May Creator of the Month: Lise Leroux
Written in discussion with Lise Leroux
Being told at the age of 25, that Lise Leroux only had six months to live was devastating. After a diagnosis of Syringomyelia and unsuccessful brain surgery, health professionals gave Lise Leroux notification that she needed to “say her goodbyes” and “get her life in order.”
After many tears, Lise prepared herself for the deadline … which passed. The ticking clock kept ticking. Her doctors kept telling her just to wait. Lise got tired of waiting and decided to get her life in order, as the doctors had suggested. In her own way. She would do anything she’d ever wanted. She didn’t have to be afraid, because there were no longer any consequences, since she was dying anyway. She had no time to waste. Six months.
Lise moved to England on her own, and despite being terrified of heights, she did a parachute jump and then another. After 200 jumps, she parachuted into her wedding to a handsome skydiving instructor. Every time her parachute opened, she felt triumphant. Take that, death! She kept on jumping for over 15 years and unfortunately broke her back on her 604th jump. As she could jump no longer, she decided to try and write about skydiving, fear, life, and choices. Her husband laughed and said she’d never succeed at writing and that she’d be a laughing stock. Deciding that life was too short to stay married to a man who would say that, she decided to set off on her own again.
It took five years, 437 rejections, and many writing courses, but eventually, One Hand Clapping was published by Viking Penguin UK in 1998. It was nominated for that year’s Orange Prize for Fiction and used as required reading for two university English literature courses. She wrote radio fiction for the BBC, non-fiction articles for newspapers and magazines, and immersive theatre plays and monologues. Writing became the way she reimagined life.
She continued to live her six-month life, and at one point decided to take a job on a cruise ship as a training and development manager for the crew. Since she didn’t have a family or children, why not travel the world while she was still around?
In 2015, her terminal diagnosis was overturned. New tests showed that the original diagnosis had been a mistake. She hadn’t needed the brain surgery. Instead of Syringomyelia, she had Ankylosing Spondylitis, which although not wonderful, wasn’t terminal.
When everyone congratulated her for getting her life back, she felt afraid for the first time since the age of 25. The way she had been able to live a successful, productive, and even exciting life, had been because her decisions were based on having only a short window with no consequences. Now she had to worry about the future and hadn’t prepared for it. She had no savings, pension, family, or children. Yay I’m alive she thought glumly. Great. And for a while she stopped pushing herself, stopped writing, procrastinated, put things off till later. And realized she’d lost the very thing that made life sweet. Appreciation for the moment.
So she turned to writing again. She brought characters to life and reimagined their futures. She used writing to process her emotions. She now writes for other people who are imagining their futures.
Four years ago, Lise moved back to Canada. She lives in Kelowna and works as an “extreme” wedding officiant, marrying people in helicopters, boats, video games, or dance classes. Anywhere people are in movement. She writes and creates interactive wedding ceremonies which include the guests in the experience. She also teaches communication and conflict management courses globally for Telus Health, and is working on her first non-fiction book, Beyond Happily Ever After – how to future-proof relationships with creative communication. The book is about how to use extreme deadlines to prioritize making your relationships the best they can be NOW rather than just hoping they will get better.
She has found a way to live by using extreme deadlines with short windows to push herself to prioritize and make the best decisions possible. She is grateful to the process of writing, and strangely enough, the neverending terminal misdiagnosis. Without it, she would never have moved to England, written a book, travelled the world, parachuted into her wedding, taken chances, or learned to appreciate the tiny wonderful moments in life and relationships.
Lise’s best suggestion to others doubtful about starting a creative endeavour … is to put deadlines in place and force yourself to produce something. It doesn’t have to be good. Better to produce something than look back and regret you never tried. None of us know how long we have. If you think you can’t do something, take a class in it, with deadlines to get past self-doubt or procrastination. For one writing class, Lise turned in one piece of homework which turned out to be the basis of the book she wrote and illustrated, which was nominated for the award. Don’t be afraid of deadlines. Pretend you have no consequences.
“Be okay with being a beginner at something and just forget about being good. Try to make sure you are okay with a bad first version or a terrible painting. At the beginning stage, you have to have something before you can edit it to make it special.” – Lise
