To Wake With The Dawn
Since my last blog post, The Sum of All Cells, I was back in touch with a lovely woman who had contacted me in the Fall. I wanted to check in with her to see how she was managing from an operation where she had a cancerous tumor removed. She had talked about wanting to have more support from others who knew what it was like to have cancer and how in this way, she felt alone.
I reached out to her in hopes of providing a lifeline to experience a quality of inner life she was yearning for in the midst of her body going through immense physical changes. Over a short period of time, cancer came back to her body and in a way that Western medicine said there were limited options for her. She did more chemo that was very strong and hard to take. She wanted to live and had dreams she imagined fulfilling, but I could see the Will to keep going was wavering.
We shared moments of deep relaxation through listening to affirmations, meditations, and Tapping (EFT). Even in the midst of discomfort and pain, when she choose, her body and mind went into a calm, deeply relaxed and healing place. I compiled some affirmations from Louise Hay for her and when I played them for her to lay back and listen to, she slipped away into a dreamy, peaceful place.
“I have a special guardian angel. I am divinely guided and protected at all times. ”
The doctor’s gave her a very short period of time left. Looking at her, you’d never suspect this woman had been told, your body will be finished within weeks. With young teenagers at home, I wondered, is this how it all ends for her? I had never been faced directly with these kinds of life limiting words, even in the beginning when my diagnosis just kept increasing in severity. I tried to imagine how this would feel, to hear someone saying this to me.
Maybe there is some ethical requirement on the part of the doctor to let a patient know this, but I still refuse to believe that anyone can determine the length of an individual’s life. There simply have been too many people with very sick bodies who have returned themselves back to great health. I have read many stories and met individuals who defied doctors statistics so I know if the Soul is meant to continue having experiences in the world, the body will go on living.
I never looked at statistics for my own diagnosis, nor did I want my Oncologist to tell me. I think he sensed this about me by the way I spoke about my situation and how I was on the Path to eventually have a full recovery. At one point, I said I didn’t want to talk about whether or not cure was possible. This was not a word in my vocabulary; there was only one way forward and that was Living, so let’s stick with that focus. This manner of speaking was never brought up again. As we worked together, I felt we developed a deep unspoken respect for each of our beliefs we lived our lives through.
So my hope for her getting through this dire stretch was big. I know miracles are possible and I wanted her to believe that her dreams could be realized. In the end though, it is what lies deep within you, the thoughts you have, the choices you are willing to make to realign your life with the values and dreams you feel support your purpose and destiny here during this Earthwalk.
This requires knowing what feeds your soul, what kind of activities fuel and support your personal expression, what simply gives you positive energy and opens up the flow of increased love into your life. Making choices is a point of personal power. Be mindful of how your choices either nurture you towards greater LIFE or shut your body down moving you towards DEATH.
“I trust my intuition, I am willing to listen to that still, small voice within. ”
“I am willing to ask for help when I need it. I am in charge, I now take my own power back.”
Although, I have always worked professionally in the realm of a ‘murky grey’ where nothing is black and white, just subtle shades of changing grey along an open continuum; there is something about having a life threatening condition that makes choices become very black and white. Quite the opposite of how I’ve experienced life and been used to working with people going through difficult, stressful situations.
Life and death are always side by side, every breath matters especially when an illness that progresses like a cancerous tumor is literally pressing on internal organs and keeping the emotional pressure on boiling.
What keeps one wanting to live, to change the course of a terminal diagnosis? Often, there are external reasons like wanting to see your children grow up, get married, be a grandparent or travel and see places in the world that are on the ‘bucket list’, but even these reasons are not necessarily enough to keep a mother living.
No, there has to be something deeper inside, greater than wanting to stay alive for others, something that is connected to your Soul's Calling or Destiny or a sense of a Higher Purpose. Each of us has our own name for this. What is this calling, this greater purpose that one connects into? This inner voice that gives you the strength to go through the most intense inner storms of your life?
I believe, there is also a time when your inner voice lets you know it’s time to say good-bye and go back to the spirit realm for a soul reset. This timing, only the individual can know. What courage this takes, to listen and make your preparations to transition out of this physical world, knowing you are leaving loved ones behind. How hard this is, for those of us on the outside to mentally understand the timing of this, yet I wonder about being the person who makes this decision. What a crossroads in life this moment is.
As difficult and sad as this can be, I respect a person’s decision when it is time to depart the physical body. Letting go of the physical world is part of the life death cycle. It’s what we signed up for when we were born. Seeing death as moving on into another realm after the lessons here have been learned for this lifetime is something we all will experience eventually.
Spring has arrived again, my 3rd Spring since my diagnosis and I am forever grateful to wake up to the singing of the birds outside my bedroom window. The sun rises without fail and light streams in through my windows. I love this early morning moment and I think to myself, I am so lucky that this is my morning again. I look forward to the next one tomorrow morning.
Every day, I thank my body for being so strong and healthy. For perservering, hanging in there with me and showing me how to find my way back to an inner balance of harmony, peace, and unconditional love. Every day truly is a gift.
It’s Easter weekend and the word, resurrection cannot leave my thoughts. My energy continues to come back to me in new ways. There are many days over these past 2.5 years where I have felt renewed from a low, lifeless place, restored back to life again and again, each time reaching into a new way of Being.
I love you all and I am here to connect with you and share in the magic that this life brings each of you. Don’t wait for a better day to do the things you’ve always wanted to do. Begin today!
and now I leave you with this beautiful poem:
Beneath the Sweater and the Skin by Jeannette Encinias. Posted by: Vanessa of https://wildandpreciouslife0.wordpress.com
How many years of beauty do I have left?
she asks me.
How many more do you want?
Here. Here is 34. Here is 50.
When you are 80 years old
and your beauty rises in ways
your cells cannot even imagine now
and your wild bones grow luminous and
ripe, having carried the weight
of a passionate life.
When your hair is aflame
with winter
and you have decades of
learning and leaving and loving
sewn into
the corners of your eyes
and your children come home
to find their own history
in your face.
When you know what it feels like to fail
ferociously
and have gained the
capacity
to rise and rise and rise again.
When you can make your tea
on a quiet and ridiculously lonely afternoon
and still have a song in your heart
Queen owl wings beating
beneath the cotton of your sweater.
Because your beauty began there
beneath the sweater and the skin,
remember?
This is when I will take you
into my arms and coo
YOU BRAVE AND GLORIOUS THING
you’ve come so far.
I see you.
Your beauty is breathtaking.