The Gifts of Cancer

Cancer – one of the things that most of us deeply and desperately don’t want to experience. And I have cancer (I have MPN, a rare form of blood cancer). It has been very challenging, but I am also here to tell you that it comes with wonderful gifts. It is amazing what happens when the health you have taken for granted your whole life goes away but you discover, if you listen, you really do have a choice about whether you are going to respond or react – use it as your teacher or be a victim to it.

Our old way of dealing with illness is to endlessly try to fix and when that doesn’t work, we resist, deny and ignore. But if we cultivate moments where we stay open to the experience of illness, it will also create a deeper connection with life with all its wonder, joy and aliveness. Here are a few of the gifts that my cancer is bringing me.

The first thing that comes to mind is the deepening recognition of the preciousness of everything. Yes, I have been opening to it for years, learning how to not take life for granted but this is graduate work … very intense graduate work in becoming fully open to life … no matter what it is bringing.

Not only is every single moment brand-new but everything in that moment is brand-new. If you pause and get quiet, you will see that everything is constantly in flux. Nothing ever stays the same. That toothbrush you used this morning has aged a bit since yesterday and will continue aging until the moment you throw it away and get a new brush. The same is true of the toothpaste tube. It is a little bit emptier and has morphed into a different shape. It is amazing that we rarely notice this gradual changing of life.

If you allow yourself to let in what I am talking about it, it will open you to a startling but healing insight – everything is impermanent. If you allow it, this will take you another step into freedom with the realization that you too are constantly changing and one day you will no longer be here. Even though I have written about death and talked about death over the years, cancer has lifted some lingering clouds so that I can really let in the truth that one day I will no longer be here. The atoms that make me up will once again become a part of the clouds, the rain, and the Earth, which so beautifully has held and nourished me over the years.

Yes, it is scary to recognize this – to truly let it in but it cuts through the forward marching of our mind that causes us to miss life. This constant addiction to becoming causes us to whiz past life, barely even noticing. We don’t really taste what we eat, we don’t see our loved ones faces, and we don’t hear the music of nature. I am now tasting more, really seeing my loved ones and deeply receiving the astounding creativity of nature.

Another thing that cancer is highlighting for me is how much our minds just want to control life and how much suffering that brings. I have spent decades softening this addiction to control inside of me and cancer is deepening that process. But I have moments where my mind hates to be sick. It also intensely dislikes the side effects from the chemotherapy I will be on for the rest of my life. But all these reactions in my mind are highlighting the illusion that control brings safety – that if we just do life good enough or right enough then we won’t be hurt, we won’t get ill, we won’t die.

And yet the greatest safety is opening to life – to all of it – which includes loss and gain, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, and even death. So, I find myself softening a lot throughout the day when I notice my mind is struggling with the cancer, causing me to hold my breath and tighten my body. I then rediscover, over and over again the stillness, peace and support that is always here right outside my struggling mind.

One of my favorite mantras I say to my mind is, “Let go. It is safe. Home is here. And all is well.” These are not the truths of our mind. In fact, they are the exact opposite of what our minds believe but the safety of relaxing into life is the truth of truths. Remember those first words that Eben Alexander, the Harvard neuroscientist said to his sister after he woke up from a seven-day coma, “All is well.”

Cancer also has deepened my ability to see that the thoughts in my head are as ephemeral as the clouds in the sky. And yet we try to make them be the way we want them to be but that is like trying to herd cats. You may get them all in one corner, but they will dart right on by you. It is such a relief to see that deep peace is not found in making my life and my mind to be the way I want them to be. True change does not come from changing anything!! It comes when we discover how to unhook from our addiction to struggle and bring our attention back to life exactly as it is right now.

I think the gift I most deeply appreciate is having greater access to my heart. Much more quickly than ever before, when I am caught in the struggles in my mind, it wakes me up to the truth that I am simply resisting what I am experiencing. I then step out of resistance mode and welcome whatever is here.

When I write these words, tears come to me. I can’t tell you the joy that comes from having been caught in a story like ‘I hate this cancer and I will never ever feel better’ and then I open to it, touching these feelings with tenderness. A moment or two before, my body was experiencing the challenges of cancer all on its own. I had abandoned it for my resistance to the all-too-familiar unpleasantness. But to unhook from turning away and then turn toward my experience, my heart just bursts open and floods whatever I have formally been resisting with its healing balm.

Also, the more I can be with my own suffering, the more I know I am not alone. One of my greatest joys is to be caught in the uncomfortableness of cancer and then to remember that there are millions of people on this planet that right now are or will be in the future experiencing what I am experiencing. Oh, the joy of that! I am not alone! Then I turn toward what I’m experiencing, not only for myself but for all of those other people, for I probably have a greater capacity to meet the challenges of cancer than most.

So may you know that one day you will become ill – and eventually die. But in the meantime, use the little upsets, this stubbing of your toe, the not too overwhelming headache, the pulled muscle, as invitations to turn toward your experience rather than away and to meet it with kindness. What a novel concept that illness can be our guide back to a full, alive, intimate connection with life!

Also, the invitation is to appreciate little things as you open more to your life: the taste of your bowl of cereal, the deliciousness of being present for the cascading water in your shower, the sounds of your family in the next room or the birds when you first step outside and be willing to let life be.

Whatever challenge you are experiencing or will be experiencing, whether it’s illness, the loss of a loved one, the loss of your home, being fired from a job, being ridiculed by another, and on and on, know that these challenges come embedded with gifts and even just a little bit of asking yourself what am I experiencing right now and, when you can, touching it with kindness, will open the doorway into the healing you have always longed for.

This blog is a shortened version of a radio show I did call The Gifts of Illness. If you would like to listen to the show, CLICK HERE.