I believe this may be a bit controversial to throw out there but this theme bothers me a lot and I really want to share my thoughts in the hope that they may help someone with a diagnosis.

I am a health coach and a trained holistic cancer coach. Every day I support women with breast cancer to recover. No, this does not mean all alternative …no chemo etc. It means finding an all-around approach to recovery that can include chemo, radiation or whatever the person chooses. But it also means nutrition, detoxification, emotional wellbeing, hormonal health, stress management, purposeful living and exercise. This is all the stuff oncologists are not trained to advise on and do not have the time for.

And this is what I come across all the time:
The war on cancer, to be a cancer warrior, fighting cancer….it just sounds so wrong to me.

We hear it everywhere and most of all from the big cancer charities who fundraise for cancer research etc.

I do understand, I really do because I have been there myself. You get the big C diagnosis and you just want this to pass. You want to get rid of this cancer, it feels like an enemy. An enemy to your body and soul and an enemy to the life as you have known it, the life that you want to return to as soon as you can. You just want to get rid of that enemy-tumour and carry on with life and of course in this situation it appears the easiest to fight. To go into full on battle and get this over and done with.

What does an enemy do though when you fight? The enemy will probably fight you back even harder. Well, at least this is a strong possibility.
So…. what am I saying? That you should ask your cancer to be your friend? May be that goes a bit far as you don’t want to get too comfortable with the presence of cancer in your body and this thinking would not make you take the steps you need to take to heal from cancer. You do not want to get complacent.

Consider the option that cancer is here to challenge you, in a way a language to communicate with you, a symptom to let you know that things are not right.

Obviously, you may say you are not well if you have cancer but I would like to argue that it is not cancer that is the issue but the underlying cause of the cancer. Cancer is the symptom, the language to communicate with you.

How about then, imagining cancer as your teacher…this teacher has come into your life to wake you up and to make changes. Would this not bring about the greatest chance for healing and recovery?

If you think about it..unless you change, nothing will change and how can we work on changes in ourselves in lifestyle, thought patterns, nutrition and so on if we are engaged in a furious battle.

I would like to argue that we need to listen carefully to what cancer has to tell us, is here to teach us and this may be in many different areas in life. This could be to do with nutrition, overcoming grief, anger, resentment, trauma and also how we feel about our life’s path.

Mostly there are aspects of all these areas. Cancer is never just one thing but whatever it is, the more carefully we work with ourselves to heal and recover the more we will learn about ourselves and the cancer that has come to reside.

With this in mind we can choose conventional and complimentary treatment options wisely to heal rather than to engage in a short battle and then withdraw to wait for the next war.

I really do not mean to be offensive in any way, I respect and know from own experience that there is always an element of battle for example the battle with your own fear and emotions and sometimes cancer has become so strong in us, has grown so much that it is threatening us severely. I do not put down this difficult situation at all.

However, considering cancer as a teacher could make us much more able to respond wisely to our health crisis. To adopt response-ability rather than lashing out from a place of fear and terror.

I know, more easily said than done but I hope I was able to encourage those of you with a diagnosis at the very least to dare think in a new way.

Personally I would love to banish the words warrior, war on cancer etc from our cancer vocabulary

The wound is the place where light enters you. – Rumi
With my best wishes,
Sabine
www.sabinehopebreastcancercoach.com