(The following was originally posted on my Carepages blog for family and friends during my treatment.)
According to the book I wrote (now almost twelve years ago) illness, pain, and injury have three underlying life purposes. Most often, they redirect our path and help us clear away life clutter or shift in ways we had previously put off. (Usually, we have known for some time that we were supposed to make this shift, but either because we didn't know how, thought it would be too complicated, or just plain put it off, we didn't. The other two include being part of a life path, such as being born disabled or being led to meet someone who could become important in our life's purpose. As friend Doc Nell loves to say, "Sometimes we need to go and read our own book." (Yep) And I am. I'm working the revision of Transformational Healing and hope to have the newly revised Deluxe edition available with it's companion e-book by summer.
In the early days of my diagnosis, I began to make new life decisions based on what mattered most to me. When considered from the standpoint of life and death (for example, if I only had six months to live), it gets real easy to make decisions about what's important. But surprisingly, after pondering if I should "retire" from all my client work, websites, online life, I realized how much I valued certain parts of all that. I began to see more clearly what could stay and what had to go. I also started working from a more intuitive based motivation rather than a logical one. Some amazing things began to shift.
When I allow myself to work based on what I'm being called to do, a book I had put off resizing for a year, was done in less than 24 hours. (The Wisdom of Emotional Healing is now going to be a smaller size.) I had considered pulling the plug on Bookectomy, my writer's educational website. Why bother with that when I am in "this" condition. But I kept feeling drawn to it, played with it, added to it. Loved it. It's blossoming into something I enjoy. Its offshoots include a Facebook group where I am playing, teaching, having fun about all things books. It's my playground. I even did live video in there the other day, something I had put off for over a year. You'd think this now-no-haired girl would have been shy to go live. . . (didn't phase me a bit.) I formatted a book while on chemo - easiest book I ever put together. Why? I worked when I intuitively felt led to work and rested when I felt led to rest.
Perhaps a more important shift has been in the gift I gave myself. That gift was time. For years I had wanted to create a digital book of family photos I could pass down to the family. I have started working on that. It will take time, something I didn't make time for before. But it will be of lasting value when done. Generations that come after me will have a photographic history of their ancestry, at least to a minor extent. I also gave myself a Netflix subscription and granted myself time to watch things. I watch. I laugh. I crochet. I think this is called relaxing. . . something new to me.
I have also been shifting my mindset. Quimby (see the Wisdom book above) stated that if we just got rid of all our opinions or beliefs, we would be wiser, happier, healthier. In learning about Access Bars (Dain Heer) I learned about IPOV ("I have an interesting point of view about that). Whether about how someone dresses in Walmart or regarding cancer, I seem to have a point of view about everything. Slide those points of view out of the way, and miracles begin to happen.
In the beginning, I worried what chemo would be like. IPOV. You know, they show it in all the movies, and it's terrible. But for me, and it is different for everyone, it hasn't been horrible. Compassionate nurses come in and access my port. They plug in little IV bags of this and that, each designed to help me through the "Red Devil" they will also IV in. The process is actually very relaxing and calm. I have a large recliner to sit in. Access to tv, snacks, soft music. I go home, eat, rest. It really isn't at all like my IPOV imagined.
Gradually, step by step, my healing is taking place. Not just on a physical level, where just yesterday an ugly piece of that dying tumor fell off, but on a much deeper level where I am making room for a much more balanced life where I am doing things I enjoy, things that bring joy to others, and more peace for me.
The one thing I hope you can glean from this is that we all can benefit from operating from intuition, letting go of opinions, and doing more things that matter and bring us joy. Don't wait for illness to come in forcing the shift. Start doing it now.
Later today I will do chemo number 3. It's like climbing a mountain. Three is mid-way up, but I see the peak. Two weeks from now for number four, I'll view the landscape from the top. Then I will do four treatments with a different set of drugs. It's all a process. "What could be better than this?" (Another Access Bars statement.)