ANOTHER TURN OF THE WHEEL

ANOTHER TURN OF THE WHEEL

It has been a long while since last I blogged here. Somewhat understandably, I subconsciously believed that the end of my chemo meant a renewal of my old life just as it had been. I believed that my "new normal" after three serious surgeries, a blood clot,  five months of chemo and a false positive for a metastatic lymph node, would be  a cancer-free me, acting and feeling as I was in September 2010, the day before I was diagnosed.

Even before the end of my medical travails, I had tried to go about leading my life as fully as I could, given the limitations of severe pain and frequent medical interventions. I would boldly go about teaching and administering the integral mentors and ministers program that I had conceived over two years prior. Urging me on was the fear that my life could be snuffed out within a year or two.  Wasn't the predominant cliche that one had a bucket list to fulfill prior to life's end?  Well, this program was high up on that list.  In retrospect I had ranked it higher than self-concern and self-care.

Racing to implement the program that took up two years of my life, I was motivated by fear, by a sense of misplaced duty, and fear of standing up to the person in charge of the program. The fear came as I have stated that I might die soon and would never see my "baby" implemented. The sense of misguided duty came from not wanting to disappoint those who had registered for it. And there was my fear of standing up to the person who would not let me delay the program's onset by a year. If I could not deal with these three ego-based fears, then how was I to deal with my two cancers, a far greater threat than letting myself or others down?


1.  Fear
My stilted coping strategy might be called denial. I could do all these plans to keep very busy and not have to face my fears, I reasoned. Then I'd put the remaining 10% of my energy handling my health. I could put myself into the knowledgeable hands of my medical team and just endure what was happening.  I could still do things all by myself by sheer force of will as I had done many times before. No need to truly be courageous. Just put my head down, forge ahead one step at a time. Soon all the angst  would be over.  And I would be able to return to who and what I was before my illness.

I began creating my own Integral Life Practice health module from the day of my diagnosis from scratch.  I could intellectually create and follow it as soon as I conceptualized it. What I hadn't appreciated was that the deeper realization, the soul-work, of integrating it into my being-in-the-world would take far longer. One step forward, two steps back....I began re-reading my own work to remind myself what I had just discovered about Integral Healing.

Reading a self-help book or writing one involves the activation of the intellectual part of the self.  Applying it as a consistent practice requires the activation of different skills.  That takes patience, perseverance, and a commitment to one's self.  It also required that I knew myself deeply and honestly. I realized that the multiple traumas I had faced during my life had left their imprints on the deepest aspects of my thoughts and behaviors. I surrendered to the truth that I would have to seek out talented and appropriate guides into the wounded parts of me to free up the energy that I would need to activate my integral healing program.

In INTEGRAL HEALING  I have written extensively about Lorraine and Patricia, one an integrative therapist and another an integral homeopath and spiritual adviser. Both were able to help me address these traumas and my spiritual need for support and growth. I had hoped for a rapid resolution of the residue of those traumas, but I learned over time, and am still learning, that this depth of healing takes time and is not for the faint of heart.

I wanted to flee their probing questions. I wanted to quit them both multiple times as I had to confront the coping mechanisms I had constructed during my life that no longer served me well. I had to acknowledge that new thinking and behavioral patterns would have to be implemented as the old ones were discarded.

It has been almost three years since my treatment for cancers ended, and it has taken until now for the traumas to have healed. Why did I stay the course on this most difficult road?


2. Sense of Duty to Other
My favorite musical has always been Gilbert and Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance", where the subtitle is "A Slave to Duty." It is a merry confection about a boy born on February 29th and who is bound to a band of pirates until his 18th birthday when he will be free to return home. But the pirates figure out that he has a birthday only every four years, so he is actually 5 "and a little bit older." Therefore, he must remain with the pirates.

Having been brought up by a mother that demanded I bow to her needs, I learned that honoring my own meant I was being selfish. It also gave me egoic pleasure that I had the gift of being able to make my mother feel better, and that I was being a good daughter.  That soon spread out to all "others" in my life, where my needs always came second to those requests by others to oblige them with some performance.

When Dr. Woodward told me that I definitely had breast cancer, I blurted out two questions: "Am I going to die soon?" and "What should I do about the class I am starting?"  I dare to say the reader might find this a bit perplexing: "Who cares about the class? That first question is The Big One. The rest of your worries will fall into place as you deal with the answer to the first."

But not for me. Looming as large as my own death was the huge sense of responsibility I felt toward the enrolled students. I could no more disappoint them than I could my mother or anyone else whom I felt "depended" on me in some way.

This feeling is actually a narcissistic one.  I am that important to people I have not met, in a program offered by a small organization, that I must forgo my own dire health situation for their interests?  The child who is pegged as the only one who can make the parent happy or meet her needs develops an inflated and deflated sense of self that is confusing.  I was no one, and I was the only one. I personally counted as nothing, and I was the only hope.  This was the second prong of my trap in going forward with the program that I had held with such reverence.


3. Inability to Stand Up For Myself
In the hands of someone with a different agenda than mine, knowing that I have a very strong sense of duty, the person can manipulate me quite easily.  And so it went.....
When I made it known that my diagnosis was positive for cancer, I stressed that I would need at least a year's postponement of its launch to see which way my health went. I was told that this was not a possibility. I knew, deep down inside, that this was not the right decision. But I was too passive to push the issue, too afraid of confrontation, too distressed by all of the medical issues I would have to decide, that I reluctantly agreed to start two weeks later.

What a mistake.  I paid dearly for that failure to "just say no." Negative life events flowed from this mistake. I spent two years thereafter working through the issues I needed to resolve so that would never recur. I would have to go even deeper into my original traumas to correct the three areas that had led to the mistakes I had made during my cancer treatment.


My reconstruction of my early training was critical to the full and happy life I live today.  The book I have written is not an ending to the story, to  my autobiography, to my fleshing out of Integral Healing.  As deeply as the surgeons had to cut into my body three times, that is how deeply we all must cut into our repressed, denied, and ignored shadow material. That material must be excised as my tumors were.

Cancer is a disease of fulminant growth, unbridled and ceaseless growth until it kills the host. So is shadow material, trauma residue, pain vortexes, and addictions.

I have begun blogging here and at Cancer Hope Network, which you can link to below.  My book should be published in October, 2014. My web site will be up then.  I invite you to share your healing stories with me. I will be posting some of them, and interviewing some of you about your sacred memoir or autobiography.

Blessings to all,

Lynne

http://blog.cancerhopenetwork.org/2014/03/03/when-lightning-strikes/