This week I was devastated to find out that a dear friend had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Then another friend who I met through horses posted that she was starting new chemotherapy. They both already have great attitudes so I sent them both the picture at the right.
Another friend found this bracelet and sent me the link telling me to “Keep F___ing Going”. As we’ve both faced challenges we’ve thrown the phrase back and forth ever since.
I got the bracelet when I was having radiation. It seems rather appropriate for everything I’ve been handed in the last year. Two surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation, Mike’s health problems and then death. Some days it feels like it’s all I can do.
Through my treatment and especially after Mike’s death I’ve had people tell me what an inspiration I have been. Let me tell you that’s a little more than humbling to hear.
All I can say is sometimes life sucks! We must pick ourselves up, give it our best shot, and go on.
Photo by Rhonda Abell
That being said I also am reminded periodically that people can only come from the place of their own experiences. And we’re all trying to do our best.
I’m listening to a book about how peoples’ health is affected by trauma in their childhoods. Sometimes in major ways. The doctor who wrote it is a pediatrician in a low-income part of the San Francisco area. She had noticed how one young boy was in the 50th percentile in the four-year-old growth chart when he was 11.
The school had referred the child to her for an Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) assessment. She came to discover that he had been abused when he was four-years-old and his parents had dealt with it as best they could. But were not what she calls the “buffer” he needed. They were doing the best they could.
Even in severe cases, people are amazingly resilient but these traumas can cause health problems much later in life also. The book mentions auto-Immune diseases, cancer, and many chronic diseases as caused by childhood trauma.
Equine Gestalt Coaching with Higgins. Photo by Kim Beer.
When we are subjected to stress for long periods of time our stress responses get out of whack and our defenses are lowered. This leads to disease.
In my case, it might have been dealing with Mike’s illnesses for five-and-a-half years that lowered my defenses. All I know is that being a part of the Equine Gestalt Coaching Method® training and the horses put me in the best place mentally I could have been to have been diagnosed with breast cancer.
I knew it was a temporary condition and that surgery and treatment were going to work.
If you feel like you have something in your life that needs to be addressed, it may be something like a relationship with a loved one, let the horses and me see if we can help you sort it out.
A New Attitude can help you get out of overload.
Onward! Perfect
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