Cancer brings up emotions that defy logic. They can’t be defended or dissuaded, they have to be felt and slowly evolve. I BLAMED myself for my cancer. Clearly, I wasn’t a GOOD ENOUGH person to NOT get cancer. I must have caused it, maybe even DESERVED it.
Photo by DJ Watts
The year before I was diagnosed with breast cancer, my mother died of ovarian cancer. I didn’t feel I had done enough, spent enough time with her, prepared enough food for her, loved her hard enough. I was ANGERY that she had cancer and that she died of it. I wasn’t angry at Cancer, I was angry at HER for letting cancer happen.
At age 6, so proud to be matching my mama.
Then I was diagnosed with cancer and it felt like Karma for all of these unspoken and unspeakable feelings. My anger, blame, and guilt towards my mother and especially towards myself- were eating me alive.
So I let cancer HEAL me. Cancer became penance. Penance for what I failed to do, for my feelings, for my thoughts. Cancer gave me insight into my mother’s pain. It did not break us apart but instead it brought us together, even after her death.
The place where my mothers ashes were scattered.
Chemo became my temple and I became a monk. It allowed me the chance to dig deep with in and be stripped. Cancer taught me a priceless lesson that my mother tried desperately to teach me during her life- External Beauty holds no TRUE value. I didn’t understand why she pushed so hard against my desire to be PRETTY until I watched every copper strand of hair, both perky breasts, my endless lashes, and boundless energy abandon me in a blink of an eye. I couldn’t fully grasp how VALUABLE I was beyond my physical body until it was stripped down to it’s essence.
“[I] put value in an asset with diminishing returns, and [Cancer] made sure all of it burned”.
©Andres Hernandez 2015 Shot in the middle of chemo.
We don’t deserve “bad” or “good” things in life. Life is neutral. Events Happen. People get sick. People Die. Not because they were good or bad or DESERVED it, but because that is LIFE. We can’t control the things that happen but by accepting events as they are, we can swim across them with greater ease because we are not being dragged under by their weight.
We are all Divine because we come from the DIVINE, We are all Extraordinary because we come from the EXTRAORDINARY, we are all Love because we all come from LOVE. We lack for nothing because everything we need was given to us the moment we divided from that first cell.
Just because my body was broken it didn’t make ME a broken person. I didn't deserve cancer and I don't deserve health because the word "DESERVE", just like external beauty, holds no true value.
Cancer gave me more than it took and healed me in places I could never reach. It helped me heal my relationship with my mother, to forgive her and to finally FORGIVE myself.
Did Cancer give you a gift you never expected? What was it? Comment below.
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