Breast Cancer Awareness Month

I have breast cancer in my family.  My mom had it for 30+ years and it eventually took her from us in 2016.  My sister was diagnosed in 2012.  (Yes I just had my mammogram done this year, so I’m staying on top of it! Thanks for your concern! :-))  The interesting piece to this is back in 2012 I had my first thermography done and you have to do a 90-day second picture for your baseline after your initial picture.  I loved getting the thermography done!  You just stand there with your arm up in the air and they take a picture of your breast in all these different angles and nothing touches you. It was painless, quick and easy.   Now I know that thermography is not recognized as a reliable tool for screening, per the research, but I have to say it really helped me and here’s how……

My first picture showed a white spot on the right side.  Both my mom and sister’s cancer was in the right breast.  You want all the green colors in your picture.  White means there is something brewing and red means there is something wrong in an area.  The MD who read my picture said I should just keep an eye out on this considering my family history.  Luckily for me, I was working for an MD who also was trained in craniosacral therapy and she saw the report and told me to go get some bodywork done.  That made sense to me.

So I went to see this most amazing healer acupuncturist who doesn’t use needles, she uses her voice to move your energy. Basically she sings to you.  She can also tell you your whole life story just from feeling your pulse!!    Before I went in to see her though I did tune into my right armpit area where the white spot was and I could feel that my energy was blocked in there.  I wished I could remember what this healer person said to me but it had something to do with harboring negative feelings towards men (it was on my right side!) or some negative emotion in there. I acknowledged it, worked with it and I could feel this shift in the energy in there and it was flowing again.

90 days later I did a repeat thermography picture and the white spot was gone!  It was all green.  A year later another picture was even better than the original ones!

Now what’s really interesting here is my mom was the ultimate doer!  She was also an Energizer Bunny.  She would just go and go and go.  She was a nurse and was always doing something for someone.  I would say I’m more like my mom.  I do get a lot of my doing energy and getting stuff done from my mom.  I appreciate that.  My sister, who is also a nurse, I thought took more after my dad in her personality.  That is until I worked on her after her radical mastectomy.

I released her scar tissue after her initial surgery and her radiation doctor said she’s never seen such a good looking mobile scar! My sister gave me the credit. My sister was doing fine until her cancer returned a year and a half later. So this time I was working on her scar tissue and also feeling into her energy in her pelvic space and I could feel this massive imbalance in there.  It was then that I realized my little sister had more in common with my mom than I thought.

You see her energy was completely blocked and empty on the left side of her pelvis.  The right side was so overtired and worked from raising 3 kids, working full time and running them to all their different activities while going through chemo and radiation treatments!  When I asked her what she did for herself, how she took care of herself, she had no idea what I meant.  When I asked her what she liked to do her reply was, “it is not about me, it’s about my kids!” When I suggested she ask some friends to help out with shuttling her kids to all their activities so she could take some time for herself, she got defensive and said she got pleasure from doing all that.

It was then that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get through to her.  She was family and family can’t always hear each other, especially my family where feelings and emotions were swept under the rug never to be dealt with.  As I quietly continued to work on her, tears started streaming down my face.  Defensively she asked me why I was crying.  I told her I was worried that if she didn’t learn how to make it about herself that she wouldn’t be around to make it about her kids. I’m happy to report she is currently cancer-free and doing well but I don’t think I made much impact.

I also realized that I had similar beliefs in the past, that my kids were my love and my joy and doing those activities were fulfilling to me and being busy kept me happy. But when I really looked deep inside myself, I also realized that being busy kept me from having to look at things, feel things and deal with things. Those scary and unprocessed emotions from the past were all there and I could ignore them if I kept busy enough.  Focusing on others is a great distraction from focusing on ourselves.   We also get told that it’s selfish if we focus on ourselves and it’s better to help others first.

But then cancer comes into our lives to help refocus us.  When cancer shows up in the breast it’s all about nurturing.  The breast is here to nurture our children.  But it is also about nurturing ourselves.  Taking in for ourselves.  Focusing on ourselves.

My sister’s empty energy on the left side of her pelvis was telling me there was no focus on herself.  There was no nurturing of herself.  The majority of women I work with have this similar pattern.  When we are out of balance in our pelvic energy we are out of balance in our lives.  The pelvic energy never lies.  When you learn to read it, it’s always spot on.

So what I hope to impart in this blog is the importance of allowing yourself time to focus on yourself.  Nurture yourself.  Do things that make you light up.  What did you do before you had kids?  Do them now! Don’t wait for a medical diagnosis to force you to do so.  It’s ok to take care of yourself.  It’s not selfish.  If we want our kids to do it, we must show them how. We have to model it for them.  Make sure you do one thing for yourself each day, even if it’s a small thing. Just do it!.  When you are putting on your bra or shirt every day, remember your breasts are about nourishment.  Start with nourishing yourself first!