Musings on Matthew Dons

When you have cancer, you can become cancer. I was very very clear that I did not want this entire interview to be focussed entirely on Matthew and his cancer. He is so much more than that. Any person is more than their leading image.

It goes without saying that this past 8 years have been focused, in the large part, on Matthew’s relationship to his stage 4 cancer but I want to know more about the person.

What I learned about having any kind of cancer, is that it will be different for each person depending on their means, their support, the access they have to information and resources, to their own strengths, weaknesses, preferences and abilities, and how people can leverage them to survive from treatment to treatment.

For Matthew this combination included his passion for reading, a supportive sister who started a GoFundMe to help with life-saving treatment and, through her company, access to a phone line where medical professionals would offer the latest information about the latest treatments, but not be involved in their treatment. As such, they had high integrity in their information as they weren’t the treating doctor. Matthew, being incredibly curious, utilised this service to its fullest and we talk about this - I question him about where he got his high level of confidence from to keep asking questions and to get more and more information. I guess shyness dies when you’re faced with death. Although not always.

Integrity comes up a lot.

One thing I love about this conversation is how straightforward and generous Matthew is. Again - in a daily dialogue with death, social mores probably become somewhat irrelevant. I find it so refreshing, personally to speak to someone with such intense integrity and honesty. Why would you be anything else in his situation?

Matthew’s children give hion a focus for extending his life for as long as he can.

We get into things like the power of hugs and the force of physical touch, another thing that has been deeply coded in modern society (touchy feely as an insult anyone?). I really love Matthew’s approach to life, even before he was sick when I met him as an expert speaker and workshop presenter at FEW For Empowering Women, he surprised me and challenged my assumptions. I guess Matthew has always been outside of culture. In retrospect, his origin story points to this too.

At the end of our conversation, Matthew said he had a great time, that he loved it! I asked why? What was it - I find this information useful to point me toward what my particular interview style and what gave the guest some pleasure. He loved me questioning him about his pre-cancer life, and I loved hearing about this too. Because, back to the first point here, I am interested in Matthew the person - not just Matthew - Make Cancer History man.

We talk about this childhood, the history of state schools and their buildings in the UK, about the rise of computers and how hard it is to teach computers - his particular family constellation directly led to his skill and savvy with tech. We talk about his voracious love of reading.

We talked about how his parent’s jobs led his family on summer holidays that brought to life Matthew’s thirst for knowledge and history. Also the path that was cut to Japan - from the people he met in Norwich to the moment he touched down in Japan and was overcome by emotion and joy.

He takes us through his early years in Japan and he fondly recalls these memories.

THIS is what he said made the interview so lovely. AND I thought I was boring his with the questions and going off topic - but I stayed with it because I trust the process, much like coaching. You put you the question, then watch to see what emerges and it's not always what I might expect.

This forced me to question MY assumptions about what people are thinking and feeling in the moment; what I had assumed was off-topic, was in fact a source of recalling joy-memories. So while my wheels were spinning ‘we need to get to Make Cancer History, we need to highlight his new NPO’ Matthew was having the time of his life recalling happy stories. And this is why I want to tell stories over and over and invite storytelling over and over. And the less performative the better. The more unbridled the better. Everybody has stories and I love them. I love them genuine, sincere, unfiltered and fulsome.

I was thinking that last week was mental health awareness week and how much people suppress in order to ‘not look weak’. And how other people will marginalise or exclude people who ‘look weak’ when they want them to be strong. And how perhaps, in the face of this daily dialogue with death, or in the grief circle, LIghthouse Circle, that I run, these made up societal norms just fall away. There’s no such thing as strong or weak and we just get to sit together in the most human circumstances and be with that most taboo of subjects: Death.

Matthew and I are planning on making another recording focussed on Big Tech and the untold damage it is doing to our brains and health. I am fascinated by this topic and want to hear Matthew’s research, observations and musings around this topic.

Let us know how you enjoyed this Legend and get involved in Matthew’s Make Cancer History project - either through donation or by pointing a friend or family member toward it, or by sharing your experience, in service of Matthew’s goal - to make cancer history.

Connect with Matthew & Donate

https://www.matthewdons.org

https://www.makecancerhistory.jp/

https://www.makecancerhistory.jp/donate/

https://www.youtube.com/@KaraMoon/videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUoSYTB50ms Matthew talks about Make Cancer History, his non profit

#legendsinterviewseries #legendspodcast #onlinecoach #podcast #season8 #Matthewdons #skininthegame #makecancerhistory

Creative Musings: Daily Dialogue with Death