TWENTY-ONE DAYS
I nearly drowned. At least that’s how it felt. To burst out laughing under water. To imagine taking my last breath fighting waves instead of cancer. Wouldn’t that be a curious thing?
This is the second day home, away from the constant touching and attending, away from hours of intensive therapies and needful bodies with impossibly high hopes.
Away, I fell into the reality of what my body needs.
Away, I wore a soft robe most of the day.
Away, I allowed the skilled hands of others to guide me from place to place.
Away, the soft whisper, “cancer,” became conversation over organic greens and juice.
We’ve been told and most of believe it, that is takes twenty-one days to form a habit, a way of being that has potential for life change. In truth, these first three weeks of any new practice are best viewed as the honeymoon stage.
I wish I could tell you that the hard work season that comes after, only applies to my unexpected life...that realigning body, mind, and spirit is a job relegated only to those of us motivated by unexpected circumstance.
Life is the unexpected circumstance. Hard stop.
Embracing this truth is when the exhilaration sets in.
Like laughing under water.
For me, if I’m blessed, the disciplines of twenty-one days will fold into twenty-one years. I will control my destiny not by pretending I accomplished something real and changing over a period of weeks, but in making an all-in, all-or-nothing agreement with myself.
We are all experts in something for just a little while, when the prospect of something new turns our necks or when others tout it as the “must try” for ourselves.
this is when I ask if I am called to be an expert of everything around me, or an expert of myself.
There is no way to capture the expansiveness of all that I am in the span of three short weeks. Mine is a lifetime exploration—
of discipline and digging in,
of wrestling with the innermost pieces that awaken me at night,
of forgiving others and particularly myself,
of letting go of expectation, of celebrating the triumph of being the best version of me.
The secret, it seems, is not only what fascinates in this moment but what we take with us to the next moment and the next, until curiosity becomes conviction, until we allow it to enter us, become us, reorchestrate our cells.
What is it, really, that you would like to be expert in?
Does it resonate with who you are and where you’ve been?
Is what fascinates you something that won’t fade over time?
Does it have potential to change someone else’s life?
NOTES:The secret to the Hope4Cancer program is not only the individual therapies themselves but the way in which they are orchestrated, one after the other, to create a “concert of chaos” [my words] in the body, with the objective of not only healing in the moment but training the body to learn to repair on its own over time.When I discovered the clinic was in Cancun, that the program is inclusive of a beautiful beach-front hotel, my immediate reaction was shame.Somewhere along the way I had developed this notion that the process of healing should be difficult, rigid, bare. In so many ways, I believe our medical system has done its best to instill this belief.Yet, the longer I was there, the harder it became to suppress the beautiful imagery of what healing can and should look like: Me on the beach, tan, with the sun in my hair. As I write, tears fall. It has been so long since I have experienced nature like this. God like this. Why is it that we feel so unintitled to this?Ironically, I write about this kind of Sanctuary Living all the time. But experiencing it…and allowing others to witness it in and through me...has been another thing entirely.I have revered hard work my entire life. My body is paying the price. Now, it’s time to share the other side of what productivity can look like. That is, the productivity of healthy cells.This is a message we all need to hear, this message of Restoration— I have rescued places my entire life and now it’s time to rescue myself.