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Category: Healing Not Healed

Maybe Fighting Isn’t The Answer

Published on June 5, 2024

A mother of one of my martial arts students was recently diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.

…Yet, seeing her in person, you’d never know.

She’s vibrant, she’s warm, she’s smiling, she’s taking care of her 7-year-old son’s needs without so much as a single complaint (that I ever hear)… and she’s even DJing on some weekends.

At first glance, some might see this as being possible denial. A possible refusal to acknowledge the diagnosis so the pain or reality isn’t felt. A possible toxic positivity, some might say, to focus exclusively on the good while ignoring fully the bad.

…But, this isn’t the case with this mother at all.

After further inspection and conversation, the vibrance and warmth she’s emitting isn’t coming from denial… but from a refusal to fight.

Which might sound confusing… refusing to fight a cancer diagnosis?!

The idea, she explained on her GoFundMe page, came from the admin of Love Your Cancer Free Life group. He said: “When you fight, it fights back. Rather than fight, accept.”

“Obviously he doesn’t mean to just roll over and play dead.” Lisa explains.

“…It’s more about not feeding into the story that everyone is told about how cancer should look and feel. What he means is come to peace with its presence and accept the need to respond for change.”

She then continued to quote the admin saying, “Fighting is a reaction. Acceptance is a response. Taking authentic action, not reaction, to create the change needed for healing. Stop putting energy into the fight and start placing energy in your POWER for healing.”

…Something we might consider doing in the “fights” of our lives, too.

Like Body Like Mind

Published on February 26, 2024

What you do for yourself when you’re physically sick are the same kinds of things you should do for yourself when you’re mentally sick.

…And I don’t mean mentally sick as in innately twisted or morally malevolent… I mean just temporarily “under the weather” and like you’ve been infiltrated by some kind of “virus of the mind” if you will.

This could happen from being overworked and exhausted, from a hurtful comment from someone you love, from the loss of someone important to you… etc.

Being mentally “under the weather” might sound like:

  • “I’m worthless”
  • “I can’t do anything right”
  • “Nothing I do is ever enough”
  • “I’m a bad person/friend/parent/spouse”
  • “There is so much more I should’ve done, but didn’t do”

What are the doctor’s orders when physically sick?

  • Rest (including time away from normal obligations like school or work)
  • Hydrate (so your body can keep things moving smoothly throughout your body—including the defeated sickness cells after our immune system is done with them)
  • Maybe medicine if the symptoms get bad enough (things to either add immune system support or help you endure the pain/discomfort of the symptoms)

And what might we do to deal with a virus of the mind?

  • Rest (including time away from people/places/things that might’ve infected your mind in the first place.
  • Hydrate (by keeping fresh, mentally hydrating thoughts pouring in from high-quality sources)
  • Maybe “medicine” if the symptoms persist or get bad enough (getting mental immune system support by having conversations with insightful friends, loved ones, or a therapist)—which I’d say is about as close to “mind medicine” that isn’t actually mind medicine as it gets.

Complete Me [Poem]

Published on September 15, 2023

Everything I loved about you
Is what I’ve used
To rebuild me

What used to be pieces
Of you
Used to complete me

Have become pieces
By you
Built into me

By leaving me in pieces
…Bless you
I’ve reengineered a more—

Complete me.

P.s. You can read my other poems here.

Expert Inner-Workers

Published on January 15, 2023

Normalize people working with expert inner-workers (therapists) so that they can better understand the inner-workings that drive literally 100% of their experience of life.

Placing (and accepting) a stigma on this is to rob people of a chance to live their most fulfilled life.

This Too Shall Pass (Sooner)

Published on January 6, 2023

Whatever hardship you’re going through right now remember: This too shall pass.

…What you do while it passes, however, is worth talking about, too.

Try and suppress, ignore, hide, or run and the passing will take longer.

Remain present, open, reflective, soft, and connected (to yourself and others)—and the passing will come sooner.

Time shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all strategy.

Inner work is the real means for having this, too, pass… and sooner.

P.s. I shared a book update today. 👀

Avoiding Triggers

Published on December 26, 2022

There’s a difference between avoiding your triggers and AVOIDING your triggers.

When you consciously avoid people who spew toxicity, for example, that’s strategy.

When you AVOID the feelings that arise when you’re triggered and suppress/ numb/ hide—that’s not strategy—that’s a slow tragedy.

P.s. In case you missed it, you can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week, here.

Filling Inner Holes

Published on November 23, 2022

The bigger your sense of lack…

The deeper your inner holes will feel.

And the deeper the inner hole, the more that’ll be required to fill it.

But, remember… filling a hole can be done in two very different ways:

1) Buying external hole-filler (which is often costly, hard to come by, and labor-intensive—you know… that luxury brand, media-worshipped, top-shelf style hole-filler).

2) Using internal hole-filler (you know, the stuff you threw next to the hole while you were doing all of that inner hole digging in the first place).

Remember this as you look around today… at the many wonderful things you often don’t notice, the people you often can’t stand, and the blessings you so often take for granted.

Maybe the “holes” inside aren’t holes at all.

Maybe they’re just parts of ourselves that, for one reason or another, became uneven from some unintentional / subconscious digging that we did and then left ignored. And what we need to do isn’t buy some fancy filler… but do some inner-landscaping/ leveling with what’s already there.

Because whole is how we were born. “With-holes” is something that sometimes happens as we go. And filling inner holes is best done with the stuff that’s already next to them—inside.

P.s. Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it. I’m very thankful to have you with me on this ride.