5 Lessons From Cancer that Helped Prepare Me For The Pandemic and Uncertain Times

Nothing throws a monkey wrench into your life quite like cancer.

 Suddenly everything about your life gets put on hold.

No matter how many days, weeks or months it took to bring you to your diagnosis, deep down, you realize life as you know it now will never be the same.

Getting diagnosed with cancer in late 2017 right before the holidays wasn’t the first time I faced a life-changing diagnosis—nor will it likely be my last.

Dealing with various forms of chronic illness, both visible and invisible, for over half my life has taught me a few powerful lessons about the things we can control and what we need to let go of to truly heal.

My journey with cancer, anxiety, depression and chronic illness showed me that although we can’t always control what happens to us, we can always choose how we respond or react to a situation through our mindset.

What wounds us has a way of healing us in more profound ways than we could ever have imagined.

Cancer was never something I envisioned would be part of my story, or my daily life, but somehow it has brought many blessings, connections and opportunities to my life that wouldn’t exist now if it weren’t for my diagnosis.

Sometimes our biggest bummers turn into our greatest blessings. Here are 5 Lessons from Cancer that helped me prepare and cope during times of uncertainty.

5 Lessons From Cancer that Helped Prepare Me for the Pandemic:

1. Letting go of my sense of control.

Uncertainty can be unsettling, but it is an unfortunate reality we all must face. During difficult seasons and times of change, we want so desperately to hold on to life as we knew it.  Cancer taught me that although I can’t control what happens to be, I can always choose how I respond to the situation.

2. Learning to accept change.

Life is unpredictable and things are always shifting and changing underneath the surface whether we realize it or not. When we resist the change, we also miss an opportunity for growth. Cancer showed me that sometimes the strongest thing we can do is let go. Sometimes we must surrender to what is and not focus on how we thought things would be or should have gone.  

3. How to accept, react and respond to disappointment.  

Cancer showed me that we have the power to transform any situation by the power of our beliefs. Things can go from bad to better. The broken can become beautiful again. My journey with cancer showed me our biggest bummers can become our greatest blessings in the end.

4. How to redirect my energy to things I can control.

Worrying is like a rocking chair. It may keep us busy for short time, but it leads us nowhere in the end. Cancer showed me there are so many things in life that happen to us that our outside of our control. Dwelling on what happened to us or worrying about the future, only takes our power away. Cancer showed me that I can’t look too far into the future. Instead, I have to focus on a few things I need to do each day and trust everything else will eventually work out.

5. Awful things can be opportunities for growth.

Painful and difficult things have a way of reminding us of our true strength. Our setback can put us on the path to realizing our true purpose. Yes, this may not be what we had ever wanted or planned for our lives, but somehow, some way, things always work on in the end.

When all hope seems lost and when the future is unsettling and uncertain, we must have faith that anything can change for the better.

I can’t promise where we’re going.
I don’t know where this path may lead.

Although everything is clouded with uncertainty, we must remember:

The blackest of nights eventually become day.

Keep the faith.
There are better and brighter days ahead.

Supporting You & Helping You Cope

One of the things that’s helping lift my spirits and keeping me grounded during these uneasy times is music. If you need a pick me up or quick escape, check out the Hopeful Warrior Playlist on Apple Music and Spotify.   

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Unpacking Grief: The Ball & The Box Analogy

“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.” - Thomas Campbell

Grief is a tricky emotion. 

It can follow you around like a dark cloud, turning your world to gray and obscuring everything around you. And just when you think the fog of your grief may be lifting, a random thought or memory can trigger a sense of overwhelming sadness all over again. 

Whether you are dealing with the loss of a loved one or grieving your former self due to chronic illness or cancer— we all grieve in different ways.  

Recently, Twitter user Lauren Herschel shared an analogy that explains how grief changes over time and why it often bubbles up randomly.

After what has been a surprisingly okayish Christmas, I had a moment today in SuperStore. Saw a lady who reminded me of my 92yo grandma, who even in the early stages of dementia, completely understood that my mom died.
I thought I’d share the Ball in the Box analogy my Dr told me pic.twitter.com/YfFT26ffU8

— Lauren Herschel (@LaurenHerschel) December 29, 2017

Herschel drew a box with a ball inside. On the left side of the box is a red “button.” She explained that “When grief is new, the ball takes up most of the box and is constantly hitting the button, which causes pain, over and over again.”

The pain is fairly constant in the beginning. “Because the ball is huge, you can’t move the box without the ball hitting the pain button. It rattles around on its own in there and hits the button over and over. You can’t control it – it just keeps hurting. Sometimes it seems unrelenting.” 

Over time, the ball gets smaller. It hits the button less and less but when it does, it hurts just as much. It’s better because you can function day to day more easily. But the downside is that the ball randomly hits that button when you least expect it. pic.twitter.com/fevAttojBg

— Lauren Herschel (@LaurenHerschel) December 29, 2017

Herschel explains, “Over time, the ball shrinks — but every now and then, it still hits the button. Maybe you see someone who reminds you of your loved one. Maybe a certain song plays on the radio. Maybe it comes out of nowhere.”

One of the hardest parts about dealing with grief is accepting the fact that the feeling never really goes away. The feelings may lessen in intensity, but the sense of loss is always there. Herschel goes on to explain, “For most people, the ball never really goes away. It might hit less and less, giving you more time to recover between hits, unlike when the ball was still giant-sized.”

There is no timetable for dealing with your grief. It can take time for the ball in your box to shrink. You shouldn’t feel rushed into getting “over” your grief, and you definitely shouldn’t feel judged for grieving, no matter how long ago it started.

I’ve learned that immense grief is often the price we pay for tremendous love. Grief comes in waves. Sometimes our emotions are calm, other times the waves of loss bring us to our knees. All we can do is learn how to ride the waves of emotion. 

There is no moving on after loss, there is only moving forward.

The reality is that we don’t forget, move on, and have closure. Instead, we honor, we remember, and learn to celebrate in a new way.

“Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope. ”

— Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

Source:

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Coming Full Circle: Grateful for What Was, Looking Forward to What Will Be

Same spot, 30 years later. @ Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco, California

Life often feels like a series of unexpected twists and turns. But have you ever noticed how a series of random events can somehow take you back to the same place you started?

We wander off this way or that way in life and sometimes feel like our choices take us off our expected paths. Yet, one way or another, life brings us back to where we started, either literally or symbolically. These are the pinnacle moments in our life where everything seems to come full circle.

Whether it is a major life event like a birthday or anniversary or the culmination of years of hard work, these are the moments worth celebrating. These are the times we will remember with smiles later. I believe each turn we take around the sun is an opportunity to look back at where we’ve been and set our sights on where we’d like to go next.

Going through cancer has given each birthday I am blessed enough to celebrate with friends and family a deeper, more profound meaning. When it comes down to it, all I really want is more time. More time to mother, be a wife, daughter and friend. My biggest wish is for more time to create memories with my loved ones that will live on long after I’m gone.

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A week ago, on December 5th, I celebrated my birthday. Less than 24 hours later, I was flying across the country to California with my family to celebrate my birthday back where it all began for me. The most incredible part was this trip was thrown together on a whim just two weeks before. We weren’t planning on traveling during the middle of the holiday season, but when you get a chance to visit San Francisco you must take advantage of the opportunity.

California will always hold a special place in my heart. Returning to the Bay Area brings a sense of going home. It’s where I entered the world and where some of my earliest and happiest memories took place. I also experienced many firsts in California: My first words, first steps, first friends and even my first significant loss.

My time in California, particularly the Bay Area, brings back a bittersweet mixture of memories. I was 5 years old, the same age as my twins when my family moved from California. Getting to visit my childhood home and park in San Ramon with my family was an incredibly moving experience. You could almost say it was meant to be because we pulled up to our old home at exactly 11:11 am on 12/7. I was so moved I snapped a picture of the dash on our rental van to capture the moment.

We took a family walk to our favorite neighborhood vista and my children got to play at my favorite childhood park. Although the weather that day was extremely rainy, the rain cleared up during our time in San Ramon and rainbows seemed to be following us around as we toured our old neighborhood.

Family walk to our favorite neighborhood vista in San Ramon, CA.

Rainbows following us to my favorite childhood park in San Ramon, California.

Rainbows touching the hillside in San Ramon, California.

Visiting California reminded me of the same forces that carved the canyons, mountains and coast made me. It’s incredible how such beauty, wonder and potential devastation can coexist so precariously.

My family was living in the Bay Area during California’s last major earthquake in 1989. What is now known as the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake happened on October 17 at 5:04 p.m. local time just before the start of the third game of the World Series between the Oakland A’s and San Francisco Giants. I was 4 at the time and I vividly remember riding my Big Wheel tricycle in our backyard in San Ramon and looking over to see the water in our pool churning like a big tidal wave. My mom and brother came running outside to get me as soon as they felt the earthquake. To make matters worse, my grandma was flying in from Chicago that night and my dad was on his way to pick her up from the airport. He crossed the upper deck of the Bay Bridge 9 minutes before it collapsed due to the earthquake. The 6.9 magnitude earthquake lasted only 15 seconds but it wreaked havoc throughout San Francisco, Oakland and the Bay Area, claiming over 60 lives and injuring over 3,500 people.

The Loma Prieta earthquake caused the upper deck of the Bay Bridge to collapse. My dad crossed over the Bay on this bridge just 9 minutes before it partially collapsed that day.

Part of the 880 Freeway in Oakland also collapsed during the Quake of ‘89.

The Marina District in Downtown San Francisco after the 1989 earthquake.

Downtown San Francisco: 1989 vs. Present Day. Buildings have been reinforced and retrofitted to be able to withstand another earthquake of this magnitude.

Living through the events of that day, showed me how life can change in a matter of seconds. I remember the uneasiness that hung in the air that day and the aftershocks kept shaking the ground every so often. I can still vividly recall how our dog kept running in circles for hours due to the constant reverberations.  Afterward, I remember driving around a seeing the devastation first hand. I can recall seeing large cracks in the cement and buildings ripped apart. Thankfully our home had minimal damage. However, that wasn’t the first earthquake I experienced living there. In total, I can distinctly remember the feeling of being in three earthquakes in the few years we lived in California. One time, a significant earthquake hit during the middle of my dental exam. I remember the nurse screaming and the pictures on the walls rattling so hard they almost fell.

Revisiting the Bay Area 30 years after such devastation showed me firsthand how much progress can be made and how much can be rebuilt and regrown in just one generation. Ask any Californian and they would probably say another major earthquake is only a matter of time. It seems the potential to experience a natural disaster is the price you pay to live among such natural beauty.

In many ways, learning to live on the edge of chaos and catastrophe is a similar to being in recovery. Chaos is often required before a new, healthier system can emerge. For example, in homeopathy, Hering's Laws of Cure, states complex adaptive systems don’t change in a predictable, linear way. Rather Hering’s Laws state that healing progresses from the top downwards, and within to outwards. Healing progresses from more important organs to those of lesser importance.  Disease symptoms are released and cured in the reverse chronological order of their onset.

Hering's Laws of Cure reminds us that our body has an innate wisdom in healing itself, and that its processes of purification and regeneration don't happen in a random or haphazard fashion.  Rather, there is an inherent order and consistency to the healing and purification process. So, when we make a conscious decision to improve our health or fitness, parts of our system will inevitably collapse into “chaos” in order to allow for the emergence of a better, more efficient system. With this in mind, we must learn to trust the process. We must learn to see that death and destruction is a necessary part of the growth cycle. Sometimes everything must fall apart so it can come together better in the end.

The potential for disaster is always looming. Yet all we can really do is learn to accept the uncertainty and volatility of Mother Nature. We do our best through diet and lifestyle changes to minimize our risks of cancer or reoccurrence, but the danger will always be there in some form. We must learn to rise about fear. Sometimes the fear doesn’t go away. We have to go forward afraid. But I’ve learned once you push through that experience you will often realize you were stronger and capable of enduring more than you could ever imagine.

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Life is full of profound moments that we sometimes don’t fully understand until the very end. So often we expect the events in our life to unfold in a linear way. We believe we must go from point A to get to point B. We believe we must have XYZ in order to be truly happy.  However, when we get a glimpse of the big picture, we can see that all these twists and turns were taking us to exactly what we needed to experience at that time. 

I’ve learned there are no short-cuts to coming full circle. Each segment, arc, and tangent of our life circle is an important part of our story; without those experiences, we wouldn’t be the person we are today.

Healing from cancer and other traumatic experiences are anything BUT linear. Rather, healing goes in a spiral. Sometimes it’s ruthless and relentlessly pushing us forward and gently pulling us back, again and again, exposing layer by layer until we become wholly transformed into another version of ourselves.

Change often challenges us with the choice to move on to the new or hang on to old. When we are confronted with immense change, we can either become better or bitter. For me, 2019 was about learning to find stability amidst the calm and chaos of life. I’m learning to balance the fear of reoccurrence with the wonder and excitement of being alive.

Looking ahead to 2020, my goal is to say yes more than no to new experiences. I’m want to break out of my comfort zone. I’m taking more trips and more adventures. I’m reconstructing myself from the fragments of what was and finding the silver lining of what may be.

Sources:

1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake
Understanding the Healing Crisis

It's Okay Not to Feel Okay

When you’re struggling with a severe illness, injury or loss, people will often tell you to “Stay, strong” or “Be positive.” And while strength and positivity certainly help tremendously in overcoming our struggles, it is perfectly alright to admit you are not okay.

I was reminded of this while have having lunch with my husband the other day. Over bites of our sandwiches, he lovingly looked at me and said, “You know, you don’t always have to be strong.”

Admittedly, those were words I needed to hear.

For most of my life I have been afraid of showing my emotions. For a long time, I also believed that I was incapable of controlling my emotions. I lived in fear of my “dark side” being exposed. I knew all to well the nasty road anxiety, fear, depression and guilt can lead you down.  And I was afraid that if I admitted or recognized my weaknesses they would grow to overwhelm me.

But I’ve come to learn that recognizing your feelings is how you actually learn to control them. By choosing to honor the feeling that you are experiencing—whether it is anxiety, fear, guilt or sadness—and not trying to numb or push the uncomfortable feelings away, you can ultimately learn how to calm and manage your emotions. So, in honor of Mental Health Awareness Week, I’d like to share some tips and strategies that have helped me in hopes they can help you too.

What is an emotion?

First, I feel it’s important to define what exactly an emotion is. An emotion is a vibration you feel in your body which is created by your mind. So, in other words, an emotion is a physical sensation that is caused by your mind. Or more simply: emotions are created by your thoughts.

You have control over your emotions.

Emotions are created in response to your thoughts. And you have quite a bit of control over what thoughts you think. Which means you have some degree of control over your emotions. In fact, even just being aware of your emotions on a conscious level can significantly change the way you experience an emotion. Many times, what we interpret as a physical sensation is actually an emotion. For example, you may interpret the feeling or sensation of hollowness in your stomach as being hungry, even though you’re actually feeling bored but not consciously aware of the emotion.

Resisting feeling an emotion can lead to more problems.

Resisting the emotion is a very common response. We may try to suppress the emotion or distract ourselves from feeling it. The self-help world refers to this as buffering.  Examples of buffering include shopping, drinking alcohol, gambling, eating and even working to avoid feeling the emotion. None of these behaviors are intrinsically bad, but when they are used to avoid experiencing our emotions, the end result is negative.

Consciously experiencing an emotion is something many people struggle with. But being intentionally aware of your emotions allows you to fully enjoy the positive emotions while moving through the negative emotions more quickly. Buffering or avoiding emotions, on the other hand, keeps you from processing those negative emotions (and from being fully aware of positive emotions). This doesn’t make the negative emotions go away—you’re just avoiding them.

Learn to tune into your emotions and honor how you are feeling.

Let’s face it. Emotions can be uncomfortable so learning to intentionally focus on what you are feeling takes some practice. Here are some strategies to help you get in touch with how you’re truly feeling about a situation:

• Try to name the emotion. This will help bring conscious awareness to the emotion.

• Do a thought download. Write down your stream-of-consciousness (i.e. every thought that pops into your head) for 3-5 minutes. This will help you to access the thoughts that aren’t conscious, but that are affecting the way you feel.

• Take some time out to process. Often we try to avoid thinking, because we’re trying to avoid the emotion. Writing in a journal or taking some quiet time to yourself allows you to be mentally present.

Remember, your emotions can’t hurt you.

So often, we are terrified of feeling emotions. We will usually do anything in our power to avoid feeling unpleasant— even if that discomfort will only last a short time. Which is interesting, if you think about it. If you knew you would have to feel terrified for five minutes, but nothing bad would happen to you, you could do that, right? After all, an emotion is just a vibration in your body. It can’t actually hurt you. And just because we are feeling scared or worried now, it’s important to remember this feeling is only temporary.

Through the events in our lives, both good and bad, we ultimately learn who we are and what makes us tick. Life is not about creating happily ever after—it’s about taking it one day at a time and accepting that we will all go through times when we won’t feel happy. And THAT is perfectly okay.

Sources:

Dr. Jennifer Greer