Errante

""I cannot understand why I have cancer," one womam with ovarian cancer said. "I've led a healthy life, eaten well, exercised regularly. I've always taken good care of myself. If anyone should be a picture of health, it's me." The area she overlooked was invisible to her: the stress connected with emotional repression. Her conscientious (and conscious) best efforts to look after herself properly could not extend to an area she did not know existed. (...)If we gain the ability to look into ourselves with honesty, compassion and unclouded vision, we can identify the ways we need to take care of ourselves. We can see the areas of the self formerly hidden in the dark. 

 The potential of wholeness, for health, resides in all of us, as does the potential for illness and disharmony. Disease is disharmony. More accurately, it is an expression of internal disharmony. If illness is seen as foreign and external, we may end up waging a war agains ourselves.

 The first step in retracing our way to health is to abandon our attachment to what we called positive thinking. Too many times in the course of palliative care work I sat with dejected people who expressed their bewilderment at having developed cancer. "I have always been a positive thinker", one man in his late forties told me. "I have never given in to pessimistic thoughts. Why should I get cancer?".

(...) Compulsive optimist is one of the ways we bind our anxiety to avoid confronting it. (...) Rather, is it a willingness to consider what is not working. What is not in balance? What have I ignored? What is my body saying no to? Without these questions, the stresses responsible for our lack of balance will remain hidden."