This I Believe

("This I Believe" is an international project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values that guide their daily lives. These short statements of belief, written by people from all walks of life, are archived here and featured on public radio in the United States and Canada. The project is based on the popular 1950s radio series of the same name hosted by Edward R. Murrow. I recently participated in a program at my church where we read essays from the website and wrote our own. Here is mine.)

I am NOT my body. I do believe this, but forget frequently. As a 10 year “cancer patient,” it is too easy, too seductive, to identify myself with my body, to over focus on the cancer.

For many years after my first diagnosis and treatment, I was conscious that I didn’t want to identify myself as a “cancer survivor.” I tried “cancer thriver,” but there it is again. All about cancer. I didn’t want it to define me, to limit me. I didn’t tell people casually. Somehow I knew that that identity would distract me from my relationships, my essence as spirit, from my spiritual journey, my quest for self and God realization.

A dozen years ago, I went on a Vision Quest in Death Valley with ten other women. With our packs on our backs and a jug of water in each hand, we stepped, one by one, into a circle of stones and stood to receive a blessing from the leaders and the other questers. When we stepped out of the circle, we were reminded that we are pure spirit. I breathed in the blessing and headed down the road to find my “place of power,” where I would string my tarp between a Joshua Tree and a creosote bush and live for the next three days, drinking only water. My body was strong. I didn’t know cancer yet. Alone in the middle of the desert, it was easy to meld into my surroundings, dwell ethereally, in that soul place.

Now, it’s not so easy. When I settled down in a new location, after years as a vagabond, and found a new church and new friends, I initially told no one. When the cancer recurred, again and then again, I gradually shared with my new friends. I see the look of concern in my friend’s eyes as they support me through more treatment. I am grateful for their compassion, but I hope they can look past my flawed body and consider me as soul, as spirit, which will live on even when this body ultimately fails.

When I recurred two years ago, a dear friend called me one night to relate that a mutual friend, a healer to us both, told her that she was having some physical problems with her aging body. In a flash of insight, this amazing healer recognized her identification with her body, and pulled her focus from her health problems, which then disappeared. My friend called me to tell me that story and remind me that I, too, am NOT my body, and encouraged me to resist over-identifying with the cancer within.

The next morning, I opened the daily message from my spiritual center in California. It read,
“Consider the possibility that you have desired and been given the body that is exactly right for your soul’s journey in this lifetime, the vehicle that will take you where you need to go, providing the essential life experiences along the way that contribute to Self-realization.”

That’s so good. That I can believe. That I must believe, especially now. I have just had a week of bone, CT, and PET scans, and a biopsy of my sternum, where a bone lesion has appeared, the first. Later this week, I begin a new drug protocol, and pray that it will work better than the last. You can help me with the praying part.

I know I am NOT my body and am only inhabiting it in this lifetime. But, dear God, please remind me often.