Tiny Buddha

Tag: cancer

  • The Most Important Pieces of My Cancer Coping Plan

    The Most Important Pieces of My Cancer Coping Plan

    “Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend.” ~Lao Tzu

    When dealing with a serious health issue or life challenge, we can choose to navigate through it to the light or bury ourselves in its darkness. While it’s not always easy to find the light, it’s a much easier place to survive in and, in the long run, is much healthier. This way of being has helped me on my recent health journeys.

    Twice in the past twenty-three years, I have received the news of a breast cancer diagnosis. Both incidences were completely different and unrelated. This is my story, and how looking for the light is so important in the face of adversity.

    My first cancer diagnosis was in 2001 when I was forty-seven, received days before the horrific events of 9/11.

    DCIS, an early form of breast cancer, was discovered through my annual mammogram. I was given the choice to have a lumpectomy and radiation or a mastectomy and reconstruction. I opted for the latter because I didn’t want to spend subsequent days, months, and years worrying about a possible recurrence. Plus, back then, radiation was more dangerous and not as refined and focused as it is today.

    At the time, I was living in a small town in Florida and decided to travel to California for the best doctor to treat this type of cancer. It wasn’t easy being separated from my three children under the age of eighteen. In the end, it was the right choice and eventually led to a subsequent move to California, the place of my dreams. So sometimes going through difficult challenges can lead to better things.

    After I had surgery, my husband Simon and I stayed in California for two weeks before returning home to Florida. I slowly got used to my new body’s landscape since my diagnosis and diligently continued to go for my annual mammograms, watching my only breast being squished between those two sheets of glass.

    Tears would trickle down my face, triggered by the loss of the breast that fed my three children. During my meditations, I expressed gratitude for my life and remaining breast.

    I tried to bring the light into my life whenever possible by engaging in self-care activities. I surrounded myself with loving and thoughtful people and tried to disconnect from those who had less hopeful attitudes.

    Five years later, during a routine blood test, I found out that I had multiple myeloma, a rare type of blood cancer affecting the plasma cells. In short, it turns healthy cells into unhealthy ones.

    I had no symptoms at the time, but was told that I’d need bloodwork every three months to make sure that the disease did not progress, and that down the road there was a chance I would need to undergo treatment for this incurable type of blood cancer.

    The fear of enduring another cancer overcame me, and I researched the best integrative physicians in Los Angeles to help me navigate this new terrain. For eighteen years my myeloma was what was called “smoldering” because I had no symptoms, but my blood test continued to show high protein levels—a sign that the disease was present.

    Each day I swallowed handfuls of vitamins to ward off any further disease progression. I met and consulted with the best doctors and researchers at the Mayo Clinic and Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. I was told that everybody’s case was different, but at one point treatment would be unavoidable.

    My second breast cancer diagnosis came in 2024, not long before celebrating my seventieth birthday. I was feeling fine, and it was still a few months before my scheduled annual mammogram when I noticed that my right nipple had inverted.

    A mammogram, biopsy, and MRI revealed lobular breast cancer, which is more aggressive than DCIS. I ended up having another mastectomy and reconstruction. Much to my chagrin, I also needed radiation. Thankfully, because my Onco Type DX Score—a score given from 0 to 100 indicating the likelihood of breast cancer returning—was low at only 9, I did not need chemotherapy.

    I am not generally a fearful person, although I am prone to depression and holding feelings in. I continued to try to keep clear of those who were living more in the light than in the dark because it triggered feelings of depression. The entire experience triggered reminders of my first breast cancer experience, coupled with increasing fear and sadness.

    Once again, I had to get used to my new personal physical landscape of implants taking the place of my real breasts. Much had evolved surgically in the twenty-three years since my last surgery, and the recovery seemed easier.

    The radiation, however, took a lot out of me. In addition to shrink-wrapping my newly constructed breast, I encountered sheer exhaustion during the six weeks of radiation five days a week.

    Unfortunately, during my hospitalization for this second mastectomy and reconstruction, my hemoglobin dropped significantly. This signaled to my doctors that my myeloma might be becoming active.

    They scheduled a bone marrow biopsy and found that 90% of my marrow had cancer cells. This was shocking news. My oncologist had been suggesting treatment to ward off progression, but I declined and said that I would rather wait until I was symptomatic.

    He had been very patient with me wanting to do it my way, combining Eastern and Western medicine, mainly because he knew that each case was different, and he honored my intuition about my body. However, he did tell me that there would be a time when he would say that I had no choice but to begin treatment, and unfortunately, it had arrived. He suggested I heal from my surgery before beginning.

    The hemoglobin drop made me feel very uncharacteristically tired. I had been an active person, hiking and working out with a trainer, so having no energy was very difficult for me, plus being active is also a way to fend off depression.

    I’d always been an advocate of listening to my body, and now I felt that my body was telling me that it was time for treatment that involved weekly injections at the hospital and taking a handful of medications at home to fend off any side effects.

    I never really understood the concept of “chemo brain” until now, but I truly feel I cannot think clearly. It challenges my lifelong passion for writing and creating.

    I’ve decided to continue to listen to my body—to rest when it asks to rest and move when it’s time to move.

    During the course of my three cancers, I went from being mad at my body for putting me through all of this to respecting the temple that has kept me alive. I’ve accepted that I cannot be as productive, and that spending a day with one or all of my six grandchildren was more healing than writing any article or a book.

    All in all, my healing had many layers—emotional, psychological, and physical. Compounding that with the fact that I was to live with an incurable cancer that would probably need treatment for the rest of my life, I was left feeling quite depressed.

    I decided I could not manage alone without the assistance of an antidepressant, which would just keep my head above water. I wanted to thrive and just needed that little bit of support.

    I maintained my sanity by deferring to self-care modalities, many of which I used in my younger years and during challenging times in my life, such as writing, meditation, listening to music, exercising, and connecting with friends.

    There’s one song that inspired my way of being, and that was Gloria Gaynor’s song, “I Will Survive.” The lyrics became my mantra.

    Cancer survivors can wear many faces. We might have a public face, and we might have a private face. True healing and recovery depend on the support of loved ones and trusted medical professionals.

    My physicians were very caring and kind, and I’ll never forget the words of my first oncologist when he gave me my diagnosis: “If this experience doesn’t rivet you, nothing will. You’ll never look at life in the same way.” He was right.

    My oncologist’s words continue to echo in my mind. From a physical standpoint, I can acknowledge and accept that my body will never look and feel the same. My daily glances in the mirror are a constant reminder of my journey. In spite of looking a little better when I’m dressed, when I’m unclothed, there’s no escaping the fact that I’ve had breast cancer—I have the scars to prove it.

    I can hide under my clothing, my covers, or in my closet, but in the shower and during lovemaking, I cannot hide, so I’ve taught myself to accept my newly transformed body.

    People say that scars give us character, and I’ve worked hard to convince myself of this supposed truth. I tell myself that the scars don’t really matter because the important thing is that I’ve survived, even though the moment I heard my doctor’s words, all I wanted to do was hide.

    As survivors, we go through many mood changes, but in the end, I believe in the old adage, “From all bad comes good.” I’m cognizant of the importance of being mindful of life’s priorities.

    As mentioned earlier, I’ve come to realize that my writing grounds me, makes me happy, and helps me survive. I also know that I need to surround myself with people who make me feel good about myself and who provide healing energy.

    I suppose this is what intuitively happens when you come face-to-face with your own mortality—you try not to allow people into your life who drain you of the vital life force that is essential for your own healing. For me, doing so made me feel that I was shoring up my spirit’s natural defense mechanisms.

    I’d always been a productive person, and my first cancer diagnosis brought with it a new sense of urgency to continue my writing practice and to share my words and passions with the universe.

    While working on my latest memoir, I made a point of trying to relax and remind myself not to overdo it. I made sure to meditate and work out every day and get a massage and/or acupuncture when I was able to fit these forms of healing into my schedule.

    I decided to express gratitude for my life and all the things I’d taken for granted, such as my family, friends, home, and the time I was able to spend in nature. Given my lifelong commitment to the care of others (I was trained as a registered nurse), I decided to turn that compassion inward and indulge in more self-care. For years I’d put everyone else’s needs first, so it felt good to offer gratitude and kindness to myself.

    Of course, when we’re diagnosed with something like cancer, the possibility of a recurrence is always in the back of our minds—but we have no way to predict the future, so we can only do our best and be compassionate with ourselves and others.

    I have repeatedly told myself that cancer was no longer welcome in my life. I realized that I would thrive as long as I continued to love and, like what psychic Sonia Choquette says, “When you name it, you claim it.” And I am naming to be in the light. That’s my choice.

  • How I’m Navigating My Grief Since Losing My Father

    How I’m Navigating My Grief Since Losing My Father

    “Grief is the price we pay for love.” ~Queen Elizabeth II

    Losing a loved one is never easy, and when that loved one is a parent, the pain can feel insurmountable.

    Last August, I faced one of the most challenging moments of my life: My father, my rock and my confidant, passed away after a brave battle with cancer.

    As immigrants, my father and I shared a bond that was uniquely deep; we relied on each other for support, trust, and guidance in a new world. His wisdom shaped my life, and his strength inspired me daily. This is my story of grief, healing, and the steps I’ve taken to navigate this profound loss.

    Allow Natural Time to Grieve

    Grief is not a linear process; it ebbs and flows, demanding to be felt in its own time.

    My father spent his final days in palliative care, with my mother and me by his side. Watching him in pain, seeing the strongest person I knew slipping away, was heartbreaking. In that final week, I cried more than I had in my entire adulthood.

    His passing brought a mixture of relief—knowing he was no longer suffering—and numbness. In the weeks and months that followed, I allowed myself to feel everything: the disbelief, the anger, the guilt, and the remorse. Each emotion came naturally, and I let them flow. It’s essential to embrace these feelings rather than suppress them, as they are a crucial part of the healing process.

    Prioritizing Self-Care

    Throughout my life, I’ve been the caretaker, always ensuring everyone else was okay. This journey made me realize that I couldn’t continue to pour from an empty cup.

    I slowed down, took time off, and focused on self-care. I rediscovered activities that nourished my body, mind, and soul. Journaling became a therapeutic outlet, and practicing gratitude shifted my perspective. I indulged in spa days, kickboxing, and dancing, drank plenty of water, and tried meditation.

    Staying connected with nature, reading for pleasure, exploring Greek and Roman mythology, and making new friends brought joy and a sense of renewal. Learning a new language also became a way to stimulate my mind and create new memories.

    Seeking Help

    Reaching out for help can be daunting, but it’s an essential part of healing.

    I signed up for a digital health program that offered coaching and connected with friends who had experienced similar losses. While I haven’t yet felt ready to talk to a therapist, it’s something I plan to pursue in the near future. Supporting my mother, who is also navigating her grief, has taught me the power of vulnerability and the importance of accepting help from others.

    Keeping Busy

    Staying busy became a way to channel my energy and emotions positively. I engaged new clients, took new courses, moved to a new city, formed new professional and personal relationships, and even started a new business.

    Challenging myself professionally and personally helped me step out of my comfort zone while being gentle with myself. Understanding the finite nature of life has made me let go of societal expectations and focus on creating meaningful relationships and pursuing goals that truly resonate with me.

    Grateful for the Journey Together

    Above all, I am profoundly grateful for the journey I shared with my father. Not all families are as close as ours, and the bond we had was a true gift.

    My father’s resilience, strength, and street smarts have left an indelible mark on my life. He taught me to be cautious yet strong, resilient yet empathetic. His legacy lives on in the lessons he imparted and the love he gave.

    Grief is a complex, multifaceted experience, but it is also a testament to the depth of our love and humanity. As I continue on my healing journey, I carry my father’s wisdom and strength with me, knowing that he is always a part of me.

  • Miraculous Empath Breakthrough: My Mother’s Cancer Gift

    Miraculous Empath Breakthrough: My Mother’s Cancer Gift

    “Humbleness, forgiveness, clarity, and love are the dynamics of freedom. They are the foundations of authentic power.” ~Gary Zukav

    Last July, my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and began chemotherapy. She asked if I could stay and help her through the treatments.

    Our relationship had always been strained—she was judgmental of my nomadic lifestyle and often spoke in a way that left me feeling demoralized and degraded. As an empath, this criticism was particularly hard to bear. I would feel an instant shock, like an infusion of toxic poison flowing through my veins, triggering a strong desire to hop on the next flight out of America.

    However, this time, something changed. I found the courage to tell her how her judgmental tone affected me. To my surprise, she listened, apologized, and asked for my help in changing. She even expressed regret for not understanding sooner how her words hurt me. This was the beginning of a miraculous transformation, not only in our relationship but in her health as well.

    A few months into chemotherapy, my mother had a severe reaction and decided to stop all medications. Instead, she turned to a healthier lifestyle. She adopted a nutritious diet, started swimming every morning at 6 a.m., and lost fifty pounds. Most importantly, she began to forgive her past, which allowed her to fully embrace the present.

    At eighty-three, my mother is changing in ways I never thought possible.

    We recently returned from a two-week scuba and snorkeling trip in the Maldives, where she swam with whale sharks and eagle rays, danced, and marveled at the stunning aqua waters. She had the time of her life, and I could see from the sparkle in her eyes the life-changing impact of the sea.

    Throughout the trip, she didn’t watch any TV and instead thanked me for sharing my love of the ocean with her. Her newfound appreciation for life was a beautiful, miraculous gift. She was happy, alive, and looked twenty years younger, and for the first time in my life, she expressed her respect and appreciation for my life choices.

    During this time, I maintained my equanimity, a testament to the spiritual practices I’ve cultivated as an empath. I stayed grounded and clear, which allowed me to support her without losing myself in the process.

    This experience has taught me invaluable lessons about healing, not only for my mother but for our relationship as well. Reflecting on this journey, I realize how much we have both grown. My mother once said that I came back to help her die, but instead, she has learned how to truly live. This transformation is a powerful reminder of the resilience and strength we all possess, especially when we embrace our sensitivities and learn how to speak our truths.

    Lessons Learned on My Path

    Honest communication can transform relationships.

    I have learned to never assume it’s pointless to share my honest feelings because you never know how they’ll be received.

    Open and genuine communication was the key to transforming my relationship with my mother. When I finally expressed how her words affected me, it opened the door to healing and understanding.

    Change is always possible.

    Know that it’s never too late to change or to create change in a relationship.

    My mother’s transformation at eighty-three is a testament to the fact that we are never too old to grow, heal, and embrace a new way of living. Her journey has shown me that change is always possible, no matter where we are in life.

    Our energy can have a profound effect on our interactions.

    Recognizing that the energy I bring to an interaction affects how the other person will engage with me has been another game changer. By maintaining a calm and grounded presence, I was able to support my mother without losing myself in the process. This shift in energy made our interactions more positive and constructive.

    One practice that helps me with this is Ho’oponopono (Hawaiian forgiveness prayer), which includes four parts: I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, and I love you.

    Ho’oponopono operates on the basis that any energies I experience can, in some way, be a mirror of energies I have in myself. My focus is to actively take responsibility for my part (whether I am conscious of it or not).

    This helps me to take active ownership of my part in the situation and to clear my side of the street. It helps me to come from a place of humility and empowerment by taking responsibility for what I have brought to the table. It is a powerful practice and can totally shift dynamics in relationships and situations.

    It’s crucial for empaths to discern which energy is our own.

    One of the most critical lessons I learned was how to distinguish between my energy and the energy of others. As an empath, it’s easy to absorb emotions, thoughts, and energies from those around you, often confusing them with your own. This can be overwhelming and disorienting.

    It was especially challenging around my mother, who is an anxious person. In the past, I would feel her anxiety as if it were my own, which was particularly triggering. Through my spiritual practices and studies, I developed a heightened awareness of my internal state.

    I started by paying close attention to my feelings and sensations, learning to recognize what was inherently mine. Meditation played a significant role in this process. By sitting in stillness and observing my thoughts and emotions without attachment, I could identify the subtle differences between my energy and external influences. I also practiced grounding exercises, which helped me stay connected to my body and the present moment, making it easier to discern external energies.

    Energy clearing is a game-changer.

    Clearing my energy has become essential to maintaining my well-being. I have discovered several techniques that prove invaluable in releasing unwanted energies and restoring my natural state.

    I use intention and release energy that I may have absorbed that is not mine, replacing it with high-frequency energy. I then call back into my body all my energy after I intend that it is cleared and cleansed.

    I clear myself and my space with the sacred sound of a Tibetan bowl and smudge with sage or palo santo, which leaves me feeling refreshed and renewed.

    I think of clearing energy like brushing my teeth. I do it several times daily, and it only takes a few minutes.

    Another effective method is using visualization. I visualize a bright light surrounding me, washing away any negative or foreign energies. Outside of the light, I visualize a disco ball with mirrors, reflecting the energy from others.

    Breathwork has also become a life-changing and powerful tool. Through deep, conscious, connected breathing, I release tension, trauma, and stagnant energy from my body. Each inhale brings in fresh, revitalizing energy, while each exhale expels anything that is not serving me.

    Having a spiritual routine can keep us centered.

    Developing a daily spiritual routine has been the cornerstone of maintaining a high vibration and a clear mind. This routine involves a combination of practices that nurture my body, mind, and spirit, ensuring I start each day grounded and aligned.

    My routine includes:

    • Morning Meditation: I begin each day with a twenty-minute meditation session. This sets a peaceful tone for the day and helps me connect with my inner self before engaging with the outside world.
    • Yoga Practice: Incorporating yoga into my morning routine helps me stay physically flexible and mentally focused. The combination of movement and breathwork balances my energy and enhances my mindfulness.
    • Journaling: After meditation, I spend time journaling. This practice allows me to process my thoughts and emotions, gain insights, and set intentions for the day. It’s a way to clear my mind and focus on what truly matters.
    • Affirmations, Intentions, and Gratitude: Positive affirmations, intentions, and gratitude exercises uplift my spirit and reinforce a positive mindset. By acknowledging what I’m grateful for and affirming my strengths, I cultivate a sense of abundance and joy. I set the intention to remain in equanimity on the trip with my mother and it worked!
    • Nature Connection: Spending time in nature, even if it’s just a short walk, helps ground me.

    These practices, woven into my daily life, create a framework that supports living an empowered life as an empath. They help me stay centered, clear, and resilient, allowing me to embrace my sensitivity as a gift rather than a burden.

    —

    Reflecting back on my journey with my mother, I am reminded of how far we’ve come. Our relationship, once strained and filled with misunderstanding, has transformed into a beautiful, supportive bond.

    The courage to share my honest feelings and the willingness to engage with a calm, grounded energy were pivotal in this transformation. My mother’s ability to change and embrace a new way of living at eighty-three has shown me that it’s never too late for growth and healing.

    By sharing these lessons, I hope to inspire fellow empaths to embrace their sensitivity and develop practices that nurture their unique gifts. Sensitivity, when understood and managed well, can be a profound source of strength and connection to the people around us.

  • Embracing Aging: I Want to Be Shiny from the Inside

    Embracing Aging: I Want to Be Shiny from the Inside

    “Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

    Yesterday my son called me from college and asked about my day. I told him about my morning, which entailed celebrating my friend’s birthday with her daughter.

    My friend passed away almost two years ago. Her daughter reached out to me a couple weeks ago and asked if I would share my morning with her to honor her mom. What a privilege and honor. Hands down YES to that.

    The celebration was full of smiles, laughs, tea, stories, tears, yoga mats, birds, fresh air, and tight hugs. As I told my son the story, he asked if my friend’s daughter is cute. (Let’s acknowledge the fact that he asked zero questions about how my friend’s daughter is doing and said nothing about the depth of the meeting.)

    “Yes. She’s very cute,” I said. “And I think she’s a bit old for you.”

    “How old?” he asked.

    “Hmm, I think twenty-eight or twenty-nine,” I replied.

    “Oh my god, Mom, she’s a dinosaur.”

    My son is twenty. I giggled to myself. If she’s a dinosaur, then I’m…

    My friend died because cancer ravaged her body. She fought so hard and had the best attitude, and sprinkled it with humor, which was even more admirable. I miss her every day. I also had cancer, but I am a lucky one. It is now gone, in my rearview mirror, and I’m very grateful. What happened to my perspective along the way is still gnawing at me, though.

    I received a breast cancer diagnosis in 2019. I endured chemo, radiation, being bald, living with a port installed inside of my body, chemo pills, and surgery.

    What happened after all of my treatments was probably even more challenging. I kept getting sick. One thing after another—diverticulitis, which causes excruciating stomach pain and generally requires antibiotics to cure, UTIs, severe brain fog, reflux, the flu, food poisoning…

    It was clear to me that my body was very compromised after cancer due to my immune system getting challenged by all the protocols, and of course the cancer itself. I have been working with an integrative practitioner to clean up my system and to get strong and hardy. This has been hard and arduous work, but I’m not afraid of working.

    I started working when I was nine years old, delivering papers in the snow, sleet, and ice in Colorado. I paid for my college and worked three to four jobs the entire time so that I could graduate and get a degree.

    My amazing, helpful husband and I raised three boys who went through a myriad of large, not tiny, struggles. I have run six marathons. I consider myself pretty resilient, but this work I have done to get back to homeostasis after cancer has been the most challenging thing I’ve endured. It has been more taxing than the cancer.

    There were at least seven days, probably more like twice that number, when I truly thought I was dying. My body was sapped of energy and was fighting to rid itself of the bacteria, mold, metals, candida, and H. pylori. I would lie in bed and try to meditate, but my brain fog was so severe that this was challenging. My body would finally succumb to sleep, only to do it all over the next day.

    I woke up feeling horrible for two years. I was preoccupied with my health. It was almost all I thought about. I had not been sick all my life until my diagnosis, at age fifty-two.

    I used to feel sorry for friends and for my boys and husband when they were sick. I didn’t even understand it. How could people get sick so often? When I was sick, though, I realized being sick changes everything.

    It’s hard to concentrate; it’s hard to focus on others and/or reach out; it’s hard to care. Yes, it is hard to care. It was hard to care about anything other than trying to feel better and hoping I would. Many days I lost hope by the end of the day. My brain did not work right, so I felt numb most of the time. There were a few days when I would not have been upset if I didn’t make it through the night.

    I am still working daily with food, supplements, breath, yoga, walking, running, and meditation. I am elated to say I haven’t had that feeling of imminent death in months. My brain fog is gone. I’m sleeping well, and all the other things that were really messed up are now going swimmingly well. I often joke that we are all just big babies because poop and sleep are everything, and baby, I’m pooping and sleeping.

    Lately, I’m noticing a new set of thoughts that have entered my brain daily. I am certain it is because I have so much room and time now that I’m not working hard to stay alive. I am not worried about the cancer returning or dying from being so sick anymore.

    I have now started noticing how I look. Before cancer, I cared enough to drag myself to Target to get a few items to wear so that I didn’t look like I was living in another decade, or I would order clothes online once in a while. I have always worked out, so I stayed in shape, but I actually glean more from the mental effects of working out, rather than the physical benefits.

    I’ve always brushed my hair and teeth and put on some mascara, but I’ve been a “less is more” person. Now I’m realizing that it all worked well when I was younger and didn’t have the lines, wrinkles, and saggy skin.

    It’s so interesting to me that during all of my health struggles I never thought about how I looked. Don’t get me wrong, I did not get excited about being bald, but I plopped a wig and a baseball hat on my conehead and kept moving.

    Currently, I seem to think about my looks way too often. I do not like it at all. I like to think about how I can make a difference in my little world, how to help others, and how to be a better mom, wife, friend, and teacher. I do not enjoy the thoughts about my extra skin from surgery and from age.

    What makes it even worse is that I have an inner compass that is not interested in doing one thing to my body or face. I actually think it’s interesting to see new lines on my face. I’m not saying I like them, but I find it fascinating when they show up out of nowhere.

    I think I’m grappling with this because 99% of my friends do botox, fillers, and/or face lifts. When I am around them, I notice their shiny pulled back foreheads, their plump cheeks, and their jacked-up lips.

    I actually do not like this look at all. To me, everyone that does this starts to look the same—alien-like. However, I also do not love the look I sport (old and tired). What a weird place that I don’t want to do anything about it and I don’t enjoy how I look.

    When I meet up with a friend that I haven’t seen in a bit, I’m sure she is thinking, “Good lord, she looks old. Why doesn’t she do botox at least?” But I’m thinking, “Geez, you don’t look like yourself anymore.”

    I notice actresses that possibly share the same thoughts I have, and I get so excited to see natural older women. I feel for them because they are in the public eye. When I saw Dear Edward I thought Connie Britton looked so beautiful and real. I saw some lines, and she looked so natural. Yay. I wanted to thank her for looking like a real female in her fifties. It warmed my heart.

    This new internal battle of mine won’t get the best of me. I feel like it’s helpful to even get it all out on paper. Now I get to work on my mind. I am intrigued by the amount of work we can do if we can rein in our thoughts and feelings. This is one of the many reasons that I teach yoga, breath, and meditation. They all can help us with our monkey minds.

    This is not easy work, but I’m up for it. I want to be so shiny from the inside that people don’t even notice my looks, and I don’t either.

    You know when someone walks into a room and their energy and light draws you to them? Many times, that person isn’t even pretty or handsome, but they exude such a peace that you want to be in their presence.

    For me, that is being fully aware of my uniqueness, completely vulnerable, and keeping my heart and soul open to every person I encounter and everything that arises. I am not there yet, but I’m acknowledging the struggle. Isn’t that the first step?

    After every class I teach, we end with “namaste,” which translates to the light in me honors and salutes the light in you. If you’re also grappling with your aging face and body, I honor your light. Shine on!

  • Forever Healing: 4 Things I Now Prioritize After Cancer

    Forever Healing: 4 Things I Now Prioritize After Cancer

    “I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.” ~Audre Lorde

    I’m a year out after completing chemo treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and on my healing journey. Cancer is a nasty little thing and can rear its ugly head at any time again. So, to minimize those recurrent chances and to feel like I’m doing all that’s in my control, I’ve accepted that this healing path will be for the rest of my life.

    I originally thought I’d be spending this first year rebuilding myself. And I have. However, I now see that this is a forever life path. Healing is a daily intentional practice, and I am on its continuous road.

    Being proactive by incorporating healthy practices into one’s life isn’t a guarantee against illness, but it at least makes us feel like we’re taking charge and doing all that’s in our control to ward off disease and optimize our health and well-being.

    I began exercising more than thirty years ago when my ex-husband moved out to begin divorce proceedings. My friend Gloria came by one day and pushed me to go to the local gym. She said it would be good for me. “Okay, I’ll try it out,” I said, “but I don’t think it’s for me.”

    Well, fast forward… exercise became a life practice. Over the years my basement became home to a treadmill, stationary bike, free weights, a trampoline, bars, and a balance ball. The local gym is also my place of exercise, as is the boardwalk and nature trails. Like brushing your teeth and taking a shower, exercise is a daily living activity.

    Healing encompasses a lot of factors. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming. Good enough must become a mindset and motto so we don’t beat ourselves up over occasional off days.

    So what goes into a healing path?

    Exercise is a must and a biggie.

    Since that’s been a permanent structure in my life, I don’t have to work on that one. Like a tree trunk, it’s rooted deep in my ground. When the walking, biking, weightlifting, yoga postures, hoola hooping, or trampolining don’t take place for a few days, my body calls out, “Move me, twist me, stretch me, strengthen me.”

    I have now added a new piece to my exercise: HIIT (high intensity interval training). Twenty minutes of HIIT a few times a week is indicated as an anti-cancer workout. And my dream and goal of ballroom dancing is being realized once again, as I’ve excitedly resumed my lessons that I started shortly before I was diagnosed. Movement comes in many forms.

    Contemplative practices are inner forms of reflection and calming activities.

    Meditation and breathing exercises, journaling, and time in nature are all soothing and quiet activities, bringing us back to ourselves. We listen to and feel what’s inside, what may be bubbling up, what our gut is telling us. We put aside the external distractions to promote the engagement of our calming parasympathetic nervous system.

    For, as we all know and feel, as our anxiety levels have skyrocketed, we live on high alert all the time, fighting off the invisible tigers, as our fight-or-flight response is continuously engaged. We don’t have to be a guru meditator, but giving ourselves a few minutes a day to just be, sitting in quietude and breathing deeply, is a natural antidote to stress and a huge release of cortisol. And as we know, stress is a big contributing factor in illnesses.

    Our lives are lived in a state of perpetual busyness and hecticness as we push ourselves toward productivity and perfection; therefore, we must prioritize activities that counter that busyness and bring us back to our selves. We oftentimes want to drown out our pain with distractions and busyness, but it catches up with us one way or another.

    Eat to live becomes a mindset for a lifestyle of healthy eating.

    We are gifted with a body that requires food to function well. As I am not a nutritionist, I’m not dishing out dietary advice. My new level of healthy eating is nature’s foods and limiting inflammatory, processed foods and sugars.

    Before cancer, I had always been a big ‘nosher.’ Entenmann’s cakes, cookies, potato chips, Dr. Pepper soda, and ice cream were my after-dinner desserts. I cut most of this out years ago when I got ulcers and had reflux and irritable bowel.

    One of my best takeaways from my trip to the Amazon was our hiking guide in the jungle, who said, “The jungle is our supermarket and pharmacy.”

    The people there, as in many poorer countries, have very low rates of cancer and heart disease. Their food is plant-based, along with some fish and meat. And look at the Blue Zones, the places in the world where the people live the longest and healthiest. Those purple potatoes go a long way for them.

    Making intentional food choices becomes a habit, giving ourselves the good stuff to fuel our body. This can be a harder part of the lifestyle to keep up with, as food preparation and shopping become a focal point. And for someone like me who’d rather be anywhere but the kitchen, this is definitely more difficult. It is an ongoing process for me.

    The bigger purpose and mindset keep me on track. My guiding mindset is this: My body took care of me through my chemo treatment, and now it is my duty, in gratitude, to take care of it. I am paying it back for how it kept going and didn’t break down; it didn’t break me. So I look to feed it well.

    I’ve upped my healthy eating to another level. My one square of dark chocolate each day satisfies my chocolate craving, and it has no sugar. I’ve developed a taste for this 100% dark chocolate. Practice and repeat. And whereas I used to choke down one piece of broccoli or asparagus, I now eat many pieces with my meal. Yay to baby steps of becoming more of a vegetable eater!

    Inner psychological work is a new one for me.

    I’ve been to numerous therapists throughout my adult life to deal with different circumstances, but now my therapy has taken on a whole new level and direction. During my treatment, I knew I wanted some type of support but did not want to join any support group or go to regular therapy again. I found, on this site actually, a creative arts therapist with whom I’ve been doing therapy like never before.

    My goal, besides coping through the chemo treatments, was healing myself from the inside out. I had an intuitive sense that I needed to clear out my whole gut and center area of my body where the lymphoma had appeared. Get rid of the cobwebs that had taken root in there and work through past resentments, upset, anger, hurt, and all the rest of those toxicities.

    Art, instincts, and unconscious work were all at play in this therapy, and continues today; uncovering and working through stuff that I never looked at like this.

    —

    This is my new life, beyond the simple wording of self-care. It’s focused and purposeful care of body, mind, heart, and soul.

    It’s work, but after a while it feels really good to be doing this with the big purpose of optimizing our well-being so we can live our best life.

  • How I’ve Navigated My Grief and Guilt Since Losing My Narcissistic Father

    How I’ve Navigated My Grief and Guilt Since Losing My Narcissistic Father

    “One of the greatest awakenings comes when you realize that not everybody changes.  Some people never change.  And that’s their journey.  It’s not yours to try and fix it for them.” ~Unknown

    In 2021 my father died. Cancer of… so many things.

    Most of the events during that time are a blur, but the emotions that came with them are vivid and unrelenting.

    I was the first in my family to find out.

    My mother and sister had gone on an off-grid week-long getaway up the West Coast of South Africa, where there’s nothing but sand, shore, and shrubs.

    I was living in China (where I continue to live today), and we were under Covid lockdown.

    He called me on WhatsApp (which was rare) from the Middle East, where he lived with his new wife. Asian and half his age.

    The cliche of the aging white man in a full-blown-late-midlife crisis. Gaudy bling and all.

    He looked gaunt and ashen-faced. That’s what people look like when they’re delivering bad news. He dropped the bomb.

    “I have cancer.”

    What I am about to admit haunts me to this day: I cared about him in the way one human cares for the well-being of any other human. But at the time, I never cared at the level that a son should care for a father. I had built a fortress around myself that protected me from him over the years.

    He’d never really been a parent to me. He wasn’t estranged physically, but emotionally, he’d never been there.

    He was emotionally absent. He always had been.

    I was the weird gay kid with piercings, tattoos, and performance art pieces.

    He was a military man. The rugby-watching, beer-drinking, logically minded man’s man.

    We were polar opposites—opposite sides of completely different currencies.

    I sat with the bomb that had just been delivered so hastily into my arms and ears. Information that I didn’t know what to do with. It felt empty. I didn’t know how to feel or how to respond. 

    Six years earlier, in 2015, I had flown back to South Africa to sit with my mother on her sofa for two weeks while she grappled with the complexity of the emotions of being recently divorced after forty-something years of marriage.

    My mother and I always had been close. She had spent her life dedicated to a narcissistic man who had cheated on her more than once, who was absent a lot of the time during our childhood because of his job in the Navy, and from whom she had shielded my sister and me.

    He had hurt her again. And I hated him for it.

    She had been devoted to him. Committed to their marriage. Gave him the freedom to work abroad while she kept the home fires burning. She’d faithfully maintained those home fires for over a decade already. She had planned their whole future together since she was sixteen years old and pregnant with my sister, who’s five years old than me.

    And this is how he repaid her.

    He’d taken it all away from her and left her alone in the house they’d built together before I was born.  Haunted by the shadows of future plans abandoned in the corners.

    She descended into a spiral of anxiety and depression, resulting in two weeks of inpatient care at a recovery clinic with a dual diagnosis of depression and addiction (alcoholism) that wasn’t entirely her fault.

    He caused that.

    I remember lying in bed when I was about six or seven years old; I was meant to be asleep, the room in deep blue darkness. Hearing my father in the living room say, “That boy has the brains of a gnat.”

    I assume I hadn’t grasped some primary math homework or forgotten to tidy something away. Things that I was prone to. Things that annoyed him to the point of frustrated outbursts and anger.

    “Ssh! He can hear you,” my mother replied. I still hear the remorseful tone of her voice.

    He was logical and mechanical. I am not.

    I don’t remember my crime that day, but I still suffer the penalty of negative self-talk, a lack of confidence, and a fear of being considered “less than” by others.

    It’s one of my earliest memories.

    And there, in 2021, I sat with the news of his diagnosis. I didn’t know what to feel.

    Guilty for not having the emotional response I knew I was meant to be having?

    Shouldn’t I be crying? Shouldn’t I be distraught?

    How do other people react to this kind of news?

    I’ve always been a highly sensitive person. It’s my superpower. The power of extreme empathy. But there I sat, empty.

    I felt trapped.

    I was in China in 2021, and we were under Covid lockdown. There were zero flights.

    I was emotionally and physically trapped.

    Gradually, more feelings started surfacing.

    At first, I felt compassion for a fellow human facing something utterly devastating.

    Then I started to feel fear for my mom, who had held onto the idea that maybe, one day, they’d get back together.

    I was terrified about how she would take this news when she returned from her holiday.

    Within a few weeks, a “family” Facebook group was set up—cousins, uncles, people I’d never met before, myself, my sister, and my mother.

    And the “other woman” and her kids from previous relationships, none of whom we’d ever met.

    Phrases like “no matter how far apart we are, family always sticks together” were pinging in the group chat.

    I didn’t know how to absorb those sentiments.

    Family always sticks together? Didn’t you tear our family apart? Where were you when I was lying in a hospital bed in 2011 with a massive abdominal tumor?  Family always sticks together? What a convenient idea in your hour of need.  

    More guilt. How could I be so jaded?

    A month later, in January 2021, he passed away.

    It happened so quickly, and for that, I am grateful. No human should ever suffer if there is no hope of survival.

    That’s when the floodgates of emotions opened.

    I cried for weeks.

    I cried for the misery and suffering he caused my family, my mother’s despair, and my sister’s loss. I shed tears for my grandfather, who had lost two of his three sons and wife. I wept for my uncle, who had lost another brother.

    I cried for the future my mom had planned but would never have.

    And I cried for the father I never had and the hope of a relationship that would never be.

    I sobbed from the guilt of not crying for him.

    Then I got angry. Really, really angry.

    I got angry with him for never being the father I needed. I got mad for the hurt he caused my mom. I blamed him for never accepting me for me. I was angry with him because I was the child, and he was the adult.

    Being accepted by him was never my responsibility.

    In the weeks and months that followed, the wounds got deeper. My mother’s drinking got worse, to the point of (a very emotional and ugly) intervention.

    We found out that my father had left his military pension (to the tune of millions) to his new, younger wife of less than a year and her four children from different men. 

    While I want to take the moral high ground and tell you it’s not about the money—it’s solely about the final message of not caring for his biological children in life or death—I’d be lying.

    My sister and I have been struggling financially for years, and that extra monthly money would’ve offered us peace of mind, good medical insurance, or just a sense that he did care about our well-being after all.

    But there’s no use ruminating on it.

    Accept the things you cannot change.

    It’s been two years since he passed away.

    I’ve bounced between grief, anger, and acceptance, like that little white ball rocketing chaotically around a pinball machine, piercing my emotions with soul-blinding lights and sound.

    The word “dad” never meant anything to me. To me, it was a verb, not a noun. It never translated into the tangible world.

    My mother once said, “Now I know you were a child who needed more hugs.”

    She hugged me often.

    But I also needed his hugs.

    I’ve found a way to accept that he would never have been the father I needed. I will never have a relationship with my father. Even if he were still alive, he would never have been capable of loving us the way we needed him to.

    You cannot give what you don’t have.

    He was a narcissist. Confirmed by a therapist in the weeks and months after their sudden divorce.

    He was never going to change. He didn’t know how to.

    Using NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) techniques, I’ve been able to reframe the childhood memories I have about my father.

    That fateful night all those years ago, lying in bed, hearing those words that have undermined my confidence and self-worth for thirty-four years: “That boy has the brains of a gnat.”

    Through visualization and mental imagery, I’ve found a pathway to healing.

    Through NLP, I became the observer in the room of that memory. I could give that little boy lying in bed, his head under the sheets, the comfort, protection, and acceptance he needed.

    I wrapped golden wings around that little boy and protected him.

    I became my own guardian angel.

    During the same session, my NLP coach gently encouraged me to look into the living room where my father sat that night.

    What I saw in my mind’s eye took my breath away.

    I saw a broken and withered man. His legs were drawn up close to his chest. I saw the pain inside him. I saw a man who didn’t know how to love or be loved.

    I saw a man who was scared, confused, and deprived.

    In that moment of being the observer, the guardian angel in the next room, a brilliant light forcefully rushed from me and coiled around him. A luminous cord of golden energy.

    I don’t know if the surge of energy wrapped around him was to heal or restrain him. Frankly, it doesn’t matter. It was pure love, compassion, and light. And it was coming from me: I was my own Guardian Angel.

    At that moment, all the past yearning for his love, acceptance, and approval dissipated. I didn’t need it from him; I needed to give it to him—filled with empathy and compassion. I needed to release him from the anger, hurt, and pain he had caused.

    I needed to do it for myself, but I also needed to do it for him.

    I’ve accepted him for who he was.

    It took a lot of journaling, visualization, mindfulness and meditation, listening to Buddhist teachings (Thich Nhat Hanh in particular), and sitting with the emotions.

    It took the desire to heal myself and him—to be happy and whole again.

    He was painfully human. But aren’t we all?

    He was a narcissist. He drank too much, cheated on his wife, never took the time to have any meaningful connection with his kids, and loved Sudoku.

    He caused my mother pain that still haunts her to this day.

    She still dreams about him.

    I like to think that if he had one more chance to reach out from The Great Beyond, he might say something along the lines of what Teresa Shanti once said:

    “To my children,  I’m sorry for the unhealed parts of me that in turn hurt you.  It was never my lack of love for you.  Only a lack of love for myself.”

    He was a deeply flawed man—but he was my father.

  • How I Found Hope in my Father’s Terminal Cancer

    How I Found Hope in my Father’s Terminal Cancer

    “Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty, even in times of greatest distress.” ~Milan Kundera

    When my father received a terminal cancer diagnosis, I went through a wave of different emotions. Fear, anger, sadness. It opened a completely new dictionary that I had not had access to before. A realm of experiences, thoughts, and emotions that lie at the very bedrock of human life was suddenly revealed to me.

    After the initial horror and dread at hearing the news had subsided, I was surprised to find a new sense of meaning and connection in the world around me.

    In part, dealing with this news has been profoundly lonely. But the truth is, cancer is a human experience, and it’s been overwhelming and humbling to walk into a reality shared by so many people across the world.

    I was immediately confronted with how much I had avoided other people’s experiences because cancer frightened me.

    Our minds are fickle when confronted with terminal illness. It can be difficult to untangle the horror and pain we associate with cancer from someone’s very rich and dignified life despite it. 

    We see cancer as a deviation from what human life is supposed to offer. A part of this can be found in the values we hold in our culture and our idealization of productivity as proof of our worthiness, with pleasure as the ultimate symbol of success. In this fast-paced, luxury-crazed world, there’s no room for hurt, pain, and mortality.

    On a personal level, I understand that it can be difficult to avoid thinking of cancer as an evil intruder that steals away the ones we love, that disrupts any chance at a good life with its debilitating symptoms and treatments. Cancer is a frightening reminder of limitations and loss.

    I was greatly affected by my expectations of cancer, in that when I found out about my father’s terminal diagnosis, I instantly began grieving a person who was still very much alive. As if life with cancer wasn’t really a life at all.

    After all, terminal means there is no cure. It means that if left untreated, it kills you. It also means that treatment won’t keep you alive forever. You will die of it, unless you die of something else in the meantime, which is likely, considering the risk of infection and complication associated with the aggressive treatment and a deteriorating immune system. It’s a death sentence.

    My first reaction to the news was that my parents had to make the most of the time they had left together. They have always been ardent travelers, and as far back as I can remember, talked excitedly about the trips they were going to take when they were older.

    I instinctively felt existential dread on their behalf and encouraged them to take out their bucket list and start packing their suitcases, to start traveling while they still had the chance.

    Now I see how misplaced my reaction was. To my parents, the whole appeal of traveling vanished when it was motivated by the ticking clock of imminent death. In telling them to go travel, all they heard was “you’re going to die, and you haven’t gotten to the end of your bucket list!”

    It turns out, life is so much more than the collection of ideas we have about what we’re going to do and where we’re going to go. Life is not about getting through a list. Sometimes only the gravest of situations can show us what is sacred in our lives. 

    By living through a pandemic and then receiving a cancer diagnosis, my father’s life came to a bit of a standstill. But despite my original anxiety on his behalf, it wasn’t really the sad ordeal I thought it would be.

    On the contrary. My father woke up from a life of constant traveling and planning for the future, only to find that he loves the life he is already living in the present moment.

    The abundance of life is not out there on a beach in Spain, it’s in the first home he ever owned, next to the forest he loves, where on a wind-still day you can hear the ocean; it’s drinking coffee in the garden with his wife, and reading books in the company of a devoted, purring cat; it’s using the fine china for breakfast and playing board games on rainy evenings.

    I’m sure that my father has moments of fear about his disease and about death, but for the most part, he’s just dealing with the existential and human need of wanting to be treated with dignity, of being more than a disease he happens to have, being more than a symbol of a death that comes to us all eventually anyway.

    Cancer brings with it a whole new world of thoughts and feelings; a lot of it is heavy, a lot of it is fear and pain, but there is also dignity, humility, connection, love, and acceptance. It demands new ideas about life and death, about people, about where we come from and who we are. 

    I cannot imagine anything more human and more dignified than that.

    As I led with, I have gone through a wave of emotions since I found out that one of my favorite people in the world has terminal cancer. It has in no way been easy, but life doesn’t always have to be easy to be good. I have journeyed somewhere deep and unfamiliar and found something there that I never expected to find—hope.

    Hope doesn’t always mean the promise of a better future or of finding a cure to our physical and psychological ailments. Hope is knowing that we are flawed, that we suffer, that we are finite. It dictates that every moment is sacred, and every life has dignity.

    Before we die, we live. The cause of our deaths will be any number of things. Cancer could be one of the reasons we die. We might have cancer and die of something else. That’s not what defines us. And we must make sure not to define each other by it either.

    When someone looks at you and utters the word “terminal,” you might be surprised to find hope. Hope, it turns out, wears many hats. Personally, I found it in the insurmountable evidence of human dignity.

  • Looking Back: The Silver Linings of the Pandemic and Why I’m Grateful

    Looking Back: The Silver Linings of the Pandemic and Why I’m Grateful

    “You gotta look for the good in the bad, the happy in the sad, the gain in your pain, and what makes you grateful, not hateful.” ~Karen Salmansohn

    The 2010 decade was difficult for me. Hardly a year went by without someone close to me passing away.

    When the tragic decade started, I was in the midst of my residency training and free time was a luxury I did not have. When I graduated and became an attending physician, I was too busy caring for patients on my own to take a break.

    In 2018, my world was shattered when one of my best friends died unexpectedly. The sudden shock of it left me feeling helpless. To counter my feeling of despair, I worked even harder to take care of patients in need.

    Shortly afterward, my father-in-law was diagnosed with a recurrence of his cancer. Over the next year, my husband and I spent whatever free time we had flying across the country to see him. We watched as he slowly deteriorated until he took his last breath in 2019.

    Instead of slowing down, I kept on. It seemed like the more I needed a mental health break to grieve, the harder I worked to suppress my grief.

    When the world stopped due to COVID-19, I too was forced to take a pause. With the whole world quarantined, I finally had the time to heal my broken heart.

    With more time at home, my husband and I found ourselves taking more walks, cooking more meals, and openly talking about our feelings. We visited with family over FaceTime and Zoom and shared stories about those who were now gone.

    We found joy in the small things: a sunrise, a bird’s song, and even just a cup of tea. With the past vastly different from what we were living through and the future feeling so uncertain, we were finally living in the present.

    Though the pandemic brought with it so much suffering and sadness, I found unexpected gratitude in the midst of it:

    Gratitude for the time that we had with our lost loved ones before COVID-19.

    Gratitude for the extra time to spend with one another now.

    Gratitude for the technology that allowed us to stay connected with our family and friends.

    Gratitude for the reminder that life is fragile and that “taking it slow” is sometimes necessary.

    Gratitude for the chance to take a step back and reflect on the important things in life.

    Surprisingly, I realized that I felt gratitude for COVID-19.

    It’s been the darkest of times. I’m devastated by all the lives lost and all the other losses people have experienced. The course of humanity has changed, and likely not for the better.

    But I’ve found solace in the silver linings that have emerged from the pandemic—things that will stay with me long after the virus has passed. I am far more grateful today than I have ever been and with it comes a sense of peace and a newfound strength to carry on.

    My father-in-law, for instance, died peacefully at home surrounded by his loved ones. For a year, we were able to join him at his medical appointments and also create new memories. We arranged for a family trip to Mexico so he could enjoy warmth in the wintertime with his sons and brothers.

    These otherwise normal events would not have been possible during the beginning of the pandemic. If he had passed away a year later, we wouldn’t have been able to say goodbye the way we did. I’m grateful for the quality time we had.

    During the pandemic, I finally grieved my best friend’s death. Instead of keeping myself busy to distract from it as I had done before, I now had time to truly process and feel his loss through the five stages of grief. I think about him at least once a day but instead of feeling sorrow, I’m usually thinking about how he would guide me through this new normal.

    While the pandemic is not something to celebrate, it has certainly opened my mind. I never would have thought that something so awful could bring about so much healing and hope.

    COVID-19 made it very clear that life is too short to worry about the little things. Life is too precious not to enjoy every moment, especially with our loved ones. When we choose to be grateful for all that we have, we open ourselves up to more joy, peace, and connection.

    While we may not be able to control our circumstances, we can control how we react to them. We can choose kindness, understanding, and empathy for ourselves and others.

    Did someone just cut me off in traffic? It’s okay, maybe they’re rushing to the hospital to see a loved one. I hope they make it there safely!

    Is the Wifi connection poor again? No worries, I can use this time to read a book.

    Did I make the wrong decision? It’s okay, I’ll learn from it and make a better choice next time.

    Reframing our thoughts to focus on the good, no matter how small, can have a powerful effect on our mood and outlook. Things that would otherwise be frustrating or upsetting are suddenly not so bad.

    For all of us, COVID-19 has taken away so much. But if we can find a way to look for the positive and cultivate gratitude then we can find happiness amid hardship. We can come out of this stronger, kinder, and more connected to the people and things that matter most.

    I’ve developed several good habits during the pandemic. I now journal every day writing about all the things that made me happy. Whenever I spend time with friends and family, I give them my undivided attention. I enjoy my work—I treat my patients as I would my family and consider it a privilege to be part of their care. I’ve also been taking more time for self-care and nurturing my creative pursuits.

    The world has changed and so have I. I am grateful for the life lessons and growth.

  • Stop Waiting for Perfection and Fall in Love with Your Life Now

    Stop Waiting for Perfection and Fall in Love with Your Life Now

    I know, so cliché, right? I can practically hear your eyes roll. But hear me out.

    In a society driven by results, achievements, and ideals of perfection, there is a huge pitfall that I am becoming increasingly aware of—that we can be so focused on trying to achieve our “best life” that life itself could pass us by and we would have missed it. Missed the beauty of just being here.

    We’ve all heard the sayings “Slow down and smell the roses” and “Life is a journey, not a destination.” We hear these sayings and pass them off as embroidery on a quaint pillow, but what if we didn’t? What if life really is in the details?

    I mean, how many of us will ever actually attain the “perfect life” we are being sold? Are we just trapped in never-ending, self-defeating cycles of diets, bad habits, and perpetual “self-improvement”?

    What if we just paused for a second. Took a break from social media. Blocked out all the outside noise. Just got quiet. What would your inner voice, your subconscious, tell you?

    What makes you truly happy? What feeds your soul? Makes you tick? Even reading that back I realize I sound very “new age,” but what I mean is, aren’t we done with being told what will make us happy? And why does life have to be spectacular to be fulfilling? Can’t what we have just be enough?

    Recently, I lost my dad after a very short and aggressive battle with cancer. I didn’t see it coming. I thought he would go on forever.

    I had been estranged from my dad for a few years before he got sick. We had drifted apart for lots of reasons but mainly because he was never there for me. Our relationship was very one-sided and usually consisted of me running after him, wanting him to notice me, to give me the love and approval I so badly felt I needed from him.

    He wasn’t any of the things a father should be. He wasn’t reliable or safe or protective or even present, and I resented him for abandoning me when I was little.

    But when it came down to it, when I faced losing him, when I saw him in his hospital bed and he told me he “wasn’t long for this world,” all of that melted away and I longed desperately for more time.

    I wish I had let go of my expectations, my resentment, and my pride and just accepted him and salvaged a relationship with him. I loved my dad, and I wish I had spent more time just being with him. Now, that time has passed.

    His loss taught me something. Life is precious. We don’t have forever. We have now. This moment. We can choose to love our lives now.

    Don’t wait until you’re skinner, prettier, fitter, earning more money, famous, a millionaire. (Most of us will never be those last two things.)

    If your life is particularly hard right now and your needs aren’t being met, work to change what isn’t working. But don’t get so focused on what you want that you forget what you already have.

    Let’s stop wasting the precious time we have here with the people we love, who make our life beautiful.

    Appreciate all the little things that make you happy.

    For me, it’s coffee shops and lazy mornings, walks by the river or in nature, grabbing lunch with my friends or dancing the night away, cuddles on the sofa, spending time with my kids, those few precious moments with my partner in the morning before the day begins.

    These things are what make a life. While we are striving to “live our best life,” we run the real risk of completely missing the one we are already living.

    My one wish is that we all wake up and start appreciating the life we have right now. That we reject the notion that we have to have perfect bodies, perfect faces, perfect houses, families, relationships, to have a truly happy life.

    Wake up to the fact that we are being sold this lie purely so that we buy more stuff, work more hours, keep striving for the mythical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

    Love your life now. Fall in love with all the little things. Happiness doesn’t come from physical possessions. It comes from appreciating everything money can’t buy. You could already be living your “best life” without even trying.

  • How ‘Griefcations’ Helped Me Heal from Loss and How Travel Could Help You Too

    How ‘Griefcations’ Helped Me Heal from Loss and How Travel Could Help You Too

    “To travel is to take a journey into yourself.” ~Danny Kaye

    The brochure read, “Mermaid tail, optional.” What forty-something mom doesn’t have a shimmering fish tail tucked in her closet for just the right occasion? Not me. I live in Minnesota. I’d borrow one when I got there.

    I took a flight from Minneapolis to Panama City, and then a water taxi to a backpackers’ resort. Not the kind with frozen cocktails and bad DJs. The next thing I knew, I was on a sailboat, swinging from an aerial circus hoop suspended over the sparkling Caribbean Sea, dressed as a mermaid.

    I felt free and alive and playful in my body.

    How did I, a grieving daughter, sister, and mother, end up there? That’s what I was asking myself. It’s both a long and short story.

    After a few years marked by death and loss, an “aerial and sail” retreat called to me. It would be a gift to my wounded self. That’s the short take.

    The longer explanation is the most painful, but probably speaks to why so many of us chase adventure or time away from our routines and responsibilities. We’ve got to work on ourselves outside of our regular lives. I certainly did.

    After losing my dad to cancer and my brother to suicide within a span of six months, I then had to say goodbye to the daughter we’d made part of our family for four years. We thought we would adopt her, but she went to live with another family.

    In my grief, I’ve redesigned my approach to life.

    It’s grief that pulls me to say, “Yes, I’ll try that.” Travel. The flying trapeze. Mermaid tails.

    An unexpected gift of grief is being cracked open and feeling the urgency of these opportunities. They are too fleeting and too precious to pass up. I’ve also embraced play and movement and taken up circus arts. The retreat offered some of the best aerial coaches out there.

    But aside from honing a skill, I craved an escape from the underpinnings of my everyday life and the frequent reminders of my missing family.

    Losing loved ones is something we will all experience, no doubt many times over. How each of us grieves is individual, but what I can say from experience—as a trauma psychologist and as someone living in grief—is that taking a journey out of one’s comfort zone can be profoundly healing.

    A “griefcation” won’t cure the pain, but meaningful travels can help us cope, possibly even heal.

    When I last Googled “griefcation,” it appeared just over 400 times on the search engine, with the earliest hits dated from 2017. That’s not a lot when you compare it to “staycation,” which appeared in more than 100 million articles. But I believe that travel is a conscious way to grieve that yanks us out of a funk of isolation and provides an opportunity for relief, insight, healing, peace, and transformation.

    Travel forces us to be in the moment, hyper-aware of new surroundings as we read a map, find a hotel, hail a cab (or look for an uber), and mentally calculate currency exchanges. All of this is a welcome reprieve from the overthinking and overwhelm that comes with grief.

    These days there are “grief cruises” and bereavement boats, with a chaplain on call. If you want to dip your toe into a travel experience, instead of fully diving in, retreats—mini-vacations, if you will—can be a good and less pricey alternative.

    I’m living in grief, but I am also lucky and privileged to work for myself, with flexible time off and enough travel points accumulated from business trips to orbit the planet. For others, your grief vacation might be closer to home or shorter in duration.

    I first sought out a short griefcation in the year after my dad and brother died. I had an urge to be with others who were grieving: those who would just know that I had no words for how I was feeling. I found a “Grief Dancer” retreat in Big Sur with a description that spoke to me: We invite you to a weekend retreat to hold together what should not be held alone.

    I flew to San Francisco and then drove the Pacific Coast Highway to what I affectionately called a “hippie’s paradise,” where primal music, soulful rhythm, and unselfconscious dancing helped me find joy in judgment-free movement.

    Ever since my dad and brother died, I’ve sought out places to travel, sometimes to escape traditions that now trigger me.

    My dad loved the gaudy, over-the-top nature of Christmas celebrations and would string twinkly rainbow lights all over our house in southern California. He collected singing snowmen from Hallmark, too. He had a dozen of them. He’d terrorize us, his grown children, by switching them on all at once so they’d each sing a different Christmas carol, competing for cheery seasonal supremacy.

    My dad died from cancer in November and after an early December memorial, my mom and my surviving brother retreated to our respective corners of the country to grieve alone. I hunkered down with my husband and two boys, hibernating in the dark cold of Minneapolis.

    And just like that, my family stopped gathering for Christmas. In its absence, I’ve worked to build a new holiday tradition for my sons that has a travel experience at its core. We now routinely head to sunny beaches to relax, read books, play together, and create special moments to remember those we’ve lost. No matter where we find ourselves on Christmas Day, we always set a place at the table for my dad and brother.

    I’ve learned that it’s possible to be living in grief, but also experience profound joy. Grief is an invitation to deeply value the moments of your life and find joy where you can, because of a renewed sense of how fleeting they are.

    We can travel to escape our grief, or we can focus on our loss as a significant component of the travel experience, creating activities to honor the lives of those we’ve lost.

    Dr. Karen Wyatt, a hospice physician and the founder of End-of-Life University Blog, has written extensively about the “safe container” that travel can provide to heal grief and loss. She defined six categories of grief travel to consider when making plans. Restorative. Contemplative. Physically active. Commemorative. Informative. Intuitive.

    Before a significant grief anniversary, I took another retreat, this time to Morocco with my husband and other entrepreneurs, to experience “radical self-awareness while leaving our comfort zones in a wild, extraordinary place.” While I wasn’t there to grieve specifically, I am always on that journey. There, my experience—to borrow categories from Wyatt—was contemplative, intuitive, physically active, informative. And commemorative.

    In the Sahara Desert near the border with Algeria, I honored the fourth anniversary of the death of my dad. It was a day of beauty and reflection. The shifting sand was a meditation on the transient nature of life. The stark nature of the landscape was an affirmation that life is never guaranteed to be long, and survival is not assured.

    The stunning beauty of the place, and the company I was with, was an invitation to honor the magic of this one “wild and precious life”—to borrow from poet Mary Oliver. It was both an embodied and soulful experience to dwell in grief. To hold in my body and spirit the importance of Dad’s memory. I grabbed handfuls of his ashes and sand and flung them into the air. Releasing. Weeping. Celebrating.

    You can’t live every day like it’s your last—if I did, I’d be broke, exhausted, and probably in prison—but you can do what makes you truly happy as often as possible.

    Travel, like grief, takes you to different lands, where life seems more precious and urgent. If you’re lucky, you will find joy amid the sadness, as I did. The memories stay with you forever.

  • Children’s Movies are Obsessed with Death, but Don’t Show Healthy Grief

    Children’s Movies are Obsessed with Death, but Don’t Show Healthy Grief

    “Grief is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” ~Jamie Anderson

    I knew my son was watching me. We were inhaling fistfuls of popcorn while Frozen 2 played on the screen above. (Spoiler alert…)

    Anna has just realized her sister, Elsa, is dead, frozen solid at the bottom of a river. Anna must carry on life without her.

    My son turned his body and looked directly at me, ignoring the film. He knew what was coming. I began to weep. This is what he expected. He patted my arm with his little hand, which was buttery from popcorn and sticky from sour gummy worms.

    Anna’s body slumps over, and her broken voice begins a haunting song of grief: You’ve gone to a place I cannot find. This grief has a gravity. It pulls me down.

    I’m frozen, too, within memories of the death of my brother Dave by suicide just months earlier. Cartoon Anna and I together mourned our lost siblings. 

    My young son comforted me while I cried. As I think about it, it is such a twisted scene. Can’t we just go to the movies, eat a bunch of crappy food, have a couple of laughs, and call it a night?

    None of us intended for me to have a grief spiral in an animated film with a talking snowman and a plot line featuring a guy who is enmeshed with his reindeer. But the film is all about grief.

    It is about one daughter’s quest to heal intergenerational trauma and right the wrongs of the past. It is about another daughter trying to learn the stories of her lost parents, and in so doing, she enters a space that is unsafe and threatens her life, too.

    I guess it is completely predictable that this story would remind me so much of my own family.

    Six months before Dave killed himself, our dad had died of esophageal cancer. My son certainly saw my tears coming. He’s nine now. He knows that he has a mother who lives in grief. He knows that his mother has a wound where her brother and father once were and that the wound gets reopened from time to time. He’s seen me cry more than I ever imagined he would.

    Have you ever thought about how many children’s films feature the death of a parent or sibling? Here are the ones that come to mind off the top of my head: The Lion King, Frozen, Big Hero 6, The Land Before Time, Finding Nemo, How to Train Your Dragon 2, Bambi, Abominable, Vivo, Batman, the entire Star Wars franchise. This year’s Lightyear. You get the picture.

    Death is so pervasive in children’s films that a team of Canadian researchers looked at the prevalence of death in this genre and concluded that two-thirds of kids’ movies depicted the death of an important character while only half of films for adults did.

    The researchers also found that the main characters in children’s films were two and a half times more likely to die, and three times more likely to be murdered than the main characters in films marketed to adults.

    So, if my kids watched a movie a week, they’d see thirty-four deaths a year—usually the death of a parent or close family member. What is up with that?

    It is an easy plot device. What better way to thrust a character into a scenario in which they heroically redeem a terrible tragedy by going on a journey, taking back the throne, restoring the family name, and so on? The point of the movie becomes the main character rising again in the face of loss. It is the quintessential hero’s journey.

    I don’t have issues with kids being exposed to death. I’ve had lots of open conversations about it with my kids. When children’s films show children thriving after terrible events, there may be some psychological benefit to that, by helping kids know that there is indeed life after death.

    But I am worried about how the pervasiveness of these stories is shaping our expectations about grief.

    It’s an important conversation to have, especially when more than one million Americans have so far died from COVID. The impact on children has been immense. From April 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021, data in Pediatrics estimated more than 140,000 children under age 18 in the U.S. lost a parent, custodial grandparent, or grandparent caregiver.

    Children see death over and over, but there is very little treatment of grief in popular culture. In most instances, a film shows the hero standing with head bowed beside an open grave. The audience may observe a tear or a nod toward a period of sadness, but the character is back in action within sixty seconds, fighting the dragon, building the robot, or saving the world. 

    The other alternative is that prolonged grief drives one to become a villain. If loss is not quickly translated into action, it seems to fester into vengeance and evil. I’m thinking of the Kingpin from Spiderman, Dr. Callaghan from Big Hero 6, Anakin Skywalker (a.k.a. Darth Vader) from Star Wars, Magneto from X-Men, among others.

    These films are telling a story about grief that is a disservice to us all. Our society counts on a bereaved person bouncing back to action almost immediately. And if they don’t, in a prompt, timely manner, the suspicion is that the grief has ruined them.

    These films help craft a society that has no model for the emotion of loss. For the slowness of it. For the darkness of it. Especially in the lives of children.

    During the season of my loved ones’ deaths, my children were twelve, eight, and eight. They were tender and sweet. And young. But also, old enough.

    There was a lot of talk about cancer at our house. The kids knew the science. They shared a house with my dad while he went through his first round of chemo. They knew it was miserable.

    Early on I let them know that this cancer would probably cause Grandpa to die. I explained the size and location of the various tumors. I let them know that our time with him would probably be two or three years.

    I believe in being honest with children in a way they can understand. I didn’t want them to be afraid that Grandpa would die. I wanted to let them in on the secret that Grandpa was going to die. No need to keep anyone in suspense.

    I was with my dad when he died in California. My children were at home in Minnesota. A few minutes after he died, I called them on the phone. My husband, Rob, sat with them, and I told them one by one. I talked to them while Rob held them.

    When my brother died, Rob and I both sat with the children. We told the youngest and the oldest together. They were once again tender and fearful. Surprised. Wide eyed. We held them.

    They didn’t say much. Uncharacteristically, they didn’t ask any questions. They knew that Uncle Dave was mysteriously sick.

    My brother’s death was much more difficult to talk about with my children. They knew that he struggled with alcohol. They knew the word addiction. They knew that he had been in and out of the hospital. The problem with suicide is that there’s no good way to make the logic work for children.

    I can just imagine the torrent of questions: How much sadness is too much sadness? How much pain is too much pain? When the cat dies? When my best friend is mad at me? What makes your heart hurt so much that dying is the logical step? When does one reach that point?

    Psychologically speaking, talking with my children about Dave’s death was so hard because it threatened to dismantle their basic assumptions about the goodness, safety, and predictability of the world.

    In my conversation with my children, I didn’t want their sense of goodness, justice, and safety to be shattered. The world is no longer a predictable, good place when someone kind and loving experiences such darkness and ultimately a horrible, self-inflicted death.

    The world is no longer meaningful when there is no simple, rational explanation for how such a thing happened. The self may no longer be worthy of happiness and joy if someone like Uncle Dave could not find happiness and joy.

    Everything in me is organized against my children understanding this logic. I didn’t want it to enter their minds or their hearts.

    But it has. It will. They will come to know the full story of their soft-spoken uncle with the beautiful blue eyes. They will remember him on our couch and in the park and in the kitchen and at the lake. They will know the truth about him and how he was lost.

    And there is no way around the reality of suicide, the reality that the truth is beyond the careful, thoughtful, simple explanations of their mother. I can’t make it neat or easily digestible for them. It is too messy.

    My children have been up close and personal with grief these past years. They’ve held human ashes in their hands. They anticipate that I will cry during a movie scene in which a character loses a sibling. They know all about cancer. They’ve attended memorials

    It isn’t what I would have chosen for them—to be in a movie theater, comforting Mommy because the cartoon reminds her of her dead brother. That isn’t what I ever pictured when

    I first held their tiny baby bodies in my arms and my heart swore to protect them with every cell in my body. Sometimes I apologize to them in whispers: “I’m sorry that our lives have unfolded like this.”

    There is a way to use the deaths of children’s movies to facilitate conversations about grief and loss.

    A 2021 study in Cognitive Development found that animated films may provide the opportunity for parent-child conversations about death, because parents often watch these films with their children. However, according to researchers, few parents take advantage of this opportunity to talk about death with their children. I encourage parents to take advantage of these teachable moments.

    For my children, who have seen grief up close, my only hope is that they are learning about the reality of grief. They are seeing a more realistic picture than Disney will show them. They’re seeing me go to work, make pancakes, drive the carpool, laugh with my friends. They are seeing me live. And they’re seeing me cry.

    They are also seeing that the duration of grief is not five minutes of screen time but that it is years.

    When they came into my world, I didn’t anticipate that grief would be such a prominent lesson in their childhood. But after watching Dave implode, alongside the loss of our dad, perhaps grief, real grief, is a more essential lesson that I anticipated.

    Perhaps watching me slog through it will help my children navigate out of their own darkness one day. Disney is introducing them to death. It’s my job to show them the reality of grief.

  • 5 Life Lessons from a Brain Tumor That Could Have Killed Me

    5 Life Lessons from a Brain Tumor That Could Have Killed Me

    “Life is a balance between what we can control and what we cannot. I am learning to live between effort and surrender.” ~Danielle Orner

    I was slumped against a wall at Oxford Circus Station early one Sunday evening when an irritated male voice suddenly barked, “MOVE!”

    Moments beforehand, I had lost my vision.

    Without conscious thought, I muttered, “RUDE!” and staggered off without clearly seeing where I was going.

    It was only months later, on retracing my steps at Oxford Circus, that I realized I’d been blocking his view of some street art.

    I’d allowed a guy to bully me out of the way while in a vulnerable state so that he could take a picture for social media.

    Lesson 1: Not all disabilities are visible.

    We can never fully know what someone else is experiencing. Mental health, chronic pain, and disabilities are not always apparent. So, when we come from a place of not knowing and are patient with others by default, we open up a window of possibility that exists outside of our judgment.

    Minutes prior, I’d stepped off an underground train and onto an upward escalator. A pain hit my right temple like a bullet. It took my breath away, everything went black, and I felt I might faint.

    Desperately, I clung to the railing. And as the top of the escalator approached, my right foot went floppy, and my vision disappeared. I could see light and color, but the world was blurry, lacking definition.

    I used what little vision I had to follow the distinctive white curve of Regent Street down to a spot where I’d arranged to meet a friend

    Panic finally set in when I realized that my friend was walking toward me, and I could recognize his voice but I could not see his face at all.

    We sat down in a restaurant, and a concerned waitress brought a sugary drink.

    My mind went into overdrive: “Had I cycled too much? Was my blood sugar low? Had I eaten/drank enough? Given myself a stroke? Was I just stressed?”

    Twenty minutes later, my vision slowly returned.

    Relieved but freaked out, I asked my friend if he thought I should go to A&E (ER). He said, “Only if you think you need to.” I felt silly. Scared to take up space. Afraid of being a drama queen. I didn’t trust myself or my experience.

    LESSON 2: Don’t seek external validation.

    The opinions of others are helpful, but only you see and experience life from your own unique perspective. Learning to trust and validate our own experience first and foremost is how we step in our power.

    Later I went back home but couldn’t shake it off.

    The next morning, I visited my doctor, who sent me straight to A&E (ER). The hospital admitted me overnight, concerned it was a mini stroke or aneurysm. But the following morning they discharged me, citing dehydration as the cause.

    One week later, I was back in A&E. More dizziness, more foot numbness, more blurred vision. A doctor described it as “classic Migraine Aura.”

    My gut leapt; that didn’t feel right. “I don’t get headaches,” I protested. “I rarely take painkillers. Why so many all of a sudden?”

    They seemed confident it wasn’t serious, but booked an MRI scan, just to be certain.

    Twenty-five minutes of buzzing, clanking, and humming later, I glided out of an MRI scanner.

    I thanked the technician. “All good?” I asked.

    “It’s very clear,” she replied.

    LESSON 3: Listen to your gut.

    If your gut says that something is off, listen to it. A gut feeling is typically a lurch from your stomach rather than chatter from the mind.

    My gut knew it wasn’t migraines; it told me so, and if I hadn’t strongly advocated for myself, then I may not have got that MRI scan.

    A week later, I was back with my local doctor, experiencing vertigo and earache.

    Did I have an ear infection? Was that the issue all along, some sort of horrible virus affecting my sight and balance?

    The GP opened my records up on his computer and his face immediately dropped.

    “Do you mind if I take a moment to read this?”

    “Of course,” I said.

    He composed himself but his face was ashen.

    “Has anyone spoken to you about your MRI result?” he ventured at last.

    I found myself detaching from reality, like I was watching a movie.

    He told me that they’d found a lesion on my brain and there was a possibility of brain cancer. “I’m so sorry,” he offered finally.

    I left and immediately burst into tears.

    Six days I lived with the idea of having brain cancer.

    Had it spread? How would they treat it? Could they treat it?

    More dizziness, more vertigo ensued, and a wise friend firmly told me to go back to the emergency room and refuse to leave until I got answers.

    Reluctantly, I entered A&E (ER) for the third time.

    After a long wait, a neurologist sprang from nowhere, took me to a room, and showed me my MRI scan. I was shocked by the large white circle in the middle of it.

    “How big is that?” I gasped.

    “About the size of a pea,” the doctor said casually. “I believe it’s a colloid cyst, a rare, benign, non-cancerous tumor. It can be removed by operation, using a minimally invasive, endoscopic camera.”

    Relief flowed through me. “It’s not cancer?”

    After reassuring me it was not, the doctor sent me away, telling me to await further news.

    Outside the hospital I hung around updating loved ones by phone. Suddenly a withheld number rang.

    It was the neurologist: “I’ve spoken with neurosurgeons, and they think you should be admitted to the hospital for emergency surgery. If the cyst bursts you have one to two hours max, or that’s it.”

    “Okay,” I stammered. “I’m actually still at the hospital.”

    “Not this hospital,” he said. “A different one.”

    A taxi ride later, it was 5 p.m., and I was in an emergency room for the second time that day and fourth time that month. Despite the chaos around me, I eventually curled up and got a little sleep.

    Suddenly it was 3.30 a.m. and I was still in A&E. Staff rushed in, grabbed my bed, and hurtled me through corridors. Bright lights from London’s skyscrapers flashed past windows, everything surreal and movie-like again

    The next day, surgeons explained that they wouldn’t be sure that they could reach the tumor until they operated, and there were four different options for surgery, ranging from a minimal endoscopic camera through to opening my skull up with major surgery.

    I hoped and prayed for endoscopy but wouldn’t know the outcome until I woke up.

    The operation was planned for 8 a.m. the following morning. I said an emotional goodnight to my sister. Suddenly a lady interrupted us and said, “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I saw you earlier and you don’t look sick enough to be on this ward.”

    And there it was—the trigger again, the gift, the insight, the lightbulb moment:

    “Despite how bad I feel on the inside, I don’t look ill enough to have a brain tumor.”

    I didn’t look ill enough to the guy at Oxford Circus taking a selfie.

    I didn’t look ill enough to my friend.

    I didn’t look ill enough to the doctors who turned me away initially.

    And now I didn’t look ill enough for this lady’s expectations of who should be in a head trauma ward.

    I breathed into that pain. Into the feeling of not being seen. Of not being heard.  Of not being validated. Of feeling like a fraud, an imposter. Of not deserving to take up space. Of not trusting my experience.

    And when I found my center, I quietly replied, “Actually, I’m having surgery to remove a brain tumor tomorrow morning.”

    Her face fell, then she wished me luck and moved on.

    LESSON 4: Our triggers are our gifts.

    When we are triggered, it shows us what needs to heal.

    It was me who felt unworthy of taking up space. It was me who felt like a fraud. She was simply my mirror. It’s up to me to heal those aspects within myself and to believe that I’m worthy of taking up space—and to then take it.

    The next morning, my operation got pushed back. It was a major trauma hospital, and bigger emergencies took precedent. I engaged in mindfulness to stay centered.

    I did an hour of breathwork to calm my nervous system. I listened to uplifting music to raise my vibration. I watched emotionally safe movies to collect warm, fuzzy vibes. I drew on my iPad and alchemized my head tumor into a cute pea cartoon character—benign, polite, and cute, not threatening at all.

    A porter arrived at 5.30 p.m. and whisked me away for surgery. After weeks of surrendering to the unknown, it was now time for the ultimate surrender of any illusion of control. I took a deep breath as anesthetic filled my veins.

    LESSON 5: Surrender.

    We can’t always control what happens to us or the outcome. We can only control what happens inside of us and how we choose to show up. We take our power back when we lean into the unknown and surrender. When we resist our current reality, we suffer more.

    I woke up two hours later and got sick.

    My brain was rebalancing after months of increased head pressure. Clutching a blue plastic bag, I looked up to see one of London’s best neurosurgeons waving cheerfully at me. “Your operation is over. We used an endoscope. Minimal invasion. We think we got it all, and it’s not likely to come back.”

    Relief, nausea, and gratitude flowed in abundance.

    I dozed a little while morphine played tricks on my mind. Delicious little dreams filled my head, and I saw the world as one big, animated garden with flowers as cartoon characters.

    I giggled at the thought of plants acting as humans do and imagined an aggressive rose bush declaring war on all of the other plants and throwing bombs. It seemed ridiculous. Humans should be more like flowers, I thought—less ego, just growing, flourishing, blooming.

    I enjoyed this magical trip a little longer, a welcome respite from the hell of the last month, and eventually they wheeled me back to the ward.

    I arrived in time to see the sun setting across London from the twelfth floor.

    It was magnificent. Its beauty, color, and intensity moved my weary body to tears.

    A nurse came to check that I was okay, and I assured her that I was crying happy tears.

    I silently watched the sun as it made its final slip over the horizon, safe in the knowledge that I’d survived another day.

  • Don’t Wait to Open Your Heart: There Is Only Time For Love

    Don’t Wait to Open Your Heart: There Is Only Time For Love

    “Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.” ~Iain Thomas

    Looking back, my most cherished childhood memories can be traced back to my rosy mother.

    Intricate forts in the backyard with Spice Girls playing in the background. Sleepovers using Limited Too’s finest sparkly lotion, eyeshadow, and lip gloss. Rainy afternoons filled with friendship bracelets and Lisa Frank activity sheets. Children and teachers showing off their wild side at my mothers’ signature talent shows at the local theatre. Arts and crafts in a room surrounded by floral couches and mauve wallpaper. Flea market field trips to select the perfect charm bracelet. And, loads of buttery birthday cakes with the words Be With Your Dreams written all over them.

    Sadly, we grew apart during middle school when she abruptly uprooted our sunlit lives in exchange for a nomadic lifestyle. After traveling with her to two states, I grew tired of the “new kid” title and moved in with my father.

    With each of her subsequent moves, my resentment morphed into a towering boulder that blocked her love to seep through. Our tug-of-war relationship continued for six years into early adulthood.

    I still remember the day that everything changed.

    I was at a work conference when I received an unexpected call from her. I grudgingly called her back in a crowded hallway.

    “What?!” I said in a pompous tone.

    She whispered, “I’m so sorry to hound you but I need to tell you something. I have cancer. ”

    “What do you mean?” I said as my throat sealed.

    “I’ve been diagnosed with ovarian cancer—I am so sorry.”

    A few days later, I visited her home in Key West, Florida. I can still picture her galloping towards me as I exited the puddle-jumper. She had a mop of loose curls, a wide smile, torn army green cargo pants, and a swollen belly that resembled pregnancy.

    For the first time in years, we bonded without the heaviness of the future.

    We became giggly movie critics. We strolled the shoreline in search of magical conch shells. We frequented our favorite Cuban restaurant and oohed and aahed over zesty soup. We bought vintage aqua blue tea sets for future tea parties. We swapped stories that were once forgotten.

    Instead of cowering in embarrassment, I encouraged her roaring laugh in public. I embraced her hippy lifestyle as we basked in the sun, with Key Lime Pie sticks in hand. I co-directed one of her renowned talent shows featuring local YMCA kids. Her trailer became a treasure trove filled with wispy white pillows, the aroma of velvety hazelnut coffee, and new beginnings.

    With each day that passed, the towering boulder of resentment I once had dissipated into raw love.

    She didn’t have standard health insurance, but she saved black pilot whales in her free time. She didn’t have a steady job, but she made others smile as she sold handmade bottlecap jewelry at Mallory Square. You see—if you’re fixated on expectations of who someone should be according to your standards, you can’t love them for who they really are.

    My mother once wrote me:

    “Those stressful days are gone, and I don’t think I’ll ever see them again. I don’t have the meetings and high-powered days like I used to. I drift to work somehow gazing at the blazing sun, aqua blue ocean, hibiscus blossoms, and the marshmallow clouds. I wear island dresses in the endless cool breezes with my hair in a wet bun. Most of the time, I hide my bathing suit underneath it all so I can hit the beach right after.  I’m dreaming of my toes in the sand, laughing, giggling, and snoozing while listening to music and chirping birds. Remember, life is beautiful. You need to find your happy – promise?!

    My mother appreciated every moment, even if the highlight of her day was glancing through a window in a sterile hallway. She described the hospital’s cuisine as divine. Although she could barely walk, she somehow dragged her flimsy wheelchair through sand, just to inhale a whiff of the salty ocean air. And at every opportunity, she looked up at the clouds in awe of being alive.

    As her soft body turned into brittle bones, I learned the importance of her famous motto, Be With Your Dreams. She taught me how to live an idyllic life filled with nature, wonderment, and positivity. She proved that having a raw, openhearted approach to life was superior than any cookie-cutter mold I once envisioned for her.

    In my mother’s last days, she shared tenderly, “Britt, I think of how I left you behind sometimes. I know I wasn’t a perfect mother, but I’ve always loved you so much, baby girl.”

    I waited for that moment for fifteen years. And in that moment, I felt nothing. Zilch. Nada.

    Time was the only thing I longed for. As tears streamed down my face, I wondered how many more memories we would’ve had, had I learned to appreciate her for who she was years ago.

    Most of us wait to resolve our conflicts “later.” The unfortunate part is that minutes and days turn into months and years. There’s a good chance we’re missing out on a relationship right now that could change our entire lives. So…

    Open the door to your heart and choose love. Be kind instead of right. Remember the good times. Let go of pain disguised as indifference. Take responsibility for your part. Stop the judgment. Be the bigger person. Forgive the small things.

    For goodness sakes, say or do something! Pick up the phone. Write an apology letter. Drive to their house. Plan a trip. Text a nostalgic memory.

    Don’t you see… there’s only time for love. And, who knows—if you’re lucky enough, they might just show you how to Be With Your Dreams.

  • How To Keep Moving Forward When You Feel Like Shutting Down

    How To Keep Moving Forward When You Feel Like Shutting Down

    “I can’t believe what I’m managing to get through.” ~Frank Bruni

    My worst fear was inflicted upon me three months ago: a cancer diagnosis—non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Out of nowhere!

    Truth be told though, lots of awful things that happen to us come suddenly out of nowhere—a car accident, suicide, heart attack, and yes, a diagnostic finding. We’re stopped in our tracks, seemingly paralyzed as we go into shock and dissociative mode.

    My world as I knew it stopped. It became enclosed in the universe of illness—tiny and limited. I became one-dimensional—a sick patient.

    And I went into shock. To the point where I didn’t feel. As a person who values mental health and understands the importance of emotions, I seemingly stayed away from the feeling part. It wasn’t intentional; it’s how I coped.

    I dealt by mindlessly and mindfully (yes, that seems like an oxymoron) putting one foot in front of the other and doing what needed to be done, like a good soldier, plowing through the open minefields.  Actions and intentional mindset were my strategies.

    My biggest fear was: Will I make it through the treatments? What if I don’t?

    So I started reigning myself in to not let myself think too far ahead, down into the rabbit hole of fear and anxiety. Being a small person with no extra weight, I was scared of the chemo crushing me. Terror would rear its head when I allowed these thoughts to enter my thin body. What if I shrivel up and die? What if I can’t do it?

    And so my mind work began. I became very intentional about putting up that stop sign in my head so as not to get ahead of myself and project into the unknown, scary future. I began taking everything one step at a time.

    I stop now and digress. I had been in the depths of despair and darkness when, many years ago, my middle daughter, Nava, was diagnosed with lifelong neurological disabilities.

    I had a noose of bitterness and anger pulled so tightly around my neck that I couldn’t even go to the park with her. My envy of the other babies who could sit up and start to climb out of their strollers was too much for me to bear; to the point where I stopped going to the playground.

    My therapy at the time was a life-saver and helped me move from the unanswerable “why me/why her?” questions to the “how” and “what”: how to carry on with a major disappointment and blow, toward creating new expectations and goals, and what to do with this to still build a good life.

    Changing the questions helped me cope and move forward. This has served me well in other challenges throughout the years, such as my divorce and Nava’s critical medical issues years later, for which she was hospitalized for a year.

    So with the cancer diagnosis, I went to the “how” and “what.” How can I deal with this in as best a way as possible? What can I do to optimize my coping skills? How can I minimize my anxiety and fear?

    Having studied positive psychology, resiliency-building, and mindfulness, I’ve gleaned some tools over the years that are serving me now through my personal medical crisis.

    Let’s look at a few.

    Anxiety and Staying Present

    We know anxiety is caused by worry of the future. So staying present is key. Working on our mind to be in the moment and not spiral outward is crucial. I know my PET scan is coming up, and I’m naturally anxious about the results. I tell myself to take today and make it as good as possible and not think about the end of the week. There’s a lot of intentional work that goes into controlling the mind.

    And when we spiral, as we humans naturally do, we allow for that too. “Permission to be human,” as positive psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar states. The important thing is bringing ourselves back. It’s not that we don’t go to dark places; it’s that we notice it and don’t linger and get sucked down into it. We recognize it and can pull ourselves out of it.

    Expansion

    Once the shock and horror of illness begins to settle and we see some pattern or predictability, we can look to expand our identity and role beyond a sick person, or in my case, a cancer/chemo patient. I begin to step outside myself, my illness, toward others and other things that are important to me.

    Connecting with who you are beyond your sickness opens you up and reminds you of the bigger You. We are more than our difficult circumstance.

    I always remember Morrie Schwartz in the book Tuesdays With Morrie—how he cried each morning (as he was dying from ALS) and was then available and present for all his visitors, to be of help and service to them.

    So I reach out to a couple of clients to offer sessions during my seemingly better weeks (in between treatments). I create some (generic) social media posts. I haven’t gone personal with this online, so this blog post is a big (public) deal.

    Meaning in Your Life

    Doing things that are meaningful, however small, and that make you feel good is a sure way to stay engaged and moving. It’s the ordinary things that keep us going. Since I love colors, I wake up and match up colorful clothing and makeup (unless I’m too weak), as that makes me feel good.

    Nature and beauty are my greatest sources of soothing and healing. When I feel okay, I go to a park, sit by the water/ocean, and visit gardens, just get outside and look at the expansive sky.

    I deal with my indoor and outdoor plants. I cut off the dead heads, water them, take some pictures, and check on the veges. This represents growth and beauty.

    I get inspiration and uplift from words, and love non-fiction books of people transcending their adversities. I read, underline, and reach out to authors.

    And I learn. I started a creativity class with someone I actually found on this site. I figure it’s a good time to incorporate creativity and natural healing.

    What infuses your life with meaning? What is important to you? What expands you? Who are you beyond your difficult situation?

    Response and Choice

    Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist, logotherapist (therapy of meaning and purpose), and author of the renowned book Man’s Search For Meaning, is instrumental in the foundational concept that it’s not our circumstances that define us but rather our response to our situations that determine who we are and who we become.

    “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

    And another one: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

    These ideas have been life-changing for me and propel me to avoid an all-too-easy passive and victim-like mentality.

  • How to Thrive in Life after Surviving Cancer

    How to Thrive in Life after Surviving Cancer

    “Have a little faith in your ability to handle whatever’s coming down the road. Believe that you have the strength and resourcefulness required to tackle whatever challenges come your way. And know that you always have the capacity to make the best of anything. Even if you didn’t want it or ask for it, even if it seems scary or hard or unfair, you can make something good of any loss or hardship. You can learn from it, grow from it, help others through it, and maybe even thrive because of it. The future is unknown, but you can know this for sure: Whatever’s coming, you got this.” ~Lori Deschene

    Isn’t it amazing how some days are etched in your mind forever and other days are just lost in the wind? One day that is etched in my mind forever is December 27, 2006. This is the day I was told I had breast cancer. While breast cancer is common, being twenty-six years old with breast cancer isn’t that common.

    So here I was, twenty-six years old with breast cancer saying to myself, “Well f*ck, that sure throws off the plans I had for basically anything.” I quickly fell into fear, worry, and “why me?”. I will spare you the details of treatment; it wasn’t any fun. I lost my hair and my dignity and fell into depression when life returned to “normal.”

    Whatever normal is, I was living it. However, nothing was normal. I didn’t know how to live without a doctor’s appointment to go to. I mean, all I wanted was an end to the endless appointments and here I was without them, and I couldn’t figure out what to do.

    So, I took lots of naps because I was exhausted, or so I thought. Well, it turns out I wasn’t exhausted; I was depressed. I was alone with thoughts of wondering when my cancer would come back. I was sucked into a pit of despair that I had never seen before. Who was I becoming? The person who sat in their pajamas all day while I worked from home—yep, that was me.

    I wanted to scream, “I survived cancer, now what?” Where was the manual on how to live after cancer? Who helps me get back to living? I just go back to what I was doing, as if nothing happened? I was tired of saying to myself, “But I’m supposed to feel better, right?”

    As the stream of appointments, scans, lab draws, and phone calls from friends and family continued to slow, I tried hard to be well and remain optimistic. Continue doing my job, walking the dogs, and dragging myself to the gym. Life just didn’t seem real, and depression overwhelmed me for days or weeks at a time. A quick nap turned into a four-hour slumber; my physical body was healing, and my mental body was spiraling downward.

    The difficulty of shifting back to life was not what I expected, and thank goodness for friends. My dear friend Rebecca asked if I wanted to run a half-marathon, but my visceral reaction was no. Then I learned the race took place one year to the date after I finished chemo, so I thought, “Heck yea, take that cancer!” It was perfect timing. One foot in front of the other, I trained for my first half-marathon.

    I kept myself going by trying to run when I could. Running was my go-to mental health fix pre-cancer, and it was starting to work post-cancer too. I remember there were days when I would drag myself to run and come back home in minutes. Then there were days I felt like I had superpowers and it felt so good.

    Rebecca and I crossed that finish line, hand in hand, and celebrated with margaritas and Mexican food, my other go-to mental health fixes.

    So why do I feel inclined to share my story? It’s not just about cancer, depression, running, and margaritas. It’s about making something good come from something bad. 

    Cancer taught me a lot of things. The biggest lesson was to control what I could. That looked like taking a long way home instead of sitting in traffic, not getting worked up about long lines in the grocery store, taking risks like rock climbing in Utah, trying new things like fly fishing in the mountains of North Carolina, singing in my car on the way to work to pump myself up for the day, going on camping trips with my girlfriends, and leaving behind a soul-sucking career.

    I can’t say I am exactly happy I had cancer, but I can’t imagine life without it. It’s a love/hate relationship. Looking back, it was an opportunity for growth and learning that I can do hard things. It was a reminder to focus on being truly alive.

    There is not a guidebook for cancer survivors, no way to time travel to the person you were before your diagnosis, no way to return your body unscathed, or quick way to restore your trust in your body again.  It’s a journey that you must figure out for yourself, one minute, hour, and day at a time.

    You must accept what has happened and discover a new self.

    I learned more in the year after cancer than I had in the previous twenty-six years. You don’t need a cancer journey to do this.

    Life is short; learn to live life to the fullest. However, if cancer is part of your journey back to living, you are not alone in your quest to learn to live again. You can do this. One tiny step at a time, you will learn to truly live again. You will stumble back and take huge leaps forward.

    You can have a life full of purpose, happiness, gratitude, and adventure. Don’t merely survive cancer, thrive after cancer! What are you waiting for? Let’s do this.

  • The Beauty in Her Baldness: Why My Mother Was Still Radiant with Cancer

    The Beauty in Her Baldness: Why My Mother Was Still Radiant with Cancer

    “Beauty doesn’t come from physical perfection. It comes from the light in our eyes, the spark in our hearts, and the radiance we exude when we’re comfortable enough in our skin to focus less on how we look and more on how we love.” ~Lori Deschene

    For as long as I can remember, my mom had long shiny silky black hair down to her knees. It was magical in the way that it attracted people and inspired curiosity and connection.

    Everywhere we went, strangers approached her, usually timidly at first with a brief compliment, and then, after receiving her signature friendly head nod and open smile, they relaxed and the questions and comments would pour in as if an unspoken invitation to connect was made and accepted.

    “How long did it take you to grow your hair?”

    “How long does it take to wash it?”

    “It must take forever to dry.”

    “Can I touch it?”

    “Wow, it feels like silk! Annie, come feel her hair!”

    “Does it ever get caught in anything?”

    “You must spend a lot of money on shampoo.”

    Regardless of the comments or the duration of the conversation, everyone always walked away smiling, their step a little livelier, as if the world had suddenly become a better place.

    My mom has a warm, open aura about her. When we’re out in public, she has a way of making people feel instantly valued and appreciated. My sisters and I call it “mom’s juju,” some kind of mystical power that brings out the good in everyone and everything.

    She makes eye contact with strangers and if someone doesn’t avert their eyes away quickly, she nods her head slightly, as if bowing down to them in respect, and offers them a big, generous smile that immediately warms them, causing them to smile back.

    She has a radiant inner happy glow that’s contagious, and over my fifty years of knowing her, I’ve witnessed people shift from closed off and rigid to open and free in a swift, instantaneous moment. It’s almost as if they’ve suddenly been released by a heavy clamp that was holding them down and they stand up taller, happier, lighter… even if only for a moment.

    Mom’s juju makes people come alive.

    It’s ironic that she’s an introvert like me, and I often think about this when I’m out in public.

    I confess that I go into “robot mode” where I forget I’m human and that everyone around me are humans too. I usually do this when I’m short on time and have a specific, focused goal, like grocery shopping.

    I avoid eye contact and deliberately close off my energy, especially when I don’t want to be approached, bothered with small talk, or exchange energy with others. I just want to shop; I don’t want to connect, chat, or stay any longer than it takes me to get my food and leave.

    But my mom, she’s different. She reminds me that I love people and enjoy connecting with them too. She reminds me that it’s more important to connect soul to soul, human to human, than to check off that next thing on my to-do list. She reminds me of the true meaning of the word, “Namaste,” and is the living, breathing embodiment of it.

    The divine in me sees the divine in you.

    When she nods her head upon greeting someone, she’s bowing to the divine in the other person.

    Most people think she’s bowing because it’s an Asian tradition, but to my mom, it’s more than a rote action imposed by a tradition, it’s a gesture of genuine love and respect because she truly does recognize the divine in everyone. And in her recognition of them, they too recognize it in themselves, even if only for a moment, even if they can’t explain it or understand it. They feel different after having the exchange with her.

    My mom’s hair was often the icebreaker for this exchange. It provided an opening for people to approach her.

    Like the sirens in Greek mythology whose singing lured unwary sailors on to the rocks, her hair lured people into a glimpse of their own divinity. They thought they were drawn to her hair, but they were drawn to their own beauty and divinity inside them. The hair was just the seductive song.

    No one knew this, of course, not even my mom.

    To my mom, her hair became something that defined her and her beauty. In a world that has the capacity to tear down anyone’s value, my mom’s hair made her feel unique, exotic, special.

    She enjoyed the attention that people lavished on her hair, and eventually, her self-worth became wrapped up in it, in the same way she would wrap her hair around her neck several times when she was cold.

    In late 2011, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.

    Beyond the fear of dying, my mom said that the idea of losing her hair was more difficult than having cancer, and she visualized not only surviving cancer, but surviving it with all her hair intact, despite what the doctors and nurses said.

    If anything could break the rules of science and chemotherapy induced hair loss, we thought, mom’s juju could.

    But after several weeks of chemo, her beautiful long hair started falling out in clumps. It left bald spots that made her look even more sickly and frail, and we realized there are some things mom’s positive juju couldn’t affect.

    Cancer has a way of ravaging you and it doesn’t care who you are or how you feel about it

    On one ceremonious and tearful morning, my mom surrendered to cancer’s command and asked my oldest sister to shave her head.

    It was an emotional, traumatic, and beautiful moment of loss, acceptance, and renewal, all swirled into one, as she watched her hair fall from her head onto the floor, piece by piece, like pieces of her identity falling away from her, and in its place, something different.

    Something clean and pure and unhidden.

    She looked in the mirror and saw herself for the first time—the person she was without the thing that she’d thought made her, well, HER. There was a bald woman staring back at her and she looked even more special, unique, and beautiful.

    I don’t know what my mom was expecting to see after losing her hair. Perhaps there was a part of her that didn’t expect to see anything, as if once she lost her hair, she’d somehow cease to exist. Her identity had been so entwined with her hair that she thought she might be gone too, once the hair was gone.

    But she wasn’t. She was still there. She survived.

    This realization freed my mom. She no longer wrapped her identity (and uniqueness and beauty) around her hair. Cancer made sure of that, it had given her no choice. Any illusion of an old, outworn identity had been swept away with the dead hair on the floor and tossed in the trash.

    She found her new identity—an identity that was based off her inner beauty, not her outer beauty. She discovered she was unique and beautiful without it, and she radiated an inner knowing of this so much so that people started complimenting her on her baldness.

    And she responded with the same signature head nod and grin, but this time, as a free woman, no longer bound by physical illusions of beauty.

    She had become truly free.

    This was the gift of mom’s cancer.

    Cancer has a way of ravaging your false identities and reminding you of what’s real and true.

    Now, eleven years later and cancer free, my mom’s hair has grown back. It’s not the same as it once was, thick and shiny black silk. It’s now thin and gray.

    But a renewed person has emerged, with an even more powerful and radiant juju, and the beauty inside her shines brighter than ever.

  • Toxic Masculinity and the Harmful Standards We’re All Expected to Meet

    Toxic Masculinity and the Harmful Standards We’re All Expected to Meet

    Recently I woke up uncharacteristically early for a Saturday to meet a friend and her baby for coffee. I am embarrassed to say that by “uncharacteristically early” I mean 8:30am, which is not that early. I get it.

    As I walked by two chipper twenty-something-year-old girls in skintight leggings either in route to or on their way back from a workout class, I found my mind reeling.

    Why is it that I see so many more women in New York City whenever I wake up early on the weekends? Why do they seem so much more productive than men?

    I first noticed this trend when I graduated from college. I would be out way too late at a local watering hole and overhear a couple girlfriends talking about their plans to wake up in six hours and meet for a workout class. My only plans for the next day were to sleep in till noon and order a bagel (with scallion cream cheese, obviously).

    Reflecting today, I noticed that this tiny, little behavioral difference is so emblematic of society’s varying expectations of men and women.

    Toxic masculinity has bred men to be the life of the party. Drink hard. Smoke cigarettes. Do drugs. Be indomitable. This behavior always necessitates sleeping in to recover afterward and lower productivity.

    For women, on the other hand, there is more of an emphasis on looks, composure, and output. Essentially, on being perfect.

    This may sound misogynistic, backward, and antiquated, but unfortunately, these expectations still affect our society, though they are slowly changing. And the result is not very positive for men or women.

    Women often burn the candle at both ends, affecting their stress levels and happiness, while men try to be tough and unbridled, which often leads in behaviors that are severely damaging to physical and mental health. In fact, toxic masculinity is often linked to why men have a shorter life expectancy than women.

    Looking at these two women this morning, I felt a twinge of envy. I wish I was more of a morning person. I wish I took my fitness so seriously. I wish I was more productive. But I suspected I was zeroing in on the perceived positive side effects of the expectations of women.

    Perhaps these girls were extremely tired from the night before and trying to please everyone and do it all and look beautiful and never complain. Or, perhaps, they did not go out and genuinely are morning people. Perhaps this is simply their way of practicing self-care. Why must I try to define them?

    Nevertheless, I did feel envious. I am still unlearning habits formed at an early age.

    In high school, when I was closeted and trying to fit in, I found one of the easiest ways to do so was to drink. Even more, I would be rewarded for drinking heavily. It was a demonstration of my masculinity. Even worse, the escapism that this provided me from the haunting mental occupation with my sexuality made alcohol even more seductive and compounded the drinking. The habit was forming, the instructions clear. I should drink a lot. The benefits are endless.

    What they don’t talk about is the anxiety and laziness that is birthed from a lifestyle of partying to prove something. Most of my twenties, I would waste my weekends and leisure time imbibing like it was the night before the apocalypse, then feeling sad the next few days. I was stuck in this cycle.

    It took getting cancer to become more reflective on these feelings of depression, due in large part to drinking, to cut alcohol out of my life. And the difference is major. My productivity has skyrocketed. (Though, I still decidedly am not a morning person).

    Seeing these thin, legging-clad women bright and early brought me back to my twenties. Reminded me of this toxicity that I am unlearning. Reminded me that I have made changes, and that it is okay not to live up to the standards someone else put on me. But this morning also reminded me that women have it no easier in terms of what society asks of them. The grass is always greener.

    We all need to come to the middle and find some balance. These expectations on everyone are too much. We all need to define what is meaningful for ourselves—this should not be up to society.

    Who knew Lululemon could trigger me so much?

  • How I Get Through Hard Times Using Curiosity, Compassion, and Challenge

    How I Get Through Hard Times Using Curiosity, Compassion, and Challenge

    “Sometimes the worst things that happen in our lives put us on the path to the best things that will ever happen to us.” ~Unknown

    Until I was thirty-seven, I thought I’d led a pretty charmed life: I had a supportive family and good friends, I’d done well academically, always got the jobs I’d applied for, and met and married the perfect man for me.

    In 2013, when I was thirty-five weeks pregnant with my second child, I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. My baby was induced at thirty-seven weeks, and my chemo started ten days later. In a funny way I was relieved; Okay, I thought, I’ve been seriously lucky up until now that no one has been ill in my life, so if I can survive this, then this is as bad as it gets.

    And that year was bad—moving home, caring for a toddler and a newborn, and going through aggressive cancer treatment was horrendous, but I hunkered down, tried not to think too much about it, and survived.

    In December 2014, literally as we were clinking champagne glasses to celebrate my all-clear results, my husband had a devastating call from his mum in New Zealand. She had just been diagnosed with a rare and incurable cancer. Early the following year my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer, and my mother-in-law died that spring.

    It was at this point I started to feel weighed down with a heaviness. This wasn’t the deal… I’d taken the cancer hit for the team, everyone else was supposed to stay well. I started to lose my trust in the world.

    My urge to control everything and everyone around me, which I now realize I have had since childhood, went into overdrive. I became fearful of change and made list upon list to organize and reorganize my life until I had anticipated everything that might go wrong and put things in place to deal with it.

    My brave dad endured a variety of invasive and aggressive treatments, but his health continued to decline. I could not control what was happening or the sense of loss and grief that at times I felt were swamping me.

    Something had to change: I started journaling, yoga, and meditation. Slowly I felt my anxiety and my panicked grip on my life begin to lessen. I looked inward and I started to notice familiar feelings and patterns, recognized myself responding to roles and labels that I no longer felt to be true.

    There were shifts; very, very small shifts, but with two small children, a husband working long hours, and a dad with rapidly declining health, even small shifts made a difference to my capacity to cope.

    Toward the middle of 2015 my husband started to get awful headaches, nausea, and dizzy spells. He was in a very stressful job, so decided to leave work at the beginning of 2016 to get his health back and decide what he really wanted to do with his life. However, in the spring of 2016 he was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor. At that stage my children were three and five.

    The next couple of years were consumed by medical appointments for my dad and my husband, alongside the busyness that goes hand in hand with raising young children, but I continued my inner work. I examined my feelings. Was that really how I felt? Had I felt that way before? What helped then, what might help now? Is the story I’m telling myself about this true? What do I need right now?

    In spring 2018 my dad died, in spring 2019 my husband died, and in spring 2020 the UK went into its first lockdown due to Covid-19.

    Every year since 2014 I’ve said to myself, well surely the worst has happened, this year has to be better, and yet each year something else monumental and life-changing has happened. The past seven years have been relentless, and at times I have been overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for the people I love most in the world.

    People used to hear my story open mouthed and ask, “How do you cope?” I would reply in a way designed to brush them off, remove their focus of attention, and minimize my pain by saying, “Oh well, you know, you just deal with what life throws at you.” I knew that this wasn’t true, but a flippant reply was easier than the truth. After years of continual inner work however, this is my honest reply:

    To boost your resilience, to heal, and to ultimately thrive you have to be prepared to turn over the picture-perfect patchwork quilt of your outer life that you present to the world and take a good look at the messy stiches on the underside.

    You need to be prepared to look at the messiest of those stiches and painstakingly unpick them so that you can find the knots, the tangles, and the imperfections. It’s only when you connect with your authentic self that you’re able to respond to your unique needs in times of crisis and learn what you need to do to foster your own resilience.

    The way of doing this will be different for everyone, but if I could boil it down to one pithy statement it would be to always keep in awareness the 3 C’s: curiosity, compassion, and challenge.

    Here are some ways I’ve applied this in the last seven years to help me, and perhaps these ideas might help you too.

    Allow your feelings.

    Other people are allowed to feel uncomfortable about this, but that is not your responsibility. Your responsibility is to embrace your emotions so you can process them and work through them instead of repressing, denying, or numbing them with substances and distractions.

    In my life this idea of numbing or distracting has taken shape in many ways. One is the compulsion to check my phone rather than sit with feelings of restlessness, boredom, or uncertainty. Sometimes I find myself opening my fridge or cupboard, not because I’m hungry, but because I’m anxious or agitated.

    Recently, I’ve needed to work on sitting with my feelings when I say “no” to someone and worry there will be painful repercussions if I don’t keep other people happy.

    These are all hugely uncomfortable realizations, but offer an opportunity to spot patterns—do I always reach for food after a specific event, do I always reach for my phone when I feel a certain way in my body?

    Once I’ve shown a curiosity about my choices, I can have understanding and compassion for why and challenge myself to do something else. Instead of food can I do some rounds of a breathing exercise? Instead of the phone can I practice some simple yoga poses? Can I pause before saying “yes” to something I know won’t serve me and think of the times I’ve said “no” and there haven’t been negative repercussions?

    Key questions here are: What do I really need, what am I afraid of, and how can I soothe my threat system in that moment before reacting?

    Put your needs first.

    I learned that however much I was needed by other people (and with a dying dad, a dying husband, and two small children I was needed a lot), I had to start the day knowing that at some point I was going to make time to put my needs first.

    Sometimes that was getting up early to enjoy a hot chocolate in peace, often it was taking some quiet time in nature. I joined a gym with a pool because swimming is something I find hugely supportive for my mental health, and I joined an online yoga site as I no longer had the lengthy chunks of time I needed to get to a class in person.

    Embrace ritual and routine.

    Decision fatigue contributes massively to how overwhelmed I can become; routines provide a secure framework for my family to feel supported and give me more energy for the unexpected things that life inevitably throws at me.

    My routine includes:

    • Planning my week ahead on a Sunday—I have a simple document with columns for appointments, reminders, to-do list, and well-being
    • Putting out school clothes and making lunches the night before
    • Having a grocery delivery booked in for the same day and time each week
    • Menu planning and pre-preparing simple meals for the nights of the week that I know will be busy or I am working late

    Put together a well-being toolkit.

    Explore ideas and suggestions that you might find supportive, but don’t feel beholden to it. You don’t need to use all of the tools all of the time. Learning to listen to what you need in the moment (and giving yourself permission to act on it!) is really empowering.

    My well-being toolkit includes…

    • Breathing exercises
    • Journaling
    • Yoga
    • Reading
    • Running
    • Meeting friends for tea
    • Trying out new recipes
    • Sitting still—either meditating, focusing on my breath, or just letting my mind wander

    Build a supportive team around you and know their individual strengths.

    No one person can deliver everything you need. Manage your expectations about what each treasured person can bring to your life and learn who to go to for what.

    Challenge the narratives, expectations, and labels in your life (my 3 C’s).

    Do they still serve you or feel true; where do they come from; what do you need in order to let some of them go

    There were ways I perceived myself and labels others had given me that only addressed the way I presented myself outwardly. By turning over the quilt and looking at the stiches that made up these labels with curiosity and compassion I was able to challenge them.

    For example, am I really “standoffish,” or is that just my defense against crippling social anxiety? Am I really “bossy,” or am I just frightened of how unsafe the world will feel if I lose control? Am I really “capable” or just terrified of asking for help and being rejected?

    I would never suggest this is a simple process, and reaching even a modicum of self-awareness is a daily and never-ending challenge for me. There are no black-and-white answers, so it’s important to become accepting of living in the grey area.

    Ultimately, I believe that approaching each day, every response, every feeling with curiosity invites compassion and understanding, which helps us challenge and address underlying insecurities and outdated narratives that keep us down and stuck.

    Supporting ourselves to see beyond the labels, roles, and responsibilities layered on through our lives allows for the possibility of the emergence of the authentic self.

    This is a work in progress, I am a work in progress, and always will be.

    Some days I am overwhelmed with sadness, a heavy heart, and a sense of loss; some days I awaken already infused with a sense of gratitude and joy. Every day, however, I wake up prepared to be curious and interested, to approach all interactions with myself and others with compassion, and to do what I can to challenge thoughts and beliefs that I don’t want to take into my future. I just know that next year will be a better year.

  • When Life Gets Hard: 4 Lessons That Eased My Suffering

    When Life Gets Hard: 4 Lessons That Eased My Suffering

    “In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.” ~Viktor Frankl

    When life goes sideways, it can be hard to take one more breath, let alone find meaning.

    Trust me. I know.

    In the same year, I had breast cancer, chemo, radiation, and a divorce I didn’t want. There’s more to the story (there always is), but in essence, I lost everything—my health, my love, my home.

    During all of this, I lost sight of myself, quit trusting myself. I was sure I was to blame for everything.

    At the same time, within twenty-four hours of leaving the house I loved, six friends had given me the keys to their houses, telling me I always had a place to stay. My family showed up for me in ways that had me weeping.

    Also during this time, I had two powerful dreams and one still small voice—these three messengers told me the very things I needed to hear to go on.

    My first dream involved someone cooking something delicious in a kitchen. I couldn’t eat what she was making, because taste often goes awry with chemo, but I remember the cook saying, “Honey, there’s more sugar than salt in this recipe.”

    In other words, life’s sweetness would return. Just give it time.

    The second dream I had is that I dropped deep into the earth where every last bit of me was burned away. All that was left was a fierce and shining bone.

    This dream promised me that there was something deep inside that was indestructible, and it had everything to do with fierceness and light.

    And that still small voice? No matter what was happening, deep inside there was this wise and quiet Me who refused to let me be hurt anymore. What do I mean by that?

    I knew I needed something to help me survive, but this grounded Me knew I needed to be intentional about how I chose to survive. Because I wanted to make myself better, not worse.

    I began to write and record mini-meditations. I called them “A Hit of Hope.” A friend told me that the best place to record was in a closet, so there I sat, on top of my shoes, talking into my phone—using my voice and my words to name my pain and to convince myself that things would get better.

    Any human being will have pain and trauma. Any human being will have things happen to them that they would rather avoid. But as long as we are alive, we can know that life will go sideways. In big and small ways, we will suffer. So as much as it pains me to say this, why suffering happens is irrelevant. The only question we can answer for ourselves is how we will choose to be in the midst of pain and suffering.

    While there are still days when the bus of emotions can run me down, and while I have made more than my fair share of missteps in my recent journey, I have learned a few things along the way.

    1. When there are big, and out-of-control life events, radical self-love and emotional recovery are the first order of business.

    When you are hurting, put down the metaphorical gas can or salt or knives. Don’t make the fire any bigger or the wounds any deeper than they already are.

    What do I mean by that? Make choices that keep your head clear, choices that keep your body and spirit safe.

    For instance, a friend of mine, who was going through a divorce at the same time, was told by his best friend, “Just get roaring drunk, and stay that way for three months.” While that might help numb the pain, that kind of behavior would only create more problems in the long run. It would be far more healing to embrace journaling, yoga, or some other form of self-care.

    Also, even if you messed up, don’t beat yourself up. Can you admit to how you contributed to the situation? Absolutely, but think of yourself like a kid on the playground. More scolding and finger wagging usually does little to help the situation. Often, it’s a big ol’ hug that is needed to stop the tears. So, get centered, get settled, and heap loads of love on your hurting self.

    2. You get to feel every ounce of what you are feeling.

    Do not be ashamed of your feelings. A Buddhist concept relates to this: first and second darts. The first dart is the emotion (sadness, fear, anger), and because we are human, it is right and good to let those emotions flow through us.

    The second dart is our reaction to our emotion. Why do I always do this? If I were a better person, I’d… You know the drill. Feel your feelings, so that they can rise up and flow away, leaving you calm and clear.

    3. There is no time to lose, but there is no need to hurry.

    What in the heck does that mean? That bold statement doesn’t mean you should fly into manic or panic mode, but there is nothing like a life-threatening illness to remind a person that this now matters. In fact, this is the only now you are assured of getting. “You never know what’s coming,” a friend often says.

    The idea is to live each day fully. To make the small choices, the day-to-day decisions that bring you the most joy, the most delight. This might mean starting that novel or business, calling that friend you’ve been missing, getting on your bike or yoga mat, or climbing that mountain and yodeling until the grizzlies roar back in response.

    Simply put, there is not one day, one decision that will magically poof us to the good life for the rest of time. There are the small choices that add up—and either bring us toward more wholeness or continue to tear us to bits.

    4. Meaning is what helps us to survive.

    This last one is something Viktor Frankl, a survivor of four Nazi death camps, pointed out. In the worst of the worst, it can feel almost impossible to find meaning, but doing so is essential. It’s here that the why matters.

    When life assails, it can be easy to ask, “What’s the point?” To feel adrift. Untethered. Rocked this way and that by wind and wave, all threatening to pull you under.

    You have to find your why, your meaning, your sense of purpose or intention. What can you—you—do that makes life feel fuller, richer, more vibrant and alive?

    For me, it was helpful to think about active verbs. I wanted to move, create, heal, serve.

    What did this look like? I would work out each morning, because that helped me to feel strong in my own body. Then I would sit down and write my meditations, getting lost in the joy of doing something creative. This process not only healed my own struggling spirit, but I hoped it might do so for others. When I posted them, I did so with the intention of letting them serve others.

    If you have a hard time finding your own sense of meaning, take a look at your life. What do you do that makes you lose time, something you get lost in? That’s often a great indication of what brings you meaning. Or what is something you do that makes you feel better when you are done? How can you incorporate that into your life more?

    If you are still struggling, ask a friend to help you brainstorm. Or take a walk, and let your mind wander along with your feet. Your spirit often just needs some time, space, and quiet to speak deeply to you.

    This might sound like fluffy advice, but it’s not. As Frankl famously said, “He [or she or they] who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

    To be clear, this isn’t easy, nor does it happen in a day, a week, a month, or even a year. But create the right conditions and good things are far more likely to come.

    Last week, I happened to be sitting on my front porch. When I got up to go inside and make myself tea, I noticed my orchid in the front window.

    A friend gave it to me before I started chemo. Every morning, I look at it as I sit inside and write, but this was the first time I’d seen it from the outside. From this new perspective, I could see a gathering of buds, pressed up against the window, the direction from which the light comes.

    The soon-to-be blossoms were hidden entirely by the pot and the leaves when I sat inside in my leather chair.

    That orchid offered me a message, just like my dreams. Those flowers showed me a deep and profound truth: sometimes, the blossoming is on the other side.

  • How Beating Cancer Helped Me Stop Being a People-Pleaser

    How Beating Cancer Helped Me Stop Being a People-Pleaser

    “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” ~Pema Chadron

    The hardest part of hearing the words, “I’m sorry, but you have cancer” at the age of thirty was knowing I had to tell my mother and my husband.

    Why?

    Not because I was afraid of their reaction, although it would be especially heightened since my father had died of cancer three years prior, but because I was going to take on a role I had never experienced before: a patient.

    For me, being a patient equaled being dependent. Someone who was needy and required others to change their lives to accommodate them. That wasn’t me at all.

    I was a people-pleaser. A self-sacrificer. An empath who could feel the emotions of my family members and worked hard to avoid adding to their stress. 

    I spent my entire life making things easier for those around me. I never complained. I didn’t ask for anything. I willingly gave up my desires to make other people happy.

    I built my life around the premise that I could handle everything on my own; but suddenly, my “I’m fine, don’t worry about me,” mantra was about to change.

    As a young mother with two children under the age of three, I knew that I was going to need help during my cancer treatments. And that fact was more terrifying than my diagnosis.

    Growing up, my family never had any money. My mom and dad worked opposite shifts to avoid paying for daycare, and many times, it was just me and my two older brothers fending for ourselves.

    While I never went hungry, I didn’t always have a lot of food options. I remember the days of powdered milk and wearing my brother’s old, ragged clothes.

    As an empath, I could feel the strain on my parents as they tried to make ends meet. So I learned to be quiet. Shrink down. Not make waves. No milk for cereal? Okay, I’ll just use water. Cold? I’ll just wear my winter coat in the house. I became so good at being “easy,” it became part of my identity.

    “Oh, Natalie never gives us any trouble at all” was something I took as a compliment. It was overwhelming, but over time being a people pleaser became an intrinsic part of me.

    As I grew older, life became a little easier. I got a job, started making my own money, and my parents respected my independence. More importantly, I was able to leave my people-pleasing practices behind for a little while. I went to college, then graduate school, and became a psychologist helping others live better lives.

    I was a helper, which is a more acceptable way to channel my people-pleasing lifestyle. And it worked well to keep my people-pleasing at bay. Until I became a mother.

    When I had children, my husband and I made the decision that I would stay home to raise them. While blessed to have this choice, it reawakened my people-pleasing tendencies.

    In my mind, since I was the one who stayed home, I needed to make everything as easy as possible for my husband, since he was the one going to work. All the night feedings, the diaper changes, the baths, even while recovering from complicated c-sections, my automatic response was, “I got it.”

    When my husband would interject, I would remind him how he needed sleep because he had to go to work, reply that I wasn’t tired, or that it was “faster,” if I did it.

    Was I tired? Yes. Did I sleep during the day? Anyone who has children knows the answer to that one. But that’s all I knew—how to make it easier for everyone else so I could avoid feeling their emotions. 

    When my cancer diagnosis threatened to remove my ability to handle everything on my own, I fought hard against it. I drove myself to my testing appointments, refused any support group or counseling; and I would probably have driven myself to my mastectomy and chemotherapy appointments if they would have allowed it.

    Others called me “strong,” and “stoic,” but I felt confused to hear that until my mother asked me, “Where did you learn that you have to do everything on your own? What is that about?” I shrugged; it was just how I was wired.

    Thankfully, my cancer journey passed quickly, and I was back into my routine in a few short months. I was healthy and immersed in raising children.

    Yet I started to think about my mother’s question and wonder why I consistently refused help from anyone.

    It took a few years and a lot of reading and soul searching, but I came to realize that my empathic abilities were more than just understanding how others feel, but feeling how others feel. And my people-pleasing practices were attempts to remove any feelings of discomfort from my loved ones.

    I wasn’t living authentically for myself; I was living for others. And it was time for a change. 

    Here are five ways that I transitioned from people-pleasing to self-caring:

    1. I learned about boundaries.

    Setting boundaries is one of the most helpful and basic activities that one can do to interrupt the people-pleasing process. I started to tune into my body and notice when I felt uncomfortable, whether it’s how I was being treated or if someone was asking something of me. Those were good indicators that a boundary was needed.

    2. I practiced saying no.

    I always tell my children that just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you need to.

    3. I did some self-exploration.

    My kids would ask me “What’s your favorite food?” Or “What’s your favorite color?” and I could never answer. Why? Because I was so used to going along to get along that I never developed favorites or even a basic sense of what I truly liked and didn’t like.

    4. I started journaling.

    I utilized writing to help me learn about myself. Who am I without a relationship with anyone else? I asked myself questions, listed my wants/desires, and started taking small steps towards achieving those goals.

    5. I was gentle with myself.

    I understand this is a process. I am still in recovery, but now I have the awareness to recognize when I am struggling with wanting to please others rather than myself.

    Ultimately, transitioning from people-pleasing to self-caring enabled me to become stronger, not only for myself but also for the people I care about most. It wasn’t easy to break free from the ways that I had adapted to my childhood circumstances.

    I had to rewire my brain, step by step and it’s still a process. It’s ironic that not having a choice with cancer is what ultimately gave me the freedom to change.