It’s true.  Being diagnosed with a brain tumor was the best gift I ever received.  It was my soul’s last ditch attempt to get me to change my life.  I equate a tumor to a pearl.  A tumor is a capsule of toxicity.  The oyster, in order to protect itself from something it perceives as a threat to its survival, creates layers of nacre around the toxic substance that over time becomes a beautiful, highly-coveted pearl.  Just like a pearl, the brain tumor, created in toxicity, is what I choose to make of it.

Until the age of 38, I lived what I had been conditioned to want -the ‘American Dream’.  It consisted of my husband commuting over an hour each way into Boston every day while I stayed home with our children.  I felt stifled, unhappy and also exceedingly guilty that I did not appreciate the life that I had.  I felt that my children deserved better.  I tried to fit into that mold.  We aren’t made to be molded though.  We are meant to be ourselves.  I remember, often, thinking that I would be one of those people for whom nothing great nor nothing terrible would ever happen.  Can you imagine living your life with such low expectations?

Then, in 2009, my ‘safe’ but sad world came unglued.

My dear father was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer.  The year of his illness (and his toxic chemotherapy treatments) was the most draining of my life.  An MRI, on me, just 9 days before my father passed revealed a 5 centimeter ‘white matter lesion’ in my left frontal lobe.  It was brain cancer.  The second shoe had officially dropped…

I became more machine than human as my dad slipped away and I found myself facing my own mortality in the summer of 2010.  I simply went through the motions of his funeral, MRIs, spinal tap, planned my children’s birthday parties, and my craniotomy.  After the surgery, I decided I no longer wanted to be a victim.  I got my butt in gear.

Nothing is accidental.  Nothing is random.  This is not what many of us are taught, however.  We call these things ‘bad luck’.  I couldn’t disagree more.  Only through owning the way our life looks can we ever truly heal.  There is no guilt in this.  There is no blame.  We feel certain ways, we believe certain things and our life manifests based on this.  My thoughts and feelings about myself started this chain reaction.  My deep sadness at witnessing my father’s suffering and my inability to effectively manage my feelings contributed greatly.  Choices that I had always made about diet, exercise, and lifestyle, based mainly on fear and self-loathing for much of my life, kept the momentum rolling until the climax of ‘terminal disease’.  I don’t blame myself at all and I am not sorry for any of it.  At that time, it was far easier for me to live in quiet desperation than stir the pot for fear of what might arise.  But at the critical moment, when my life was on the line, I chose to re-engage rather than watch it slip away.

I turned down chemotherapy.

This was a controversial decision for some in my life, but for me it was absolutely the right thing to do.  Chemotherapy did not help my father – at all.  In fact, it made him incredibly sick.  The images of his suffering were fresh in my mind.  My oncologist told me that chemotherapy could not cure me or even definitively extend my life.  I had 2 young kids at home.  Why would I begin a therapy that would not cure me, but was sure to make me weaker?  Logic, in this case, was on my side even if conventional wisdom wasn’t.  I am not suggesting that you not seek expert counsel when health issues arise, but once you have the information you need, you have the authority to make your own choice.  Often, we make decisions under duress and out of fear simply because we don’t see any alternatives.  Although I didn’t yet know how I was going to heal, I knew it wasn’t through western oncology.

I went to see a natural healthcare practitioner, Dr. Mark Mincolla.  He stripped my diet of foods that fed the cancer (sugar and fermentation in particular) and he suggested I monitor the aggressiveness of the cancer with the AMAS blood test, a Medicare-approved cancer screening.  I also began taking natural immune-boosting supplements and had a Raindrop Treatment with Young Living essential oils that significantly kick-started my body’s emotional and physical detox.

After 3 months, my AMAS result came back normal.  Anything under 100 was considered a normal, non-cancer result.  My score came back a 15…not too shabby!  This did not mean the tumor was gone but it meant I had reactivated my immune system and that the cancer was no longer growing.  I know at some point the tumor will dissolve.  I am not delusional when I say this.  There are many who heal cancer naturally, including brain cancer, it’s just that we don’t hear about them through the mainstream media, whose sponsors are the very corporations that profit enormously from conventional cancer treatments.  The healing stories usually include major changes in diet but they also, ALWAYS, include healing the underlying emotional self.  The message that I wish to share with all who want it is that healing is about reconnecting with our true selves, and disconnecting from the personas that we so often assume.  

We heal when we realign to our real, unedited, messy and wonderful selves.  Often we believe we shouldn’t be who we really are.  We hide behind what society tells us is ‘successful’, ‘right’ and ‘beneficial’.  We accept that competition is ‘normal’ and that there are winners and losers at life because it is what dogma has taught us.  I can’t be a persona anymore and I can’t play that game.  I don’t have the luxury.  That’s what happens when you experience what is known as a ‘dark night of the soul’.  You can probably imagine what this means, but, in essence, it is a watershed moment in your life where everything you have built to feel ‘safe’ comes crashing down around you.  You are forced to face your fears.  If I am not true to myself, I will not survive.  That’s how important it is to be real.

I am real when I write and share my experiences.  I am fulfilled when I am at home with my kids and husband enjoying a funny movie, or taking my walks in nature with my 2 dogs.  I don’t crave fame or fortune (although I wouldn’t mind a little cushion in my bank account).  I crave peace.  I crave balance and justice for all.  I crave the new world that is on the cusp of breaking through where everyone knows who they really are, knows that they are connected to all of humanity and embraces each other as equal, powerful creators.  I crave the world where everybody is living their authentic purpose in abundance.

I used to think of myself as a cancer warrior, but that meant I was fighting myself!  I am a cancer sojourner.  I am a traveler, on a quest to know myself through this experience, but this is not my home.  My body, in its infinite wisdom, built a shell around toxicity to protect me.  I choose to learn the lessons that my soul is conveying to me through these experiences.  I think lovingly of my body, including the tumor, and know that when the toxicity is no longer a threat, the tumor will dissolve, having served its life-saving purpose.  I’ll tell you a little secret: I already feel healed.  I perceive myself as healed and I exude healed.  That’s all I will ever need.

I feel such intense gratitude that I have had this experience.  It brought me to life.  It allowed me to give up my need to fit in, my self-loathing and my need for rule-following.  Only when nothing worse could happen to me did I feel free enough to spread my wings and fly.  I now demonstrate how to live fearlessly as my authentic self.  My greatest joy is serving others by helping them to connect with their innate power to change what isn’t working in their lives.  We are all capable of transcending our self-imposed limitations.  We may not always be able to control the situations we are presented with, but we most certainly have authority over how we respond to them.  My hope is that you walk away knowing that out of the darkest moments comes the greatest gifts.

Be open to receiving these gifts, even when they are delivered in really ugly and scary packaging.  It is never too late to change.  It is never too late to fulfill your life purpose.  I am living proof.

xo,

Erin