She Can't Read Cursive

“Put a face and a name to your cancer”, Terri said. “Um…what?”, I retorted. I regularly see Terri, an Intuitive Reflexologist. She’s critical to my wellness team. She has helped me manage and uncover some serious emotions; helping me attack what I believe to be some of the root causes of my cancer.  I’m pretty obsessed with having a recurrence prevention protocol. I exercise daily, eat plants, practice Qigong, keep a gratitude journal and ongoing conversation with God and research cancer prevention endlessly. I’m always wondering if what I’m doing is enough. Is what I can control enough? Terri hit me in the gut when she said “you can control everything around you, but you are feeling like you can’t control the cancer. So control it by naming it and thanking it for its message.” oomph. Name it? Really? I read in a book once ( Radical Remission by Dr. Kelly Turner. GET THIS BOOK.) where cancer patients were counseled to send love to their cancer. Sending lo...

About this time last year, I felt like I needed to start focusing back on releasing negative emotions. I mean, I try not to harbor them or hold on to them, but sometimes it takes effort to work those emotions out. I consulted with Dr. Silberstein from BeatCancer one day in the middle of cancer treatment. I was looking for lifestyle changes to help reduce my cancer recurrence risk. She recommended I get rid of my microwave (I did) and eat plants (I started slowly) and drink a special green tea (I tried). Then she asked me a question I thought unusual. She asked me what was going on in my life 8-10 years ago. I didn’t have to even think about it. I blurted out that I was entrenched in grief from my then husband’s affair which resulted in a child and subsequent divorce. She just made that muffed ‘hhmm. uh huh’ noise. That noise told me she wasn’t surprised to hear of my emotional trauma. She commented that out of the thousands of cancer patients she has counseled, the majority...

This summer a Noble Circle Sister, Katie, died. While she had cancer for nearly 24 years, it was still so shocking that she actually died. She was, for me, the gold standard of how to thrive and 'beat cancer'. I just assumed she'd live another 20 years.  I NEEDED her to live another 20 years. Because if she did, that would mean I could too.  You see, it's extraordinarily hard to stay focused on your OWN story when you have cancer.  Someone else's story easily derails you.  It sends you into the depths of fear and the 'what ifs'.  Katie lived though.  I mean she really lived.  She loved well, served selflessly, laughed a lot and sure saw the world.  She was super smart to boot.  I mean, she had a patent for developing the coating that goes on airplanes that repels lightening.  So, you can thank Katie the next time you fly.  I had such admiration for her.  While serving lunch to my 5 year old, I asked her if she wou...

I remember I was hurriedly trying to buckle my then 4 year old into her carseat.  I was, again, rushing to another appointment and was barking orders to her and lamenting about something she did that displeased me.  She grabbed my cheeks with her little hands and with a maturity beyond her years said, “oh, mommy. It will all be okay.  I promise. It will be okay.”  I paused, kissed her little face and agreed with her. Children have a way of healing our hearts.  I used to tell my daughter all the time that she made my heart happy.  Why have I stopped telling her this? Not only does she make my heart happy, but she has healed my heart.   SHE, in essence, has made everything okay.  She healed the bitterness I held in my heart for my ex-husband (who started a family with another woman while married to me). Her cuddles and flittering kisses healed my broken spirit in the darkest days of my cancer treatment.  She has healed the void my mother’...

Being a motherless mother is hard.   I feel like I’m just winging motherhood—almost like a game of pinball.   But instead of the flippers to propel me in a different direction, I just go down the hole.   I wonder often if my mom were still alive would she be my flippers?   Help me get back on track?   Be the boundaries for me?   My dad is wonderful, but he seems to have no memories of me as a child.  When Gianna does something sweet or fun or completely irritating, I wonder If I did the same thing.  And how did my mother handle it? My mom was always good with documenting our lives in scrapbooks. In her final years, my mom dismantled my baby book to re-do it.  Problem is she had dementia and half the photos are now missing and the rest are out of order or mislabeled.  It’s a great metaphor to how I feel sometimes.  Lost, disoriented, confused.  It’s challenging not to be envious when I see other mothers sho...