After my cancer diagnosis at 38 years old, I knew I needed to act quickly…I needed to change every aspect of my life if I wanted to live a long life.
Turning up to chemotherapy wasn’t going to cut the mustard…I needed to do a lot more than that…
Cancer recurrence is real…and after you have had it…that little voice on the back of your mind is always trying to play with you….
Nobody told me I needed to do anything other than turning up to chemotherapy…in fact doctors told me I was going to be tired and I wasn’t going to be able to do much during treatment…treatment was going to last at least 6 months – mine lasted 7.5 months with the delays.
I decided I wasn’t going to sit around for 7.5 months
I started with changing my physical body, changing my diet and introducing exercise. Very quickly I knew that I needed to do more…so I started taking every piece of my life a part so I could heal completely: in and out.
I once met a cancer survivor who had also done the inner work as I did. We were talking about how many people try avoiding the inner work…she then said…
“They avoid it because it is HELL”
Yes it was HELL…to open up, to feel vulnerable, to sit with my pain even though I thought I had safely placed that inside me as deep as I could…it needed to come out…when it did…I felt I vomited out all that pain. I couldn’t believe I had lived like I did for so long…in fear, in pain, prisoner of my own story, my own believes.
My husband once said ” We have spent our lives up to now to trying to conform, to fit in. We are now trying to get rid off everything we have done to fit in so we can find who we really are.”
As I lived in different countries and travelled around the world, I always tried to fit in but it wasn’t until recently that I discovered that it is not a matter of fitting in, it is a matter of finding who I am regardless of where I am, it is been content with who I am regardless of what it is around me.
When you make a decision to take your life a part to discover who you are, you embark on a beautiful journey of self discovery. Even with all the pain that I had to relive and redefine, my self discovery journey was the biggest gift I received from cancer.
Life is all about the meaning you give to things…how can you redefine the meaning to whatever it is happening in your life right now?