USE IT OR LOSE IT
If you read my love note last week, or if you've been around here for a while, you have read that I used to be a serial people pleaser. Before I was diagnosed, I defined myself, my life, and my relationships by other people's opinions on how all of it should look and be. I was not living the life I dreamed of, but I had given up on that life being possible. I wasn't even living life for myself. I had started to make some changes, but I wasn't anywhere close yet to where I needed to go and didn't even know it yet, how far away I was or even where it was that I was meant to be. Enter cancer.
It should say something about how far down the "I need other people's approval" rabbit hole I was that it took a life threatening illness to pull me out of it. It literally took being faced with the fact that I might lose this life to finally push me to make big changes about how I was living it. It was the ultimate "use it or lose it" scenario. And it reminds me so much of another beautiful value from the Anishinaabe code of ethics.
"Search for yourself, by yourself. Do not allow others to make your path for you. It is your road, and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you."
Cancer is one of those times in life that exemplifies this the most for me. There are many who will walk this section of our road with us, but there is no one who can walk it for us. We are the ones who have to make the decisions for
ourselves, choose the options that feel right to
us, and decide how it is that
we are going to respond to this, how we are going to allow it to shape
our life. I knew that I would lose this life, or at the very least not be happy with it's quality, if I didn't listen to and trust myself. That was finally enough to make me prioritize my own opinions and feelings over everyone else's and stick by them.
And what started as something very specific to my cancer experience and how I was navigating my way through it and my treatment decisions, eventually spread to my life after cancer as well. I want to use up every last bit of my life. I want to do what I've dreamed of, see what I haven't, be content with how I've lived it and, above all, be happy. I want to continue the search for myself by myself, because that is the only way to guarantee that what you find is truly
you.
Happy Healing
