I realize that everyone handles vulnerable situations differently. For me, I really did not want many people to know the health challenge I was experiencing. In fact, it’s just been the last few years that I’ve become comfortable with sharing my journey. There were various reasons I kept my diagnosis to myself and my immediate family. The biggest reason for my secrecy was that I didn’t want people worrying about me. I didn’t want to be treated differently, given that I had a diagnosis with a survival rate that society measured in years.
Not wanting others to be over-concerned stemmed from other or alternate things, like the fact that I did not feel ill in the slightest. I would personally scan my body for any signs or indications that I was fighting a disease. I could find nothing. In fact, I felt good! I ate well, I exercised, I was committed to meditating, I enjoyed my loving family. Not to mention I was an enthusiastic student of self-improvement, and I was long devoted to living a positive life. So “sick”, I was not. The only indication of this diagnosis was the small lump in my breast.
As I researched what to do and who to go to for help, the conventional paths for treatment never sat well with me. I felt pressured to decide on a plan, then to start moving forward. At a certain point, when I contemplated a lumpectomy, I realized that I had simply considered it so that people would leave me alone. But after meeting with the surgeon, I knew that the conventional path was not my truth. Everybody wanted me to act fast and get the cancer out of my body before it spread. It felt like the cancer was being viewed as a foreign object or cling-on that somehow entered my body. This concept of it being “foreign” was what didn’t sit well with me. In fact, my awareness of this internal uneasiness was my turning point.
If this diagnosis was indeed a blessing, then cancer was not my enemy, as I recall thinking. I birthed this cancer and so I knew I had to somehow befriend ‘it’ because ‘it’ was ‘me’, in this form I had yet to recognize. This concept was hard for most to understand so, I kept it to myself. I decided to begin this process of acceptance by spending 3 weeks at the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida. This is a center dedicated to healing through a vegan diet that is supplemented by exercise, positive thinking, and non-invasive therapies. Most who knew of my condition, aside from immediate family, believed I was going there to get myself in the best physical condition I could before proceeding with surgery and whatever other conventional protocol was presumedly being prescribed. But I knew I was going there to treat my cancer in a way that made all the sense in the world to me. Hippocrates was my truth – I knew it would provide the kind of environment that would enable me to heal on my own terms.
Before and after my trip to Hippocrates, I was very protective of myself with respect to others’ energies. Even though everyone wanted only the best for me, I could feel them knowingly or unknowingly, projecting their fears and concerns onto me. This meant I needed to keep many at bay. I knew I was swimming upstream, and I didn’t want others’ heavily weighted vibes make the current any tougher. To be honest, others’ fears rocked my world in disturbing ways but, I remained steadfast on a mission of complete faith into what I knew would be my healing truth. I felt very raw and vulnerable. I needed to protect myself to remain on my course. I would only let certain select people be privy to my circumstances – only if it served me in a positive way. At first a part of me thought it was selfish, but soon I learned it was a valuable process in honoring myself through gathering my tribe of positive allies. Debbie Downers Need Not Apply! I needed the wind beneath my wings; the ones that were also seeing this ‘setback’ as only a blip in the road. I needed those that were willing to patch me up, help me put my breast plate of armour on to get into the ring of proclaiming victory for my health and recovery.
As the year passed, and with each doctors visit I had with my oncologist repeatedly stating my tumor was shrinking, confirmed I was on the right path. I could see that my focus was changing from the “I” of “Illness to ‘” We” in “Wellness” – something in my reality shifted. I started to feel inspired to share my story. To my amazement, people started thanking me for sharing my truth. It soon became obvious that telling my health story was helping others undergoing similar life struggles.
Even though this healing journey I was on yielded remarkable gains, I found it incredibly odd that I still had some folks close to me, with fear in their eyes, ask me to consider surgery. Thankfully, I was grounded enough to recognize that they were stuck in the mainstream narrative of, ‘how to treat cancer’. Seeing how ‘programmed’ many people were, almost like a horse with blinders on, was another reinforcement I needed to keep going and share my results. I realized that everyone’s intentions were well-meaning but also stuck on one track. Don’t get me wrong, everyone is entitled to the opinion that represents their truth. As I got more and more rooted in what was right for me and continued to follow that truth, it built this force field of inner power that grounded me emotionally. There was a strength in discerning what was right for me, and then honoring it in spite of what others felt I should do. More than anything, this was about me trusting my inner wisdom, rather than what the mainstream said to do.
My husband and two boys were – and are – completely supportive of my decision to journey down this non-conventional path. And I knew my boys never doubted me because they valued my choice to live my truth. The men in my life, trusted me and, I adore them for always standing so closely by my side. This continues to inspire me.
I’d be remised if I failed to mention that my parents often came to the forefront of my mind during this journey. On one hand, now that they were no longer with me on this physical plain, it seemed easier, as I know they would have been very scared and worried for me. But on the other, I know that they have been watching over me from above, with pride, the kind that only a parent feels for their children. I can sense that their spirit honors my spirit as well as my courage to have walked this road less traveled.
