I can't believe I was mad at Her. She was doing the best she could and I was mad. Mad that she got sick, I felt like she let me down. This wasn’t in the plan. I had a family to take care of, work and bills to pay. How dare she stop me.
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It hurts my heart now to think of how mad I was at my own body.
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I disconnected even more from her during all the treatments, surgeries and procedures. I felt like I had to in order to allow them to take place, to just get through it and over it. I wish the anger had stopped there, it didn’t. Once I was declared cancer free by my doctors, which isn’t a term I personally use, and told I could lead a normal, active, healthy life… I tried that, what did that even mean though?
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The road to a normal life is not at all what I imagined it would be. After many painful detours, I finally landed on the one single truth that would lead me to a healthy, joyful life. I needed to forgive my body, I needed to have compassion for Her, I needed to love and appreciate all that She had been through. I could see this strength and beauty so clearly in other women, that I saw as survivors, somehow I had not applied that same compassion to myself.
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Man, I had a lot to learn about body love and self love! There was no going back to this because it’s not something I ever had in the first place. Going back to normal wasn’t going to work for me, what I needed was a whole new way of being, a whole new way of showing up for myself.
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The more I showed up with love and compassion for myself, the more I showed up with love and compassion for the people and things that I care about in the world. I have learned that there really is no other way. And we can’t do it alone. I had an army of women behind me and in front of me, holding me up, supporting me and showing me the way.
Lisa, your an inspiration to me, thank you for putting into words what’s hard to define in my “raw moments”. With love and grace you forge the way and make it easier for me to tread.