PUTNEY — Dec. 24, 2020: The reality is that we are all dying, and dying is a beautiful part of life. Taking a good, honest look at death feels so essential, yet is hard to do in the everyday grind - it seems it can be truly looked at only when we are face to face with it.
Now don't go thinking, not for one second, that I am special. “That Angela, she's amazing - if anyone can heal from cancer, she can.” I've heard that. The thing is, we can all heal ourselves from whatever it is that we are each suffering from - cancer, depression, autism, PTSD, heart disease, all of it.
Healing is not the same thing as being cured. Healing to me is being present with what is and feeling all the feelings that come up, then letting them go. Healing is holding a vision for a healed me and feeling the feelings as if I am already healed, without attachment to that vision.
Then I am healed.
Now I am healed.
And you can be, too.
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Sept. 12, 2020: I'm not gonna lie - it's hard having stage 4 cancer. That's the truth of it.
Hard does not equal bad, though. It is also true that having stage 4 cancer is a miracle, a gift.
Every day I live with pain, with limited movement, dependency on others, with the reality that I will likely be receiving different forms of chemo until my last breath, with the possibility of not being around for my kids' graduation from high school or even middle school.
Every day I also live with incredible downloads of wisdom coming from all around me in the form of conversations, books gifted to me, YouTube videos that appear in my feed, realizations about who I am, appearances of amazing gifts from Mother Earth like hawks with snakes in their talons, the time to cultivate a deep and rich meditation and energy practice, and love pouring into me from all directions.
Would I do it again if I had the choice?
Well, if there was some other way to receive all these gifts, then yeah. But I'm not sure that there is. It kind of feels like I'm going through the kind of intense journey which is required for those gifts. Maybe not.
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May 2, 2020: Love has taken on a whole new meaning in the last few months.
Yet it took until last week for me to internalize this new understanding of love. While I was in a lot of pain and meditating on the pain in my body, it came to me. If I am “fighting” the cancer cells in my body, I am using a lot of unnecessary energy, and the cancer cells might start fighting back (which it already feels like they have).
If I “love” the cancer cells in my body, I am using far less energy than when I fight, and it feels so much better.
Love has a transformative power. And when those cancer cells transform, it transforms and heals my whole body.
Fighting has an obliterative aim and quality. And when cancer cells are obliterated, they clog up my organs and systems and it might even make the cancer stronger.
I'm not saying that fighting is never an answer, but it probably backfires far more than we think.
Love really is the answer, even in the most difficult of situations, with the most difficult of people, and with pesky ol' cancer, too.
So if you don't hear me talk about fighting the cancer, or beating the cancer, now you know why.
I'm over here, just lovin' it up!
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Feb. 6, 2021 - Here's the wild thing. I am so happy. I don't think I've felt happier in my life. Something in me has been freed up like never before. A burden I've been carrying has been lifted.
Yes, I've had a nose drip for a year, an extremely itchy right arm for the past six months, electric shocks that travel across my skull every once in a while for the last many months. The only active activity I can really do is walk, I've lost 3.5 inches, there doesn't seem to be enough room for all my organs, and I can barely see over the steering wheel.
I could go on and on - do you want to hear more weird symptoms?
Yet every morning I wake up with a huge smile on my face, excited to greet the dawn, to receive what the universe has to teach me that day, to share love with every living being around me, to build relationships, happy to be alive.
What a tremendous, tremendous gift I have received in such an unlikely place.