Here we go! For so much of my life, I saw myself as healthy. I knew I wasn’t as healthy as others, but I definitely didn’t think of myself as unhealthy. My weight was good and stable, I slept fairly well. I ate regularly, and not too much, and didn’t eat a lot of things like fast food or sodas. Or so I thought, but I was definitely not counting the pizza and french fries and potato chips.

Anyway, I couldn’t have seen my diagnosis coming. I looked better than a lot of my peers. I walked every day, with vigor! How the heck could I have cancer? How the heck could it be an aggressive cancer that had already metastasized? What?

Well, as I digested that information, I knew for sure that I would not be taken out by this. I am healthy to begin with, and I have a lot to live for. I refuse to die yet. I am not afraid to die. I know that. But I am not ready. I always thought I would be one of the lucky ones in our family who lived to a ripe old age. Despite the fact that most of both sides of my parents’ families had bleak longevity pictures, I was always convinced that I could live to be nearly a hundred. How can you tell me that has changed? Well, if it does take me out, it won’t be for a long time. I am going to find a way to stick around.

So what does health mean? It is clearly not just physical health, though that is a major component. And while it is extremely humbling to watch my hair fall out and muscle tone diminish, I know that the rebuilding is going to be where my true strength lies. I am actually looking forward to that. Then I can finally get my personal training certification and begin helping people in ways that psychotherapy did not. I have always enjoyed the physical, and so that will be a major component for me. But health goes so far beyond that. I need to reconnect and rebuild my spiritual wellness. I have not had a major connection to the divine for a long time. I do admit that I had already been thinking about this, before the disturbance. Before my 50th, not long ago, I told myself I would begin going to church or some kind of service. I still haven’t sorted that out, but it is coming. I need and want it. Catholicism may be out for me, as the dogma of who can and can’t be “saved” is too hard for me to accept, but Christianity in general is probably a fit. I also feel that Buddhism can be a source of connection for me. I will seek.

But mostly, and this one is a big one for me, is healing the trauma and fear and resentment and anger I have lived with for most of my life. I didn’t even know how righteously angry I have been. How my resentments were so big I couldn’t even see them any longer. How the sexual traumas I endured and even put myself through were so damaging that I repelled love because of the scars I had accumulated. And how fear of getting soft again prevented me from doing any of the necessary healing. And while these acts of healing might be painful at times, they will more than anything be a relief unmatched by anything else. I will finally apologize in a meaningful way to myself, forgive myself fully for the wrongs I have done to myself, and I will love myself fiercely for all that I am and will be.

So let’s choose to heal fully. Our bodies, minds, and our spirit. I am here to walk alongside you, to learn from you, to grow in the light, and love and be loved. Namaste.