Tag: breast cancer

Parallel Lives

My life partner Anne and I are often mistaken for sisters (even twins!), but we never imagined our similarities would extend to both of us being diagnosed with breast cancer. My treatment took place three years ago; Anne underwent surgery last week. Hard to believe at first. Again?! Both of us? Yet here we are, living parallel lives on yet another level. This is the soul design we were given. Once again, physical health came up, fear of mortality came up. Life shows you the full cosmic picture at times, and how you view it is up to you. Each person’s life unfolds exactly as it’s meant to, even the fearful, uncertain parts. And each person handles their life’s events in a way that is unique to their own individual journey.

Anne and I approached the experience of breast cancer in ways that are similar and yet quite different. We went to the same breast center, so we both have had wonderful care there with some of the same practitioners. The location of the lump in Anne’s breast, however, varied from mine (lobular vs. ductal), so her surgery was a bit different (both lumps removed successfully). How we each have found ways to come to peace with the whole process is a further variation. Anne gathers and organizes information; the more specifics she knows (up to a point), the calmer she feels. I, on the other hand, find peace and calm in the spiritual overview that everything is unfolding according to my soul’s design. Each synchronicity uplifts my spirits and centers me in inner peace.

So Anne and I move along our life paths separately yet lovingly intertwined. We each share our perspectives, so it is always a mutual journey. I am learning things I did not know before from Anne’s exploration of the details of her diagnosis. And I think Anne appreciates the surprise synchronicities too. For instance, Anne’s surgery day was 7 Tijax in the Maya calendar. The number 7 stands for “balance,” and Tijax is the energy of “cutting through all negative thoughts/feelings to experience the miracle of healing.” Very powerful alignment—and then the added “aha, yes” was when Anne noticed that the number of her pre-op room was 7! We both laughed. Moments like that make you feel that you are part of a flow of universal Intelligence that includes all life everywhere. The cosmic kaleidoscope, I call it.

Another synchronous occurrence was that her surgery was two days before Thanksgiving, and because it went very smoothly, it became a beautiful reason for both of us to feel thankful. In addition, we had almost identical experiences of gratitude after our individual surgeries. I lay in the recovery room feeling surrounded by compassionate bodhisattvas, each one extraordinarily gentle and caring. I floated in an infinite sea of kindness, tears in my eyes. Anne, too, felt intensely the generous spirit of her caregivers. The feeling was so powerful that it carried over into the hours after her surgery: She wanted to call every one of them together to personally thank them for how open-hearted and kind they had been to her.

These are the gifts that each moment can bring, when you experience the magical connections between people and events. A health diagnosis can crack open every door and window inside you so that all you see is the light and love at the core of everyone and everything. Soul vision. It’s in the details and the overview, and it’s what moves our lives in such parallel, yet distinctive ways. My treatment was successful, and deep in my heart and soul, I trust that Anne’s will continue to be successful too.
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*Yet another similarity is that both Anne and I have written about our breast cancer experiences: she on Caring Bridge and me in my blog (and book). It seems to help each of us to share what we are feeling—and to know that there are so many others who have also felt this way.

Breast Cancer & Beyond— Book Excerpt

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. In my new book Breast Cancer & Beyond: An Unexpected Soul Path, I describe my recent experience with breast cancer in 2021–22. A cancer diagnosis can be daunting as well as frightening, but I wanted to write about how, in spite of that, for me, it turned out to be a deeply spiritual and often peaceful journey. Below is a short excerpt from the Introduction to the book. Both the print and ebook versions of the book can be ordered at https://amzn.to/4aka0eu.

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I am a breast cancer survivor. After the diagnosis, my surgery and treatment proceeded over several months. It took me a while to assimilate the medical information, as well as my emotional reaction to it. Coming to peace with it all is the essence of my journey. Since I am a writer, my first impulse was to write about my experience—what was occurring in my body, my emotions, my mind, and my soul. I wrote about everything as it happened, week by week. Gradually I came to see that it was part of my life plan, what I had chosen (pre-birth) to experience in this lifetime. We each have unique soul paths within which we grow and evolve, and this was mine. That inner awareness steadied and uplifted me every day as I moved forward.

What you will read in this book is what it was like for me to live with a breast cancer diagnosis and treatment over a period of seven months, and then the months of integration after that. There are some sections where I don’t mention cancer specifically, but everything here took place within that framework. Each part can be read separately or in sequence.  I wrote from my soul’s perspective because that is mostly how I experienced it, and that is what centered me in peace and acceptance. In the very beginning, my hand seemed somehow guided to find the lump myself just two weeks after a “normal” mammogram. I believed it must be part of my soul’s journey on Earth, what I (and God) had designed for my physical life and spiritual evolution. Within that context, there are no mistakes, and I am flowing with each day’s experience.

In the last part of the book, I write about the wider view of life (and eternity) that I received as I journeyed along the unexpected path of cancer and how it affected me going forward. With each week, the universe seemed to expand, and my sense of my place within it also expanded. That expansion has not ended, and I do not foresee an ending because that is the nature of human life as we grow gradually beyond the confines of our physical form and open to infinity. Every experience becomes an initiation into something greater. A blessed gift, all of it.

Survivors

There are imitation “survivors” like those on the contrived TV show. Then there are real ones, such as those who have survived cancer, stem cell transplants, heart surgery, or another extreme health challenge. Surviving these involves courage and physical stamina unlike any other life experience. On the other side is relief, gratitude, happiness, but also, unexpectedly, sadness. The latter is invisible to others and almost unidentifiable at first to those experiencing it. It may have many sources, such as loss of “life as it once was” or the realization that one’s own mortality is inevitable, sooner or later. Unexpected tears arise for no specific reason, except perhaps the poignancy of life. I am a breast cancer survivor, and these issues came up for me. I am finding that they come up for others as well.

I just finished reading Suleika Jaouad’s book Between Two Kingdoms, Memoir of a Life Interrupted (and listened to her powerful TED talk), in which she describes her reactions to surviving a leukemia diagnosis at 22. Her prognosis was dire, and she went through almost four years of difficult treatments to finally emerge cancer-free.* She too then felt both relief and sadness, at times an unshakable depression. Yet she eventually came to great wisdom about how the two “kingdoms” of health and illness are not inseparable but “porous.” We all move back and forth between them in our lives. There are always “interruptions” of every kind.

The breast cancer treatments I received lasted about six months, and the prognosis was good, so my experiences were very different from hers in significant ways. She faced setbacks and brushes with death over years. Indeed, each person who lives through a difficult diagnosis or illness has a very unique experience. For the most part, after initial shock and fear, my experience became one of trust in my soul’s path and accompanying inner peace because of that trust. This helped me through any discomfort/pain that accompanied treatment. I had moments of extraordinary spiritual epiphanies throughout the surgical, chemo, and radiation treatments, ones that expanded my view of my own life and all life. It was only after the completion of treatment that an inner sadness appeared.

I must add that all this took place during the first years of COVID as well and brought up general issues of health and growing older. Looking ahead to one’s eventual death can happen at any age, young or old. It is something we each face. Those experiencing health challenges may have it handed to them unexpectedly, but we all eventually must come to terms with our own mortality. There can be fear, sadness, acceptance—or all simultaneously. It is never just one thing.

To be completely honest, thoughts of death and infinity have been with me since childhood (as those who read my blogs or books may know). I have carried background grief about the nature of life/death all my life. Yet, as I’ve explored a more spiritual path as an adult, those fears have shifted; a new balance has been created with deeper trust in the wisdom of a greater universal Intelligence. This is where I was when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Eventually that took me to the next level, an indescribable expansion into the unknown which gave me a broader acceptance of both the tears and joy that is life on Earth. Yes, I’ve had sadness and emotional ups and downs after recovery from breast cancer, but I’ve also had amazing moments of connection to the spirit that exists everywhere. I became aware that at that level, life and death are One.

So, to be a real survivor (as opposed to a TV one) is to recognize that the deepest survival happens at the soul level, because the soul is eternal; it never dies. Our human bodies may survive illness, disease, trauma, heartbreak, loss, and other life crises. Our souls survive beyond all those physical experiences, even, or especially, death. Sometimes that’s how we learn this wisdom, through the challenges of our physicality. God shows us irrevocably that the form may “die”, but spirit never does. We are ALL soul survivors, every one of us—butterflies of light.
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*Suleika was recently diagnosed with a cancer recurrence after ten years. She has moved once again through a successful bone marrow transplant, with her husband Jon Batiste by her side (as seen in the film American Symphony). Their mutual journey is very inspiring.

Fear and Trust

We all live with both fear and trust inside us. Fear is the residue of past painful events and the emotional triggers that can make us relive them and think something similar may happen again. Today the entire world lives with the fear engendered by a global pandemic and the illnesses and deaths that have accompanied it. In addition, political discord divides our planet. Each of us handles such fears in a variety of ways: distraction, denial, depression, nervous apprehension, sadness. Or just allowing the feelings to flow through and accepting them. The acceptance arises from a trust that lives deep within each of us. We were born with it.

Trust is the spirit of life itself. It is a connection to something greater than the specific events of your life. Some call this God or Universal Consciousness, but it is beyond labels and even beyond human understanding. The longer you live, the more opportunities you have to remember this connection and open to trusting it.  Sometimes in the midst of a very frightening or sad experience, you may realize that acceptance is the only thing that brings peace of mind. A peace that sidesteps the mind’s attempts to understand and control the situation. Acceptance opens the door to trust. Trust that comes from the wisdom of the heart and soul.

I have had many opportunities to get in touch with acceptance and trust in recent years. I’ve moved from one part of the country to another and then back again, my sense of “home” in constant flux. A dear lifetime friend died unexpectedly, and I felt my heart break. I have also lived through the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. Each of these life events affected me immensely and ultimately taught me to let go at the deepest possible level. Cancer, in particular, was a teacher of the most profound wisdom with regard to acceptance. When I accepted that cancer was indeed part of my soul’s path for this lifetime, I was able to move through the experience with trust instead of fear. It has been a year since my diagnosis and treatment, and the deeper truths I learned inform my life daily.

Simultaneously, COVID too has been a major factor for me in living with acceptance. The specter of COVID and its variants forms the background for our lives now, whether we try to ignore it or think of it continually. Perhaps it has come to teach us on a grand scale that there are things we can’t control and that only acceptance will bring peace of mind. Whether it is a hurricane, a pandemic, or a physical condition, there are always events we just have to surrender to and do the best we can to live through consciously. Life is a drama that includes every extreme. At times it feels overwhelming, and we want to rewrite the script, forgetting that we designed our life path before birth.

Everything is happening for our awakening and expansion. If you can embrace this truth, it puts you in touch with the peace at your core. A peace that gently moves you through fear to trust. Trust in the events of your life, however they may appear, and trust in your self and your soul’s journey. You may think everything is chaos in your life, but your heart and soul know better. It is all a sacred passage into the light of peaceful awareness.

Living with the Unknown

Nothing is definitively known, ever. That’s why Native Americans, in their timeless wisdom, have called life the “Great Mystery.” No matter what scientists do to try to break the code—send vehicles to Mars, create life in a test tube, photograph black holes in space—the puzzle of human existence and life and death is never really solved. Any “knowledge” we come to as a species is a shifting illusion that changes with the years and with those who are “knowing.” That’s the realm of science and the mind—and belief systems.

Then there’s religion and spirituality. Many traditional religions have explained life’s mysteries with teachings about God, each of them claiming truth and revelation. Yet those too are based in belief. Spirituality extends the parameters a bit to a wide array of perspectives and possibilities about the nature of life and Spirit. If we remain open, we enter the realm of the heart. Therein, it becomes clearer that we can never fully understand life or God; we can only experience them. Which means letting go of interpretations and searches and just living in the mystery as it unfolds.

I’ve found this to be a guiding truth over the past month on my journey with breast cancer. Each day, new information comes up to be processed, or there is a new test result to be waited for. If I try to figure it all out ahead of time or mentally project myself into all the possibilities, I get lost in the “what ifs.” And fear. Instead, I focus on the experience of each moment. That returns me to my heart. My decisions and direction arise organically from there.

My years of meditation practice have prepared me for this time. It becomes an intensive immersion in present-moment awareness. Breath by breath. And I find I don’t have to remind myself to do it. At this point in my life—and perhaps because of the nature of what I am going through—I seem to automatically remain centered in today’s experience. Tomorrow is a question mark, but today the sky is clear, the birds are singing, and I am alive. That’s all I “know.” Perhaps that’s the gift of facing a disease that is full of unknowns and can be so frightening. In order to remain centered in the calm at my center, the peace of my soul, my entire being brings me back to the present moment.

So how do you and I retain this wisdom, this calming approach, in our day-to-day lives, beyond crisis situations? Here, I think it once again becomes a practice of consciously calling yourself back to the present moment, with each breath you take. The more you do it, the more ingrained it becomes in your consciousness. Gradually, you release your hold on the need to know outcomes and relax into living with the unknown, accepting each experience as it arises and letting go into the next one. This is the natural flow of spirit in life. If you allow it, it will carry you effortlessly through the endless vacillations of life. You feel every emotion as it arises but never lose your connection to the inner peace that lives at your core. In this way, the unknown becomes your faithful companion, instead of your adversary, on life’s journey.