My Beautiful Rebellion: From Cancer To Clarity

I know what it’s like to feel stuck. I know what it’s like to be doing a job that doesn’t feel quite right and to long for the freedom of living a life on your own terms. I also know what it’s taken me to claim this freedom and I’d like to share that story with your today.

Freedom has always been a huge value of mine, which is why I started working as an English as a Second Language teacher after university. I was free to travel when I wanted and was not tied down by a contract. It was a lot of fun with the students and the staff were great. I was a passionate teacher. But I was not free.

I sought adventures overseas and was forever saving up for my next trip. I travelled Europe and lived in London with three of my best friends, journeyed for 3 months in India, went to hip hop dance school and worked in New York and lived in Montpellier, France. It was a whole lot of fun too. But I was not free.

I married and moved to Switzerland and got a nice job at a hotel school. The pay was good and the staff and students again were lovely. We could afford a beautiful apartment in the center of town and trips away several times a year. I was more financially abundant than I’d ever been. But I was not free.

I was not free because I was not living my purpose. Of course it was good enough to have a job I liked with many perks – but I knew better. Getting a regular paycheck was not good enough when I had no time to work on the novel I’d been writing for the past several years. I’d drowned out my dreams with the voice of reason and ended up overloaded with work I didn’t feel passionate about. Perhaps this is the ‘real world’, but it’s not the world I choose to live in today.

Many people would simply have ignored that inner voice and sedate their frustration with TV and Friday night drinks, the comfort of endless snacking and scrolling. But TV and what I saw online only made me see that other people were living their dream life. So why couldn’t that be me?

By the time I quit it was already too late – I had manifested a cancerous lump in my breast. I was 34 and had no history of it in my family AND I was not living my purpose. My body was trying to talk to me and this time I listened. I rose up and set myself free.

Today I’d like to share part of my Freedom Manifesto; an ideology shaped by my journey to health and happiness :

1. WE WILL CONSCIOUSLY CREATE OUR REALITY

I had already been studying the power of the mind for more than a year when I received the diagnosis and so I got to work on myself immediately. In the space of the week between the ultrasound and operation, the 3.4cm lump had already decreased by 1cm.

What I realized was that our emotions are creating our future. We all hear about the benefits of positive thinking, but actually the positive state is more important than the thinking. Before I had often times been sinking into despair and victimhood, but now I knew better.

There was a lot that I did and still do to transform my health and I share with you the two most important ones from my regime. These can be translated into any area of your life where you desire transformation.

I got high:

Every thing on this planet is vibrating at a certain frequency, including us. When we feel amazing, our frequency is high and when we’re low, so is our frequency. Like attracts like so being at a high frequency attracts the miraculous. This is basic Quantum physics / Law of Attraction stuff.

So how did I apply this? Firstly, I went the health route – chugging green juice and getting as alkaline as can be, but I also knew that I was pretty healthy before and many of the recommendations, like wearing deodorant without aluminum, I was already doing.

What made the biggest difference for me was getting high in nature. I walked and swam at the beach as much as possible. Nature is an amazing healer and it always made me feel more grounded and with a stronger faith. Plus as I walked I’d say my affirmations like ‘my whole body is healthy’, ‘my lymph nodes are clear’and ‘the lump is reducing/gone’. I’d say one affirmation over and over and really feel it in my body, breathing the words down into my chest. You know that feeling in your chest when you feel really positive about something and just know? – that’s what I felt. When my mind wandered I’d switch to another affirmation and I’d do this for at least 30 minutes as I walked. It was a pleasure though because I was in such a high vibrational place and thinking positive thoughts actually feels really good. I still do this today as much as I can, even if I’m just walking to the train station.

So often we are unconscious of the story we are playing in our mind, but meanwhile it is creating our future. Choosing my thoughts and being at the beach was a spiritual practice that made me feel connected, aligned and in the state of knowing that good would come. Only we have control over what we believe and therefore, I chose to believe in a bright future and feel happy.

I spoke positively about ‘it’:

I never said ‘I have cancer’. I always said, ‘There’s a lump in my breast which is malignant/cancerous’. It may have been more long-winded but it meant ‘it’was removed from me. Itdidn’t define me. It was not me. And when the lump was removed I immediately changed ‘have’ to ‘had’ and ‘is’ to ‘was’.

I also told only a select few at the time because I didn’t want others to be thinking of me as sick or have to talk about it wherever I went and in any case, I referred to the situation as ‘my health journey’ and ‘my health issue’ (and still do). Words cast spells and have a frequency too and so I replaced those commonly used like ‘battle’ and ‘fight’ (which relate to violence and struggle) with ‘heal’ and ‘cure’. To say ‘heal’ and ‘cure’ the body relaxes and it feels so easy.

“I have learnt to create my world with the power of my mind, the wisdom of my body and by taking inspired action.”

2. WE WILL LISTEN TO OUR BODIES

My recovery has been quite the journey in trusting my inner voice and emotions. It is not easy when a doctor insists you need chemotherapy – just in case. And then the next three doctors try to convince you of the same and hand you the same print out of your statistics. What I learnt is that doctors are human and I am not a statistic.

I felt that chemotherapy wasn’t right for me and nor did I want to put my body through what would be necessary to maintain my fertility. I made peace with the fact that I would rather die than do that and focused my attention on getting healthy via the alternative route. Through digging deeper, however, I was able to meet with one of the experts in the field, a highly-respected specialist, who quoted research demonstrating that for my age and type of cancer chemotherapy had not been found to be that effective and that even though the print out bore my age, the statistics reflected the sample group, who were much older than me. I was ecstatic. I’d listened to my inner guide and been greatly rewarded. I’d taken the time to make my own decisions and withstood the pressure of what everyone else wanted for me, not out of fear but from what felt right, given what I suspected and then what I knew. I am proud of who I am because of it today and felt great about having radiotherapy and going on tamoxifen several months after my operation.

On my journey to health, I have also been supported by many holistic professionals; an energy healer, a shaman, a naturopath, my doctor and my acupuncturist and TCM doctor. I have been told I just have to stop thinking so much, breathe and be happy (it sounds so easy, right?). Our bodies are the most brilliant and wise creatures on this planet, yet we’ve forgotten how to listen to them. Today I practice yoga, meditation and dancing AND I enjoy being in my body. Could the cure for cancer be so close?

3. WE WILL BE WEALTHY

This is something I tried to ignore for many years because I believed that I had to choose between money and a life of passion and freedom. I thought I had to sell out to be wealthy and this is why I was never free all those years before. Money combined with purpose is what I seek today. To live an epic life, we must be able to afford self-care and outsource our stress so that we can focus on our zone of genius. We require money to be healthy too and I’m not afraid to say it. Money is simply energy and we are keeping the flow of energy going when we allow it in and don’t try to hang onto it too tightly. Today I believe in an abundant universe and this is the reality I am creating.

Today I have my own coaching business and have finished that novel. I have overcome self-doubt and learnt to express myself and use my gifts to encourage, uplift and inspire others. I have tapped into my inner strength and learnt to follow my intuition. I have learnt to create my world with the power of my mind, the wisdom of my body and by taking inspired action. Today I am committed to helping women attain their own version of freedom – because we all deserve to lead great lives and be supported throughout our beautiful rebellion.

I hope my real story has inspired you to make a positive change in your life. We tend to questions our abilities and choose “security” over passion, but now I know better. If we release what is holding us back, and follow our dreams and passion, we set ourselves free, start vibrating energy at a higher frequency and attracting what’s for our highest good.

Please let me/I’d love to know what you are passionate about, what the challenge is in setting yourself free or how you’ve managed to do this and any other thoughts or any questions you might have. I value your input tremendously.