Much of what we have learned about life was outside-in from our parents, schools, and cultures. They informed our beliefs and assigned meaning to our actions, often not in alignment with who we were inside.
Recent Survivor Stories
Author Archives: Sue
Joyce Gornick's story, Breast cancer
The sequence of events were, three surgeries, my daughter’s wedding, which I was determined to do, after all, over a course of about 15 years, I had done hundreds of wedding, and now to not be able to do my own daughter’s? This was not an option in my life! I did it all!
Angel for January... Play
Maximize every moment of liveness. Experience pleasurable involvement in all your activities and enjoy what you are doing. Have fun!
Remembering Betsy... 1949~2009
Where to begin? Other than Mom, I’ve known you longer than anyone else on the planet!
Angel for December... Synthesis
We inter-face with the world in numerous ways; as a partner, a family member, child, parent, pet pal, neighbor, customer, and community member both culturally and nationally to name a few. Who is the ‘one’ that is behind the many faces — who is the ‘one’ inner-face?
This week... Diane Kenney, breast cancer survivor
Even now, seven months later, I still sometimes feel like this isn’t happening to me, like I am watching someone else go though this life changing experience. But it is real and I know it. Going through chemo removes any doubt about how real this experience is!
A new age of Reformation
I am a melanoma survivor, and I embrace each day now with a clear understanding of the dark abyss of disease and illness from which my medical team saved me. Cancer and chemo therapy are a terrifying storm of confusion, uncertainty and struggle, but with the proper medical solution, there is also hope.
Cancers Can Vanish Without Treatment, but How?
It was a view that was hard for some cancer doctors and researchers to accept. But some of the skeptics have changed their minds and decided that, contrary as it seems to everything they had thought, cancers can disappear on their own.
The October Angel... Trust
Move from a place of knowing within you rather than as a result of adaptation to outer experience.
My Brain on Chemo: Alive and Alert
Slowly, insidiously, the fog of the everyday has returned to enshroud me. It came in wispy strips, a little more, then a little more, wrapping me like a mummy. Just the other day, in the car with my wife and my two daughters, I began railing about being stuck in a traffic jam.
Perspective, my wife said. Perspective.
I could not hear her. You see, I’m struggling with this pre-existing human condition.
This week... A spouse's Journal, Dick Durrance II
How do we know these things? What is premonition? Fear taking form? Spirits? Jung’s collective unconscious? They are not always right. But sometimes they are. That’s what gives them their power.
Journal, Sue Drinker
“But experiences fade. Sameness will have it’s day, every day. We wake every morning pretty much the same as we were the day before, because that’s how we like it, and because anything else would be scary.” Maybe that is what cancer does to you… it pours you into experience and re-defines sameness. It is more than scary, it is a wake-up call on steroids.
Journal, my journey... Sue Drinker
Just hold on one damn minute… There is nothing “out there” doing anything except what it should be doing… Blowing, shining, whirring, chirping, rustling, bumping and bumbling… everything that was happening in me was totally of my own making… OF MY OWN MAKING… well… then if I can be darkness, can’t I be light?
After cancer, Gratitude for Simple Pleasures by Dana Jennings
I’ve been thinking a lot about gratitude lately, trying to put my finger on what exactly I’m grateful for in the year since I had surgery to remove my cancerous prostate.
this week... Janie Reneè May, breast cancer
A few days later my doctor called with the bad news. It was cancer, but the non invasive type. They referred me to Dr. Andrew Morse, surgeon. He did the first lumpectomy on November 16th and told me he was sure he had gotten everything. A couple of days later he called me himself with more bad news. Apparently the path report came back and showed a second type of cancer in the same breast. This time it was the invasive type. So he scheduled me for the second lumpectomy on November 27th. That surgery took a major toll on my left breast. When the bandages came off the left breast was completely concave to where you couldn’t see the nipple.
Welter, Diane...Your Friends for Life
Your Friends for Life is a community of cancer knowledge and support… a group of people with first-hand experience who would not hesitate to get up in the middle of the night to come to the aide of a cancer trauma… an individual, one on one solution which fosters friendships and fulfillment for everyone involved… the patient, the family, the husband or wife and the children who are caught up in the drama without really understanding why their worlds are up-side down.
Host, Carrie... Carcinoid Tumor
I want to inspire people through my book and by giving sincere talks that explore the questions, “How do we do this?” “How do we live our lives without becoming crippled with fear when we are living with a terminal disease?” or “How can we squeeze some happiness from the lemons life may have given us?”
I guess I find it ironic that because cancer rendered me speechless, I’ve found my voice. It’s quieter and stronger than the loud one lost growing up in a large, loving, noisy family. I first recognized it in my Valentine to the President and now, a lifetime later, in the pages of my book.
Spreading the word about Melanoma
I don’t know if I was “lucky” and “caught it in time”… I’ll never know.
Read Full Article