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Something to Believe In
RD: You sing that love was the illness, and disease the cure, on "Make It Go Away." Are you saying cancer cured your heartache?Crow: I was diagnosed after being in a relationship with somebody who's famous as a cancer survivor. We're still good friends, and I have a lot of admiration for him. But at the time, it was extremely painful, and what forced me to let go was my diagnosis and what that dictated -- which was showing up for myself, handling it on my own, not flying back into that relationship. The only person who can save you is you: That was going to be the thing that informed the rest of my life.
RD: Are you living with the uncertainty that your cancer could recur?
Crow: I was a "good person." And I thought, How could this happen to me? When you're diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, you face the idea that good works don't necessarily lead to a good outcome. And while I believe I'm cancer free, when I'm not feeling so great, [I worry] that maybe I have cancer again.
RD: And does it scare you when that happens?
Crow: No. I've finally found an unshakable peace because I don't fear death. But there are things I fear that I never feared before, like the end of the world for my son, the kind of chaos he'll have to live through if we don't pick up steam here.
RD: About 180,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year. What advice would you offer?
Crow: Get a second opinion. Then let the doctor you feel comfortable with help you navigate the system. Generally, treatments are fairly standard. And try to keep your life as normal as possible. After a while, the cancer seems so much bigger, and you can become invisible. Do something every day that's in line with what your life was -- jogging or reading or getting on the phone with your sister.
RD: Last year, you lobbied Congress with the National Breast Cancer Coalition. Tell us about your work with them.
Crow: I support NBCC because they train and empower women and men to get involved in science and access to care, as well as in the political aspects. I was thrilled to work on their bill to fund research into environmental links to breast cancer. NBCC activists are tackling the difficult matters that need to be addressed if we're going to see the end of breast cancer, and I will be right there with them.
RD: You've always been politically active, but this album seems to take an especially strong stand.
Crow: Having a little baby around while making the record just created this urgency in me. How do you explain to a kid what a polar bear looked like or why it's so hot in the summer? How do you explain that we inherited this earth and didn't take care of it, and now it's going to be up to him to try to put a big Band-Aid on it?
RD: You sing angrily about the war and global warming. Do you see any reason to be hopeful?
Crow: We can't cling to despair. We don't have time to wallow.
RD: So how are you planning to help clean up the mess?
Crow: I work with the Natural Resources Defense Council, as well as stopglobalwarming.org. And I'm trying to figure out how to get wind and solar power to my ranch and to get my whole farming community off the grid.
RD: Do you grow your own food?
Crow: We're building a chicken coop and planting an organic garden. We've got a stocked fishing pond. I don't know about the beef thing. It's too hard for me to have a couple of cows and then kill them and eat them.
RD: What else can people do?
Crow: It's doing what you can do. Some things seem expensive but ultimately save you money, like energy-efficient lightbulbs. Driving a hybrid car is a lot less money than a huge gas-only SUV. It's like what my mom was always talking about when we went camping. We left our campsite looking better than when we got there.
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