Breast Cancer Recurrence – Dealing with the diagnosis
I just want to share this with you as well.
You know, when I was first told that there was a cancer recurrence, my first reaction was: “I don’t want to die!”
That was quick and immediate.
And it had both: a sense of self pity and huge fear.
Everybody would nod their head, everybody would tell me that they understand. And many people would give me an energy of “poor thing”. I noticed that this was keeping me stuck in fear and cluelessness.
And also: What a strange thing to say, as we ARE going to die eventually. So what’s the point of saying this as my big statement of commitment?
I realized that in order to find a way to really move on, I had to reframe:
“I want to live!”
And I am willing to do whatever it takes to do that.
What happened next, I was not prepared for:
I was shocked to feel resistance. The inner yes came much slower that I expected it to be. I knew that, in order to mean something and transform something, the yes had to come as loudly and quickly as a thunder in a thunderstorm that was hanging directly over my head:
“Do I want to live? – YES! BOOM!”
And it didn’t…
I didn’t want to die, but I was afraid of the changes I needed to make.
It felt like a huge undertaking.
A scary one.
If I really wanted to live, there could be no compromises, I had to find the best solutions for me.
I couldn’t cut corners, I couldn’t accept excuses.
And I realized that this had to be an ongoing, lifelong process without a finish line.
No wonder I was hesitant