna Roeschley is working with the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual on updated versions of the resource cards. Photo by Ryan Miller.

“I had nothing,” says Neu, the co-founder and co-director of WATER or Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual, who, despite a wide knowledge of and access to resources, found herself without access to materials that addressed the journey of women with cancer.

In collaboration with women with cancer, Neu created Seasons of Survival: Prayers and Rituals for Women with Cancer--a set of prayer cards containing rituals and liturgies that could easily be carried along to chemotherapy sessions or doctor’s appointments.

For Anna Roeschley (pictured), a Mennonite Voluntary Service participant serving as an associate at WATER, working with Seasons of Survival has allowed her an opportunity to process some of her own thoughts on the journey through loss and healing.



“My involvement with this project is in tune with a season of loss in my own life as I journey with friends whose mothers are ill and passing away,” says Roeschley.

Neu said before she created Seasons of Survival, she asked a group of women with breast cancer what they needed.

“They told me they wanted prayers and rituals,” Neu says.

Roeschley, a 2007 graduate of Bluffton (Ohio) University from Flanagan, Ill., is helping create prayer cards for a second packet to focus on creative journaling and additional resources available to women in need of healing.

The Seasons of Survival packet contains prayers, rituals and litanies that are specific to the experiences of women with cancer and those accompanying them. The cards offer women prayers for chemotherapy, practices for when they begin losing their hair, and laments for the inability to conceive, among others.

Cynthia Lapp, pastor of Hyattsville (Md.) Mennonite Church, has shared these prayers and spiritual practices with several women in her congregation who are dealing with cancer. She has also used the prayers and rituals during a women’s Bible study group.

Lapp appreciates the inclusive and comfortable language of the materials in Seasons of Survival, as well as their embodied and holistic focus.

“It acknowledges different parts of the body and focuses on blessing ourselves,” Lapp says.

Such a blessing often requires support from others.

"It’s nice to see that and know that there are other people who are also being encouraged and doing that," Lapp adds.

Out of this project, and the responses of women that have found these resources meaningful, Neu and Roeschley are developing content for a third phase emphasizing resources for companions and loved ones walking alongside women with cancer and who also need healing.

For Roeschley, working with the Seasons of Survival resources and experiencing loss in her own communities sparked a creative energy that fueled her participation and excitement for the project’s third phase.

“The prayers and rituals we’re creating connect me with my friends as they lose their mothers or walk with their mothers through different phases of what it means to be healthy and live life,” says Roeschley.

Through her placement, Roeschley also helps empower women's voices in religion through conference planning, the development of fresh web content and other literature, providing resources, and creating connections among individuals and groups of women. She lives in community with four other young adults, three who are participants in MVS, a Mennonite Mission Network Christian Service program.

WATER, founded in 1983 by Mary E. Hunt and Diann Neu, is a feminist educational center that helps to organize programs, publications and resources representing feminist religious values and advocating for social justice.

Seasons of Survival: Prayers and Rituals for Women with Cancer can be ordered by emailing waterstaff@hers.com or by visiting the resources section of the WATER website.