A mid-life cancer diagnosis was certainly a wake up call to my already healthy lifestyle. As a fitness instructor and personal trainer who practices what she preaches, I was literally knocked off my podium following an armpit lump discovery, an ultrasound and a biopsy confirmation of breast cancer.
Quickly faced with a chronic illness, I questioned all the possibilities of WHY? Disbelief, shock, anger, despair, plus a plethora of other emotions flooded my thoughts, and clouded my rationale on how to move forward.
A cancer plan was put in place (surgery, chemo, and radiation) prefacing an unfavorable mission of poisoning my body, mind and soul to kill one thing in order to survive another.
I needed answers. I wanted to put a label on my cancer manifestation. Breast cancer is less than 10% heredity, so what else can I attribute this diagnosis and link it to? I did some deep diving into my past to help uncover causes for my present diagnosis, and took active steps towards a different future.
Unprocessed grief, and years of emotional stuffing planted the seed that grew into my illness. As a child, I was a quick study to do what was expected without being asked or told to avoid conflict and backlashing. I kept all words and thoughts to myself, and rarely shed a tear even though on the inside, I was hurting and angry. I was secretly craving affirmation, praise, some type of tangible acknowledgment of acceptance. My emotional plate served up an overflowing meal of negativity, self-deprecation, a lack of self-love and a yearning for affection and approval.
As I continued this emotional overeating acceleration into my young adult life, I was reaching without grasp onto something or someone to bring me happiness, stability and joy. Through my years of unlearned or untaught nutrition to feed my emotions with healthy healing, I was slowly growing disease.
Has a traumatic experience or chronic diagnosis slapped you in the face with a reality check?
Faced with adversity, we are heroines of our chronic illness diagnosis. With a cultivated awareness and potential emotional choices, we can nourish, move and transform to create a healthy healing balance to realize an abundant lifestyle.
Image by Larisa-K from Pixabay
Emotional energy on its own is neutral. What we feel and our reaction to an emotion puts a stamp on it as either positive or negative. Feeling is the subtitle we give it as joy, fear, anger or sadness. When we attach a definition or a thought about the emotional energy, then it takes on meaning.
When we absorb negative and unbalanced energy to FEED our emotions, our chakra wheelhouse internally slows down, gets stuck, and potentially could be manifesting into disease. Obviously we need to eat, and what we eat can certainly affect our mood and alter our emotional well-being. We may unknowingly starve our emotions to show others who we want to be, or stuff them down to avoid undesired confrontation or chaos.
Our emotional energy is expressed through physical and mental sensations, like pain, fatigue, pressure, etc. These are signs of emotion trying to MOVE on its own to create energy in motion. Healthy emotional movement practices could include; deep breathing exercises, a yoga session, walking or sitting meditation, journaling, group sessions, art therapy, and EFT (energy frequency tapping).
Healing choices offer an astute awareness of what and how to feed or nourish our emotions; what healthy actions are needed to move emotions through towards alchemy… a place of TRANSFORMATION to heal and wholeheartedly embrace a balance of living with illness and beyond.
