Tag: cancer diagnosis

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Why did I get cancer?

I think we all go through this, right?

We ask ourselves the question ‘why me’ when we are going through a tough time…

going through something unexpected…something that we thought we would never have to deal with….

And in my case it was cancer…bowel cancer…Stage 3

When the doctor confirmed it was my cancer diagnosis and that I would need 12 sessions of chemotherapy.

I asked God: “Why me? Why now? Why cancer?”

My kids were only 4 and 6….

We didn’t deserve this….I didn’t deserve this…

At the same time, I put my hand up and said:

“God, I know I haven’t stopped in years…I haven’t been listening at all…and I kinda thought I was invincible, didn’t I?”

It turned out that I wasn’t invincible indeed.

I also thought God wanted to tell me I needed to heal my relationship with my family which had been troubled for many years….

Deep inside, I started to open…my heart…my body….my soul to a new life….to a new way of being and I knew that I was about to go through a lot of suffering…

But my desire to live started burning inside me….my desire to create a new life became stronger each day.

Slowly the “poor me” feeling, the guilt feeling of not having looked after myself, the ‘why me” feeling of feeling powerless started to change….

I felt a little fire inside me that slowly got bigger…

I felt empowered because I wasn’t scared to ask questions, to receive answers, to work on whatever I needed to work on…

I just wanted to live and that was bigger than any suffering and pain that I needed to face and go through….

When I reflect now how sad and powerless I felt straight after my cancer diagnosis and probably a couple of weeks after that….it pains my heart.

I know now that to work on my power within my body, mind and soul was crucial to my healing.

It made me go from feeling powerless to empowered.

I know cancer is not the only obstacle one can face, we face so many things that we don’t think we are able to cope with…

An accident that changes your life, a stroke, a chronic disease diagnosis, a death in the family, loss of a loved one, a sick child, a divorce…the list goes on.

Making the shift from feeling powerless to empowered is an important part of the process….

it makes you open to change, to learning, to creating, to forgive, to love, to share, to evolve and become the best version of yourself.

So now….tell me about your life?

Has anything happened recently or in the past that you haven’t dealt with?

Something that made you too scared to even face?

Something that you are still living with but that scares you, that make you feel like you want to hide in the corner in the dark?

How can you change your perspective from

‘Why me, poor me’

to

‘This is why….”

If you ask me “why do I think I had cancer?”

I can tell you it was because I needed to heal my heart, forgive…

I needed to appreciate life a little more….

be more grateful….

I needed to learn how to let go….

I needed to learn how to stress less….

to love more….

to laugh more…..

to rest more….

to enjoy life a little more..

.I needed to put my self first…

I needed to love myself unconditionally for who I was, for who I am and for who I was to become.

What about you?

Why has any life interruption happened to you?

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Don’t let “life” compromise your health

How well are you taking care of yourself these days? 

I could say I have had a full life so far…born and breed in Brazil…I left when I was 21…first one of a huge extended family to leave without a plan… 

Unless you can call having a Spanish passport and €1000 a plan? 🤦🏼‍♀️ 

Looking back my plan was very simple…I had a deep desire to prove to everyone you could create a life on my own terms…even though I was a woman…👩‍🎤 

Coming from a chauvinistic culture, that was a big statement at the time… 

I went to Spain first, then I lived 3 years in Belgium, 4 years in England…went traveling with my boyfriend at the time, husband now through Central and South America…ended up in New Zealand…had 2 kids and 3 years ago, we moved to Brisbane.😅 

We moved to Brisbane for my daughter’s health, she had asthma in New Zealand. She was cured when we moved to Brisbane but then I got cancer…

Bowel cancer Stage 3 to be more precise😔 

My KPIS for the day went very quickly from how many placements I could make in my recruitment role to

what I was going to eat to heal my body…

what I was going to listen to help my mind…

and what I was going to do to help my soul…

all of this wasn’t actually too hard for me…. 

BUT what it was hard to learn was… 

~to be vulnerable 

~to ask for help  

~to be dependant on my husband  

~to count on family and friends to help us… 

I had to learn to climb up from the deepest hole I could have ever dug myself into… 

Somewhere along my life, I thought to myself I was invincible…

it turned out…I wasn’t…and I am not… 

And ya know, it wasn’t easy…

I had to work hard…

I had to acknowledge my mistakes…

I had to accept responsibility and learn how to get to know myself…

and face my worst fears… 

I had to learn how to forgive not only others but myself too.😊 

Now life looks very different…

2 years after my diagnosis, I feel the healthiest and happiest I have ever been… 

I am continuously working on my physical, mental and spiritual health…I swore I would never take my health for granted anymore…

I am living up to that promise with every breath I breathe, E V E R Y   S I N G L E   D A Y 

Recently I left my 10 years recruitment career to focus on my business –

I am now a Wellness and Lifestyle coach.

I help cancer patients to regain control of their health physically, mentally and spiritually by making small changes that compound into a massive impact on their lives.

I believe we can learn from scientific research and we can learn from experiences, our own and the experience of others too… 

I have read countless books….I have listened to podcasts, YouTube videos, Ted Talks, anything body, mind and health related…anything that could help me to heal, create a new body, a new mind and a new life after my cancer diagnosis.  

I knew that whatever I did up to the moment of my cancer diagnosis was killing me and I needed some drastic changes… 

The internal work is where it all begins….I mean not only physically but mentally too – health is a ‘360-degree’ gig…you need to look at all aspects of your life…one by one… 

And through my understanding we are experiencing a health crisis… 

~most people are not fit and healthy 

~chronic diseases numbers including cancer are on the rise in every country in the world 

~heart and lung diseases, cancer and diabetes are the world’s largest killers, with an estimated 38 millions deaths annually  

~the major risk factors are tobacco use, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet and the harmful use of alcohol

ALL THINGS WE CAN CONTROL right? 

And this is what we are doing about it…. 

~we are still being bombarded and falling for foods that create disease 

~we live a lifestyle that doesn’t promote a healthy body and mind 

~we feel powerless because we think being healthy is really hard work 

~we don’t want to invest on our health because when it comes to health , everything seems expensive right?

If you want to know how you can turn your health around….you need to take action…and your first action could be get in touch with me.

I know right, scary…and it takes courage but if I changed my health around, I believe you can do it too. 

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The benefits of crying

After a cancer diagnosis, it is hard not to cry…if you are a strong person you might not cry straight after you get told you have cancer but when the reality sinks in….the tears are going to come.

When I was told I had cancer, it was after my bowel surgery so I was groggy…coming to terms of being alive after an emergency surgery…feeling lost without my kids so I don’t remember crying as such.

What I do remember is a particular day…a few days after I went home from hospital after my surgery. It was a defining day on my journey…

My husband took the kids out to the beach and I stayed at home by myself…recovering.

I spent the whole day crying…sobbing if I remember well.

I cried about my diagnosis…I cried because I could feel all the sadness inside me, how much I felt disconnected to my body and my inner self….

I cried because I didn’t see cancer coming…I didn’t see it creeping up on me.

I cried for what I had yet to face….

I cried for everything I had been holding on to…everything that didn’t serve my body and mind.

This particular day was the day I felt in myself I was ready to face what was in front of me.

I was able to gather all my strength together so I could be strong for me…for my kids… for my husband…. and for everyone who loved me.

So crying is ok…it is sometimes necessary…

I am not sure when our society has become a non-crying one…I am not sure when our society has seen crying as a weakness.

Crying is human and it is needed so we can express our feelings…so we can release our emotions.

So if today you need to have a cry, I would say go for it.

Don’t hold back…this is part of being human…it is part of the healing journey.

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How to practice self care during cancer treatment

I have spent an amazing week listening to a “Global Cancer Symposium” this week organised by Nathan Crane. You can still get access to it if you look it up, I think…

There were 4-5 speakers daily talking about all things related to cancer, cancer treatment, conventional and integrative medicine, diet, mental healing and the list goes on.

It made me reflect on my own cancer journey of how I learned how to look after myself, how I started from not knowing anything and most importantly not doing anything to help my body, mind and soul to heal.

I made so many changes during bowel cancer treatment and it all started with the diet as it was a physical change and probably one that we would think to change first given I had a physical disease.

I then changed how I look at exercise and I introduced exercise as a must into my daily routine. All of a sudden exercise became a priority in my life and that is when the mind set started shifting.

Lastly I started looking into what was happening inside my mind, inside my soul.

I noticed that in one of my chemotherapy sessions after having a massive argument with my family, I felt my body was full of toxins, not from the chemotherapy but from the stress I had put my body through it. I then started asking myself ” what can I do to deal with stress differently?”, “How can I stop the stress affect my physical body?”, “Was my cancer caused by stress?”

I embarked on a deep healing journey where I had to face my biggest fears while opening up wounds that had been buried for a long time inside me.

Little by little I started feeling more connected to what it was happening inside me, I started feeling lighter, less angry, more free. I felt there was more space inside me for more happiness, for more laughter, for more positive thinking, for goodness.

I focused very hard on making little changes daily (and still do) so I can free myself from everything that didn’t serve me anymore, things that were making me feel sick.

This lead me to being here. I feel it is now my mission to share what I learned with people who are going through cancer treatment. I feel cancer could empower people to make changes in their life and in their family lives to build a better future, one with less disease physically with stronger connections with ourselves, our loved ones and the humanity.

I embraced cancer as an opportunity to grow as a human being. I took cancer as an opportunity to change everything in my life, to show up to myself, to honour my own journey and I came out of it feeling healthier and happier than I have ever been.

I believe strongly anyone can build a healthier and happier life despite their circumstances. When we tap into our will to live and to become a higher version of ourselves, we can do and become amazing human beings.

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The power of meditation

I started meditating just after I started my chemo treatment. I thought meditating was another trend, another hype that the rich and famous talked about and the rest followed through but I was desperately trying to find ways to help my body and mind to heal. I needed something to help my mind to calm down, to sleep at times.

I started listening to guided meditations to help me sleep during the day but the more books I read about how to achieve physical and mental health, the body and mind connection, the more I read about the benefits of meditation.

I slowly started doing meditations that focussed on the breathe and for me I started learning how to give my mind a break, how to breath and focus on the moment.

I then signed up to the Headspace app and every day I would sit for 10 minutes doing a guided meditation that focussed on stress, calming, gratitude etc. I would sit religiously every day to meditate and most of the time I would feel silly, feel like I wasn’t achieving anything and getting anywhere.

Little I knew that small shifts were being made on my innerself…I started noticing the present moment a lot more by focussing on the feeling of the wind on my skin, listening to the birds chirping.

This was around a year ago…I have been meditating during this whole time…I can say that I did it more often than not most days in the last year.

Today I write you from my holidays…we have been away for a week today and I haven’t been meditating for over a week now. I have noticed that my mind can’t get into the present moment as quickly as when I was meditating daily.

All of a sudden I realised that all the work I have been doing was so worthy. When I can focus on the exact moment, I feel so much joy. I have realized that it is almost as if the ability to do that easily had to be taken away from me so I could value how important it is to meditate, to work on your mind, to exercise your brain muscles so you can fully live the present moment.