how do you heal the emotional aftermath of cancer treatment? how do we deal with the ups and downs of our personal journeys? what does external clutter tell us about the chaos in our minds?
these are just a few of the questions posed in this week’s edition of the carnival of healing, a readers digest of recently posted blog articles on creating better lives for us and the world around us. i’m the host for this week – let’s see what’s on tap
we’ll start with the cancer blog:
linda griggs, a 13-year breast cancer survivor, clearly remembers the day her chemotherapy ended. with her therapy complete, her hair growing back, and her medical team sending her off to have a nice life, she thought she’d be fine. but she wasn’t.
three months after her last dose of chemotherapy, griggs was depressed, consumed with worry about how her cancer might come back. and she realized that the end of treatment is not really the end. it’s just the beginning. griggs told her doctor about her anxiety, about how she was just trying to make it to her next three-month-check up. when her doctor told her, “that’s not living,” something clicked for griggs who instantly decided to start living — really living. surviving is about self-nurturing, says griggs, who has created a kit to help others survive cancer.
i haven’t seen griggs’ work yet but i’d imagine that barbra sundquist’s words joy is not the same as happiness from welcomejoy.com might be a helpful tool in her kit:
being happy is a feeling, while joy is a state of mind, a whole body experience. joy is always there, even in the worst of times. the joy and gratitude i carry with me sustain me when things are not as they should be.
“when things are not as they should be”. we all have hopes and expectations about how our life should go. when it gets frustrating, courney routh, in managing the ups and downs of self growth (at optimistlab) has this to say:
we’ve all experienced it: times of tremendous personal growth followed by days, weeks, or months when we can’t seem to get away from our old patterns. this article will help you understand why sometimes a little “backsliding” is necessary.
craig harper of renovate your life with craig, opinionated as always, tackles the same issue, but uses a different approach in the science of success. he thinks that
if people put one tenth of what they’ve read or heard about personal development into practice… things would be drastically different but the truth is, they consistently do nothing.
he lists 10 ingredients of success, including consistency, discomfort, passion and drive and self control.
still on the same topic of overcoming barriers to moving ahead in our lives, laura young, in get rid of clutter and tune in to your environment at her blog dragon slayer’s guide to life suggests this:
if you want your life to feel better tomorrow than it does today, key in to what your environment is saying about you. if cleaning and organizing leave you feeling overwhelmed, here’s a perspective that may do the trick, particularly if you are going through a significant life transition.
and then there are those times when our family environment presents us with difficulties. linda freedman (aka therapydoc) presents that bagel and cream cheese posted at everyone needs therapy? lessons from a family therapist:
it takes patience when dealing with family and friends who criticize and bring us down. this light post offers a constructive, kind intervention to deal with people who simply must tell us a better way to do things better- meaning their way.
let’s move on to a few more contemplative posts.
maria yu gives us the still point, great silence, and original sound posted at art-life-spirit.com.
the still point in our inner world might be like a fractal, infinite and unlimited. that means when we arrive at one still point there is another one waiting for us to attain, and then another one and another. could this be why we are called multidimensional beings?
what can i say, as soon as someone brings up fractals, they have me hooked … 🙂
brandon peele muses about a topic that my readers know is also close to my heart, sexuality and identity:
i’ve even begun to see the subtle perfection in disease and deformity. my coming of age is very heavily influenced by my philosophical love for unity and my peak spiritual experiences of unity. thus to openly reject the beauty and sexual attractiveness of half of the population outright just based upon sex, and a further 49% based upon conditioned preferences of old, now just seems silly.
scott k smith presents 2007: the vibration of the year for the spiritual other posted at other lights journal:
meet with others, with your contemporaries, students and teachers, share your vision, your ideas, and learn and grow together. in this way, you are weaving that personal vision into the greater vision.
a wonderful suggestion. i guess that’s one of the reasons why i got involved with changeeverything. life is such a bewildering experience; i wouldn’t know how to live it without the wisdom and support of all of those around me. as one of the 12-step sayings puts it so beautifully: “i put my hand in yours, and together we can do what we could never do alone.”
finally, here are a few more submissions which arrived in our mailbox:
purva mewar presents good health without gym, pills or diet charts posted at healthoma.com – cancer and health related discussions.
aparna presents cardamom based home remedies posted at beauty & personality grooming.
lisa mitchell presents the truth behind the myths of pregnancy nutrition posted at let’s talk babies.
nimo-owelle presents how to properly use a proactive acne treatment to quickly and easily eliminate your zits posted at proactive acne treatment.
scott lee presents my results with spring forest qigong – a key to better health posted at dirty mechanism.
that’s it for this week’s carnival of healing. next week’s will be at optimistlab. if you have an article you’d like to submit, you can use this form.
have a great weekend, everyone!
isabella mori
counselling in vancouver