Facing My Truth

One of the very first conversations I had with my naturopath about breast cancer, before I even received my diagnosis, was that in Chinese medicine, they believe the root mental/emotional cause of the disease is that the patient is not truly happy with what they are doing in life. That there is often a feeling of "not being true to themselves" if you will.

I spent a lot of time in contemplation on this idea. Much like Chinese medicine philosophy, I believe that every disease in the body first manifests in the mind or in the heart. To be diagnosed with cancer at 33 years old definitely meant to me that I needed to do some serious evaluation of where I was, where I'd been and where I wanted to go. While a combination of eastern and western medicine could remove the cancer from my body, I and I alone am responsible for making sure that it stays gone.

Throughout the weeks following my diagnosis, my time in Pittsburgh, the days leading up to my surgery and the weeks following, I spent much time in prayer and meditation. Listening for my inner voice. Learning to understand my truth. Getting in touch with my deepest fear that, once I faced it, would require me to drastically alter the lives of everyone I love.

Let me pause a moment to say that I believe there are only two things that exist in this world - Love and Fear. I also believe that we must face our fears and walk through them in order to get to the Love (Truth) on the other side.

I was desparately afraid, and had been for a number of years, that I could never truly become the person I was destined (yes, destined by Divine nature) to become within the context of my marriage. These words were terribly difficult to utter out loud. I remember once, two years ago, I was at a Debbie Ford workshop at the Celebrate Your Life Conference on facing your shadow side and one of the excerises we were doing involved speaking our deepest fear out loud (only to ourselves). Even then, I could not pronounce the words. For if I acknowledged it, I had to do something about it. And I was not ready. I knew then that the fear was real.

To make a long story short(er)... three weeks ago, I left my husband. I love him dearly and I always will. But this decision was not about him. Nearly every decision I have made in my life over the past twelve years always involved weighing his feelings against my own. And while I sometimes made choices based on what was best for me or us in the long run, I never did so without first considering the ramifications of how he would feel about those choices. When I received my diagnosis, I surrendered the ability to put myself last. Life had to become about making choices with my own best interests at heart.

So the past three weeks have been difficult to say the least. Lives have been turned upside down. A family has been torn apart. A man whom I have spent nearly my entire adult life with spends every day working on personal transformations that I gave up hoping were possible a long time ago. He sends out countless prayers that I will change my mind and give us one last chance. He vows to love me in the way he feels I've always deserved but he's never given. And while his words and professions of love move me, sometimes to tears, they do not change my truth. My truth that in order to become everything that I am meant to be, I had to leave our marriage behind.

This single statement is no longer my fear. Once I faced it and acknowledged it, this thing that once paralyzed me emotionally, became my truth.

And I sit here now feeling liberated. My heart still goes out to my husband. And it will continue to do so as long as he continues to hurt.

But that does not inhibit me from being free. For the first time in twelve years, I can go where I want to go, do what I want to do, and be who I want to be. If I want to spend my entire afternoon sitting in a cafe writing a blog, I can do that. If I want to go to bed at 9:00, that's okay. I can leave the t.v. off for days at a time. I can smile at strangers. I can dance til my heart's content. If I choose to spend my evening with my nose in a book, no one is going to feel neglected. I can talk to old friends. I can flirt with random people. I can love uninhibited.

I've changed and continue to change my entire life for this simple reason... I've got to be true to myself.