On September 18^th, as I was meditating, I heard the words, “Your tumor is shrinking.” While I was mildly nauseous from having completed one chemo cycle, I understood immediately that the spiritual shifts I underwent prior to my treatment was healing my body.

The night prior to my first infusion I was angry. I was highly anxious as I didn’t receive a care plan from my medical team and wasn’t told what I was being infused with, how many cycles I’d undergo or how to use my prescriptions. I allowed myself to self-loathe for several hours before I began transmuting my internal energy into gratitude. I began writing down people I was grateful for, including my personal physician, surgeon and even oncologist (despite her nurse not emailing me a care plan). Then, I began writing down supporters, guides, prayer warriors, healers – these people were friends, social media followers, strangers, family and light workers who have shown me so much love, grace and compassion this past year. Then, as difficult as it was, I thought of the hurtful people who were catalysts to my pain…an old friend, an old lover and an old spiritual partner. I thought of them with pain and saw their purpose in initiating me into this process, for if it wasn’t for them, then everything wouldn’t manifest as it perfectly did. Yes, Cancer sucks, but this discomfort is part of my awakening.

I forgave everyone, including myself. I was trying to let go of past situations and people but realized I didn’t need to let go anymore, I needed to accept and embrace what is. I didn’t need to release anyone, I needed to release me…the scared and angry girl trapped in a cage of her own making. As I allowed, accepted and ascended, I stopped bleeding, I no longer needed pain meds and my energy was rising.  

In that same meditation I said, “How will I know the tumor is shrinking, I won’t know until January?” and in response I heard, “You will go to the ER and get rescanned.” I then thought, “But I don’t want to go to the ER!” And so it is.

Ten days later, I woke up to intense pain in my abdomen. The night prior I spoke for hours to a friend, giving intuitive guidance as I could feel my spiritual gifts increasing when in relationship with others. My stoma (which is the exposed part of my colon) began to retract as I laid in bed. Usually, like a wave, it would rhythmically pull back and forward. This time however, my stoma retracted and never came back out. I knew instinctively that my body was healing itself and wanted my colon to be connected again.

I called my dear friend Brian, who ‘coincidentally’ just flown into town and was 14 mins away. While sitting in the waiting room I looked at him and said, “I am sorry. I had such a fun weekend planned.” And he looked at me in shock saying, I just got déjà vu, “I remember sitting in a hospital, just like this and you saying exactly that.” I laughed remembering the day we met a little over 20 years prior and he was holding my purse when I competed in Miss Chinatown USA. Who would’ve predicted he would be wheeling me into the ER decades later…

As they began running tests I sat with knowing and calmness, what was to come. I didn’t like the hospitalist doctor, who refused to admit me and wanted me to go on a 3-day transfusion of the death drug, Remdesivir, despite having no symptoms from a positive covid test. I didn’t like the surgeon on staff, who said my stoma was fine remaining retracted/inside me body, even though it was painful and didn’t function for five days. While this was not a healing environment, I vibed with the kind nurses who insisted I advocate for myself as they were witnesses to unethical practices in the medical system.

When my CT scan returned, it measured my tumor at 4.8cm, with the radiologist statement, “No significant changes since last scan.” Confused, I asked how there were no changes when my last CT scan just a few weeks prior said 8.9x6cm. With nearly half my tumor gone and having completed not even two full chemo cycles, I was miraculously healing.

I wasn’t surprised, I was still. My close friend Lauren texted me and asked, “How are you doing?” I responded, “I’m on path.” And she wrote back, “I’m so happy for you.” Later we laughingly reflected on this exchange as we both knew God’s provisions and glorified the divinity that exists in all of us. I took the time to rest in solitude, enjoy visits from friends and find humor in my weight loss, constipation and pain. I decided to discontinue chemo treatments as I saw how other cancer colleagues were negatively affected and kept coming back to the same conclusions in my meditations.

Immediately after discharged, my son endured school altercations and administrative repercussions. My relationship with my ex-husband negatively shifted. A close family member attacked and betrayed me and an elder figure told me I was becoming ‘possessed’ because I no longer believed in organized religion. I began standing up for myself, in ways I never practiced prior as I was not a people-pleaser to anyone, except the people closest to me.

In this process of removing toxicity and asserting my needs, my whole world started to burn as I released what I’ve held back out of fear of being rejected, attacked and outcasted. I wrote a long letter with exhibits A-D, to someone who took a ring my mother gave to me and held it for over three years. I set boundaries with someone else who became immediately angry after I cut his access to my home. I called member services and made formal complaints about my ER experience and even my original surgeon, who dismissively stated, “miracles don’t exist.” I conversed with the mother of my son’s adversary and met with the school superintendent telling him that I had little faith in the district’s priority for our children’s education, safety and mental health.

By Nov 1st, I was swimming in this new energy. I contacted my current surgeon, a woman I connected with and who visited me while hospitalized. I told her that it was open enrollment and I was ready to leave Kaiser. I asked her to review my recent scans and determine if she was willing to perform the tumor removal surgery. She expressed her usual recommendations for chemo and radiation, but I reminded her how incurable this disease is…how everyone responds differently and chances of coming out of remission is common for people, esp those who endured a lot of treatments. We had a brief conversation where she understood my standpoint and while she wasn’t in full agreement, she agreed to one’s autonomy over their own body. A couple hours later, she thanked me for working hard to get to this very moment – and that she would be committing to surgery by the end of the year.

The hardest thing I’ve endured this year is not the cancer within, but the cancer without – the unworthy environment I sat in for years…denying my truths, settling for breadcrumbs, exhaustively doing everything for everyone, dishonoring my need for rest, allowing hurtful people to consciously cross boundaries and believing that love was conditional, controlling and obligatory.

I became before IT becomed. I was abundant, even though I lost my mother, my brother, my husband, half my income and my ‘picture-perfect-family.’ I was joyful, even though I was disregarded by doctors, dealing with school issues and lots of debilitating pain. I was loved, even though I felt denied, lost and confused by people who symbolized love to me. I was healed, even though I’ve been living with Stage IV cancer for a year.

I learned that you don’t have to earn something, you just have to believe you deserve it.

As I silenced the voices within, I no longer resonated with the woman who maintained relationships that made her literally, sick. When you walk the valley of death for a year you become hypersensitive to what brings life and death in your cells. What I know for complete certainty, is that everything happens exactly as it should. Your lesson in life is to take your faith and run through the fire with it. Take your love and feel how many hearts you can hold. Take your passion and watch it connect with your soul family. Take your free will and unapologetically ask for what you want and deserve.

In order to empower yourself, you must know yourself and TAKE something you internally possess and externally direct it.

That’s manifestation. That’s accountability. That’s power.

For me, that’s December 20^th.