CHAPTER 15
We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. –Joseph Campbell
A few weeks later, I took my daughter for her orthodontic checkup. Usually she would be seen right away, but today we waited in his spacious, colorful and cheerful waiting room. There were comfortable chairs with a rectangular sofa table. Different magazines were fanned out across the glass tabletop. A magazine from the center of the pile jumped out at me and caught my eye. It was a women’s magazine. I saw nothing special about it but I felt an impulse to read it. Following my inclination, I casually picked it up off the table. I am not a magazine reader and had brought a book to read. I hesitated and started …show more content…
Chills ran up and down my spine, a sign from my body to pay attention. I carefully read every word of the article. Then I read it again. I thought about the top of my head; a large bloody sore had appeared when I was in Houston. I didn’t know what it was and couldn’t seem to get it to heal no matter what I did. Then from reading this article, I knew that it was skin cancer. I felt disheartened. This woman had covered herself up to avoid the sun, but still she developed skin cancer regularly. Because I have fair skin I am careful about my sun exposure and usually wear a hat. The fact that I might have skin cancer never even crossed my mind until that moment. I said nothing to my daughter about what I had …show more content…
All the symptoms over the years that I had to contend with, the drama from my life, Houston and now this—the skin cancer on top of my head was the tipping point for me; the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. All these years I had been as good-natured as I possibly could be. I lived in my body with my emotional, mental and physical pain sitting quietly with it and tried to understand why I was sick. My desire to know my body and why it betrayed me by not getting well with all that I did reached a level of urgency. My life had become too painful to ignore what had gone wrong. There was no sweeping anything under the rug. It was apparent that how I conducted my life did not give me the results I wanted. I had hit a brick wall so to speak. There was nothing more I could do but just let go and remain open for something
We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. –Joseph Campbell
A few weeks later, I took my daughter for her orthodontic checkup. Usually she would be seen right away, but today we waited in his spacious, colorful and cheerful waiting room. There were comfortable chairs with a rectangular sofa table. Different magazines were fanned out across the glass tabletop. A magazine from the center of the pile jumped out at me and caught my eye. It was a women’s magazine. I saw nothing special about it but I felt an impulse to read it. Following my inclination, I casually picked it up off the table. I am not a magazine reader and had brought a book to read. I hesitated and started …show more content…
Chills ran up and down my spine, a sign from my body to pay attention. I carefully read every word of the article. Then I read it again. I thought about the top of my head; a large bloody sore had appeared when I was in Houston. I didn’t know what it was and couldn’t seem to get it to heal no matter what I did. Then from reading this article, I knew that it was skin cancer. I felt disheartened. This woman had covered herself up to avoid the sun, but still she developed skin cancer regularly. Because I have fair skin I am careful about my sun exposure and usually wear a hat. The fact that I might have skin cancer never even crossed my mind until that moment. I said nothing to my daughter about what I had …show more content…
All the symptoms over the years that I had to contend with, the drama from my life, Houston and now this—the skin cancer on top of my head was the tipping point for me; the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. All these years I had been as good-natured as I possibly could be. I lived in my body with my emotional, mental and physical pain sitting quietly with it and tried to understand why I was sick. My desire to know my body and why it betrayed me by not getting well with all that I did reached a level of urgency. My life had become too painful to ignore what had gone wrong. There was no sweeping anything under the rug. It was apparent that how I conducted my life did not give me the results I wanted. I had hit a brick wall so to speak. There was nothing more I could do but just let go and remain open for something