• According to John Lennon, the only two forces that motivate humans are love and fear. Fear causes you to emotionally retract. When you dwell on fear as you are apt to do when you have breast cancer, you block out the positive feelings that lie dormant within you. In contrast, if you choose to feel love, all of the positive feelings will have room to spread out. You will open yourself to feelings of unbridled joy, passion, excitement, hope, and finally, your own sense of acceptance.

• It is no surprise if I tell you that you are not perfect. I believe that perfection is a meaningless metric by which to assess yourself. That said, have you ever considered what would happen if you put most of your mental energy into learning to love yourself instead of listening to the seemingly endless chatter rambling inside you head? Think of all the people in your life that you love dearly. Are they perfect? Of course not. They are all loved deeply by you, and in turn, you are deeply loved by them. This, to me, is the purest form of love. The kind of love you can use to truly learn to love yourself.
• When you think about it, there is nothing that cannot be healed by love. Even breast cancer. This is not my opinion. It is based on hard facts from scientific research. When you hear the voice in your head that is telling you that you are “less than,” replace it with thoughts of the love you have given and received. Challenge negative thinking about things from the past that you regret. Stop worrying about things that are yet to happen. In the moment, anything can be beautiful if you want it to be. Beauty and love are right in front of you. Every day. All you have to do is look for them.
• I am not sure how Karma works, but I think of it as a morality bank. You share your intentions and actions with all that exists around you and beyond. Compassion, love and good intentions get deposited in the bank. Bad intentions and unkind behavior cause withdrawals. In the long run, whatever you have done to others will be done to you. If you are unkind to yourself, you will be unkind to others. If you are compassionate to yourself you be compassionate to others. In this way, you begin to fill up your morality bank.
• If having breast cancer teaches you what has always been the most important lessons to be learned in your lifetime, let go of the pain, sorrow, loss, and “Why me?” thoughts. Instead, embrace the best parts of what you are now able to see and feel. Gary Zukav said it best when he wrote, “Since it is true that we become what we intend, why don’t we intend the purist feelings of love and compassion for ourselves?”

I don’t know if I answered the question about why bad things happen to good people. When I first got sick, I banged my head against the wall in frustration. I wasted hours and hours of precious time feeling sorry for myself. I isolated myself because I just wanted to be left alone. I can’t count how many days I wasted because I was too sick to get out of bed, and I wouldn’t let anyone see me that way.

Then, one glorious day when the air was cool but the sun was burning hot across my shoulders, I breathed in Spring for the first time that season. I couldn’t help remembering how good it felt to be alive. Would I have taken the time to notice this before I got sick? I’m not sure. Perhaps in a Universe where for every action there is a reaction, it was nothing more than a gentle reminder to cherish this moment. Every moment.

I considered the “Why me?” question once again. I think the Universe was whispering to me that even though things might sometimes seem unfair and feel bad, there might be a higher, more worthy purpose. Maybe Evelyn really got it right. It is your turn to find a way to nourish the soul you with a kind of love that is uniquely your own.