According to p. 138 in You Can Heal Your Life, I brought my cancer on myself.
"CANCER is a dis-ease caused by deep resentment held for a long time until it literally eats away at the body. Something happens in childhood that destroys the sense of trust. This experience is never forgotten, and the individual lives with a sense of self-pity, finding it hard to develop and maintain long-term, meaningful relatioinships. Because of that belief system, life seems to be a series of disappointments. A feeling of hopelessness and helplessness and loss permeates the thinking, and it becomes easy to blame others for all our problems. People with cancer are also very self-critical. To me, learning to love and accept the self is the key to healing cancers."
I had been told this by a naturopath, that I brought on my own cancer. If she would have told me this the first time I had cancer, I would have been livid. Cancer brings with it so much pain, so much anguish. So much hardship. How could anyone say I brought this on myself? However, the fact that it came back with a vengence a second time just months after my days of hell in the hospital having poison pumped through my veins in order to kill it, not only allowed me to be open to the possibility, but deep down I believed it.
Louise Hay's mention of trust being destroyed at a young age fits with the struggles my parents went through. The alcoholism, divorce, and subsequent life-destroying alcoholism and loss of everything my father loved, or should have loved (except the alcohol) taught me to trust only myself and no one else, knowing God would look after me. The collapse of my first marriage came as I blamed him for everything that was wrong, thinking I had done everything I could to "fix" him. "If only he would change," I told myself and everyone who would listen. Then the struggles in my current marriage. Again, it was all his fault. I was the helpless one doing everything I could, but not being able to change him. And of course there is Hays's inclusion of being self-critical. I was the start child of the family. I could do anything, be anything, and make everyone proud of me. What do you mean my multiple bad business decisions in a row compounded by a collapse of the mortgage industry has put my family $160K in debt and at risk of losing our home? The guilt!
My naturopath even narrowed it down more. My cancer originally developed in my left hip. Our hips, she explained it, are how we present ourselves to the world. Our right side is our masculinde side. Our left side is our feminine side. My tumor protruded from the left. As I was being disappointed by my husband (just another man to let me down, I convinced myself), I was taking on his role in the family as well as mine, feeling I it necessary. As the naturopath explained, my feminine side was crying out. She wasn't being nurtured, nor paid attention to at all. I was destroying her as I built up resentment for my husband and tried to fill the shoes I felt he was not as the "man" of the house. Because of this and because I was incapable of realizing my mistakes and misunderstandings myself, the cancerous tumor grew out of my left hip. Now I had to pay attention.
The fact that the tumors came back in my lungs may not have any meaning other than the lungs are where sarcomas come back, if they come back. Mine did. Cancer came back to me, I believe, because I had/have more lessons to learn. The first lesson saved my marriage. This second lesson, or set of them, I'm still developing. I think it has something to do with me realizing to slow down, relax, and enjoy life. It's not normal nor healthy to take on three jobs and plan to accomplish every lofty goal anyone has ever had in one lifetime. Again, the lesson is still brewing in my soul, so I'll revisit it later. Certainly in this blog.
The idea that someone brought a horrid, life-destroying disease on oneself is unsettling to say the least. But in the big picture, cancer can be seen as a gift. More on that later.
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