| When first diagnosed with breast cancer, it didn’t even occur to me that it was something I needed to fight. The “war on cancer” declared in 1971 wasn’t part of my perception. Eight years earlier it might have been but 7 years before my diagnosis my life took a drastic jump down the rabbit hole, so to speak, into another paradigm. In learning to surrender and trust in my spiritual intuitive voice I was able to understand the meaning of letting go and understanding faith that came from the heart versus the ego.
Fighting just didn’t make sense living from a heart based center or spiritual outlook. Fighting and surrendering were from two opposite ends of the spectrum. This didn’t mean I sat back on my laurels without taking action. The first thing I did was go into action mode. I did all those little things that intuitively had been trying to get my attention for quite some time. You know. Those soft quiet voices that say “Meditate…eat healthier…quit this job and avoid other toxins including people.” Action meant putting my life in order and cancer was the whistle that got my attention. Instead of fighting it, I accepted it and saw it as a wakeup call. Not only did I wake up to change the direction of the life I’d been living but to seeing clearly the inevitable fact that we are all going to die. So my question became “How do I really want to live?” Just last night I heard on the news, “So and so loses their battle with cancer.” Since when did living become a battle? We don’t hear about fighting heart disease or diabetes. Fighting uses precious resources we need for walking hand in hand with what daily comes our way and it places me in the category of the victim. I’m not sure about you but life is not without escaping heartache and pain or even death. Living in spite of it seems to be the gift. (as your site promotes!) That’s why the whole “survivor” label has never felt comfortable to me either. No one survives. We all die eventually. And when it does come to war, we don’t recognize soldiers that come home as survivors. If we did it seems to me that it would dishonor those who died. For some reason our focus on staying young forever gives us some unrealistic belief that we can escape death. Death knows no bounds and no one ever escapes. After volunteering 3 years in a chemotherapy clinic I know that there is no rhyme and reason as to who lives and who dies. Cancer is more of a crap shoot than they want you to know. I’ve lost more friends than I can count on two hands anymore to this debilitating disease. Even all of the hoopla on prevention and mammograms surrounded in pink ribbons distracts us from the bottom line truth. Eliminating the disease requires no fight. It requires us to collectively do the right thing and rid our world of cancer causing toxins. But this takes action. |
Mary Beth's Silver Linings
