June 6, 2024

Every day I exist in quiet solitude. I am surrounded by family, friends and continuous games, gatherings, treatments, work, and get togethers but at the core of all this busy-ness…is me, standing in the midst of it all, just watching it all pass by.

Many days I wake up with weeping eczema throughout my face. Some days my back hurts and I have to run to the bathroom even though, nothing – literally – is really expelling as I’ve had a colostomy bag since my emergency surgery in March. Most recently, I’ve been undergoing intense episodes where an aura moves across my head and my heart starts to palpitate fast. Soon after, I start violently purging for hours until my whole body is fatigued and exhausted. During this period, I can’t talk or even text, I wake at the 5^th hour feeling normal again. This has happened every other day for a few weeks – with a small break because I was fasting,

I went to the ER; they found all scans and blood work – normal.

Tonight, when I felt the aura and nausea hit, I can hear my voice as my body prepared to release again into a bowl before me and I said, ‘thank you for removing what is toxic within me.’ There is something my body is rejecting, clearing space for and healing. Instead of hating my irritated skin, for example, I know its inflammation being released through my pores. Pain is a warning sign, but also a process saying that your body is repairing itself.

Good. My body is doing its job.

I’ve been listening to my body more than I have in years. I rest, I walk, I lay in the sun, I eat crispy apples, I drink a lot of water, I dance. When my first vomiting episode happened weeks ago, my cousin was in town visiting. He humbly witnessed me fall as I was weak and missed my footing on the stairs at home – that moment btw, was hard to have someone witness. While I cooked dinner, I was too sick to eat with him and my father, who I also invited that evening.  When he stopped to say goodbye in my bedroom, I knew our energies would alchemize a healing within as I enjoyed our conversations. As we began talking, I can sense my internal fire revving up as we reflected on our past, the loss of his mother and father, joining the Navy, repeated life cycles, his favorite memory of my brother, Dominic – and all the dreams that lie ahead.

At a poignant moment, I asked him during his more tumultuous years, “Where was God in those times?”

I’ve had a continuous conversation with God since I was little. Sometimes I feel protection, love and security, other times I feel sadness, fear and isolation. Any question I’ve asked, has been answered. Any goal I desired, has been completed. If things didn’t manifest, I have a strong knowing that it didn’t come into fruition for divine reasons, and I surrender to what I can’t control.

Which leads me to today…

I am not the same person who was diagnosed eight months ago. When being told you have Stage IV cancer, it’s not something you process in one day. You notice everything. You see everything. You feel everything. So much that mattered before, doesn’t matter now. All the worldly ambitions, societal expectations and keeping up with whatever – means nothing.

I’ve asked ‘what is the meaning of life” almost every day since I was a child and when being told you have limited life left, every day has been a journey of what brings me life, who gives me life and most importantly, WHY do I want to keep living this life?

My will to live has been challenged.

I visited a friend who is incarcerated at San Quentin prison recently. He was a high school acquaintance and a person I often laughingly interacted with at the gym. When I discovered he had some challenges years ago, I told his brother to tell him to call me. He’s been calling me collect ever since and laughingly lived through me as I chatted with him while bike racing in Vegas, a cruise in Germany, working in New York, dining in D.C. trekking around Malaysia or partying in Portugal. In one of our emails he told me he’s never seen prison as a ‘gift’ but in our exchanges he is realizing that this pain made him sit with his thoughts, reflect on his actions, notice the generational patterns and take real responsibility for his life. He is physically caged, but through meditation, prayer, gratitude and rewiring thought processes, he is freer than people who exist in jobs they hate, marriages without connection and a life on monotonous repeat.

Like the experience of being diagnosed with cancer or even waking up each day, as you step off that bus, he said, “You choose what kind of sentence you will have.” That emotion will attract what comes next.

I have choices. I could be upset my colostomy bag burst in a restaurant the other week, or I pulled over four times to vomit while driving myself to the ER (only to wait there for 5hrs to be seen). I can be irritated that despite all my preventative efforts, I was diagnosed with cancer and am experiencing the hardest journey of my life without my mother or a husband.

And as I lay on this invisible battlefield, sometimes feeling strong, most of the time not knowing where I am, I also ask myself, Where is God?

God is in me, expressing itself through the love I give through this vessel, my body, which has been a source of comfort, forgiveness, grace, kindness and encouragement to people I love. I’m not perfect and see how this vessel has also been a source of judgment, criticism, annoyance and frustration….to people I love.

I have free will to choose what I express and therefore, manifest.

What is your will? How much do you have in you to endure, experience and overcome? Free Will is your power. And the most powerful act, is Love. In the end – all we want is Love. All we want is to love ourselves, BE ourselves and be accepted as ourselves.

Where is God? God is where Love is. Where there is Love, there is no Fear…