My Breast Cancer Journey Continues - Part 15
Independence Day.
Today is July 5th, the day that we Americans observe Independence Day. On the 4th of July, we celebrate the day when the Declaration of Independence was signed and set ourselves free from the British monarchy. Since then, freedom has been a value of the United States of America.
Freedom is also a value of mine. A couple of years ago, that value expressed itself in terms of the freedom to spend my time, my life, how I wanted to. These days, my value of freedom is about being free of my shadow self. It’s about freeing myself of all the fears, doubts, and conditioning.
I want to feel free of it to be more myself. Free to be who I’m supposed to be without all of the heavy energy of those fears, doubts and societal conditioning.
Free to be the me I’m supposed to be.
Freedom from the Shadows.
It’s challenging freeing ourselves from everything we’ve been told and everything we’ve learned. We can use the practice of RAIN, as Tara Brach describes in her book Radical Compassion. Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture. Using this technique can help us navigate through our conditioning, our traumas.
Doing that kind of work takes time, it’s a practice. Each fear, each doubt, each thing we’ve been conditioned to believe but that no longer serves us can be worked through using RAIN. Each emotion is brought to the surface and examined through the lens of RAIN.
It sounds a little intimidating. We hold our hurts so dearly. But when we invite our hurts, our shadow self, to the surface we can work with them and find a way through them. We can free ourselves from what holds us back.
Is there a fear, a doubt, a conditioned belief that you’re ready to be free of? Recognize, allow, investigate gently and without judgment or shame, and nurture your way through it.
My Health.
I continue to have physical therapy each week and radiation therapy each weekday. The travelling to the appointments is quite tiring. I spend much of each day resting.
So far, I have no side effects from the radiation. All is well for now. Along with the therapy appointments, self-care and rest are my daily routine.
Up Next.
I will continue to have physical therapy and radiation therapy for the next couple of weeks. My planning for when my cancer project continues. It’s exciting to create a new way of serving the collective, new work, a new me.
It feels like freedom.
(To give credit where it’s due, the picture I used isn’t mine. It’s a stock photo from Canva.com.)
Be well and be free to be yourself,
Nikki