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’

‘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?

During my bowel cancer journey, I came across the paradigm of sugar.

What it stuck to my mind wasn’t that cancer cells feed of sugar, it was that sugar weakens the immune system.

Sugar causes inflammation and cancer starts as inflammation in our bodies.

If you have read anything about cancer, you might know that we all have cancer cells in our bodies and if our immune system is strong and healthy, the immune system is capable of killing these cancer cells.

In my case, my immune system wasn’t strong enough but I decided to work on getting my most important asset as strong as it could be: my immune system.

Processed sugar meaning white sugar, raw sugar, ice cream, chocolate, biscuits, cakes, all the delicious things we get bombarded with on a daily basis. Hidden sugars like ready made pasta sauces, or sauces (like Jamie Oliver’s pesto sauce has sugar??), bread, cereal (OMG they are definitely the worst) and the list goes on…Oh and I forgot alcohol…yes I know alcohol…one glass of wine has about 8-9 teaspoons of sugar and let’s face it, we live in a society that it is totally fine to drink 2-3 glasses of wine daily without thinking it is damaging our health.

The World Health Organization suggests that kids have 3 teaspoons of sugar daily, woman has 6 teaspoons and men has 9 teaspoons of sugar daily. I think it is fair to say we are consuming beyond the recommended amount even when we think we are eating healthily, think apple juices with 6 teaspoons of sugar, plus tomato sauce with 1 teaspoon of sugar in one squirt etc…

I then read a lot about the sugar content in fruit. So many people talk about the consumption of fructose (sugar coming from fruit) when you have cancer. But I decided that if I cut out all of the processed food and sugars, all of my sugar intake would come from fruit (which is natural in this case). Also cutting out fruit could mean loosing out on many good vitamins that came straight from nature so I decided against it. I eat plenty of fruit and I believe fruit contributes to my overall body’s health and balance.

So why are we not stopping sugar?Ok, you don’t know me and this is just someone’s opinion but if you look into it, there will be millions of books, internet articles, information out there talking about it but we chose not to look because sugar is sooooo delicious right but most importantly so addictive and the food companies know that. There has been studies with rats, sugar and cocaine and it turns out rats go back to sugar more often than to the cocaine. Crazy right!

So quite simply, you need to ask yourself some honest questions about how you feel in yourself? Do you feel tired all the time? Do you crave sugar all the time? Are you and your family getting every cough and cold there is around? Are you getting the stomach flu all the time? Chances are, there are many of us in this situation but instead of looking into why our immune system is not working properly, we look to blame an outside factor because this is just the easiest thing to do. Oh! The cold is around…everyone is sick at school….at work…

Our immune system lies on our digestive track and we are flooding our digestive track with processed sugars, hidden sugars all the time. The sugar then becomes bad bacteria inside us. To achieve optimum health, we need a balance between bad bacteria and good bacteria in our digestive track. By eating too much sugar, our digestive system gets off balance and then we have a problem. Our immune system stop working properly and we get sick.

But then you ask me? But we all need sugar don’t we? Our kids need sugar?Yes we do and they do it too. But we can get enough sugar from nature, like fruits, raw honey (in moderation), brown rice (carbohydrates), sweet potatoes, starchy vegetables, (will become sugar in our body too) etc…so rest assure you won’t die when you cut processed sugar out of your life or your kids life.

My kids have got more energy than ever, they haven’t been sick since we have been on this “new way of eating” and I am confident sugar or not eating sugar I must say is an important factor that contributes to their health.

So are you willing to try it out slowly but surely to cut out of sugar to see if your overall health improves?

Tag: why did i get cancer?

Here is what happens when you quit sugar