The Power of Positive, page 27
I’ve lost friends and a first marriage to the cracking up — sorting out — coming-to-terms baggage that accompanies anyone who lives with chronic illness. Gone are the certainty of bearing a healthy child (with a 50-50% chance of passing VHL on, and not wanting a child to contend with a sick mom, I opted to have none) . . . the ability to continue the athletic pursuits I love . . . the ability to work full-time . . . independence and privacy . . . at times, personal dignity and modesty . . . and the luxury of what I call “false positives” — such as people taking for granted the fact they will wake each day and their bodies will work effortlessly. It’s hard weathering things most people normally confront in old age — or, if they are lucky, not at all.
But self-pity to me is a bore. Even if I have to pretend a little, I force myself to re-engage in life and find things I can do. Soon I re-appreciate all I have and am able to do, and the activities and hobbies that keep me engaged fulfill me again. I resolve feelings of meaningless and loss and move on. I reach out to others who are hurting or in emotional pain, and almost always feel empowered and relieved to get my mind off my own troubles.
Sometimes when too many surgeries (and too much pain) catch me up short, I still lose a sense of balance (it’s called being human), and I become distraught and frightened. Sometimes I get caught up in my daily obligations and forget to nurture my embattled body. I do so want to be “normal” and keep up with the usual business of the world. But illness and fatigue intervene. And I realize that I have to put my own health first.
When I was first diagnosed with my chronic illness, the hope that sprang from within me was born of courage and determination — not just to survive, but also to prevail. I have prevailed and I have gained perspective over the years. My second marriage is a long and fulfilling one. My relationships with my family and friends are more authentic. I don’t hold on to toxic people; I don’t have time for them. I walk through fire, and am purified and humbled by the experience.
I know my willpower and inner strength are ironclad when I must call upon them. My spirituality grows ever stronger. I’m constantly learning to appreciate, develop, and nurture this gift. And because the lessons are not learned easily, they are all the more precious. This disease has not only defined my life, it has refined it as well.
~Amy Gray Light
The Power of Changing Your Thoughts
The Book Shelf
Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled
“This could change your life.”
~Helen Exley
Tim sat behind the wheel of his yellow sports car. His brooding eyes stared straight ahead, seemingly unaware of me. I unbuckled and stepped out of the car, “Well, thanks for dinner, uh . . .” My wooden tone matched his wooden face. He nodded. “Yeah, sure.” Then spun away. I watched the taillights become smaller. Another first date gone awry.
Later that night, I comforted myself with a book. I seemed to be on a mission to prove true the litany of my single friends, “All the good guys are taken.” Unlike many of my middle-aged friends, I had not given up on love. I still longed for the marriage of my dreams. I saw marriages that were strong and happy. Couples who still held hands after decades together. The octogenarian couple who lived next door, and were often spotted walking arm in arm, chuckling over a shared story.
I dated here and there. Matt took me on grand adventures, but his penchant for dishonesty tore us apart. Roger was handsome and sensuous, but his angry outbursts shattered any hope for happiness. On and on and it went. Soon, I was joining in the chorus of “All the good ones are gone.”
Until one blessed day, I had an epiphany. Several women friends gathered for lunch at Mary’s house. Our hostess was wailing, “I had the worst date last night! All he did was talk! On his cell phone! Over dinner! All evening!” We all commiserated. Soon bored, I wandered over to her bookshelf. What I saw, really saw this time, took my breath away. Book after book on bad relationships filled her shelves. (Fictitious) titles like: Men Who Hate Women; Women Who Hate Men; Women Who Hate Men Who Hate Women; 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover; How to Say No; Be Mean Today. Two entire shelves were stuffed with books on how to recognize and experience a painful relationship.
Mary was still in full volume with the “Life Ain’t Fair” song. I knew the words of this sad song. I did not want to sing like this any longer. I turned again to her bookshelf. With rising dismay, I read more discouraging titles. While I was dumbfounded, I was also very excited. I knew I was on the edge of A Big Change. Excusing myself, I left lunch early.
I was thoughtful as I drove home. Coming into my quiet house, I ditched my winter coat on the floor, dropped my keys on the couch, and checked my own bookshelf.
How did those titles get there? Because the same titles, and more, were on my shelf. What’s Wrong with Marriage Today? How to Be Happy and Single. Liberated Women Unite. The list went on.
I leaned my forehead against the cool wall. What had I created for myself? I had been surrounding myself with thoughts of bad marriages and poor relationships. How could these ideas possibly lead to a loving marriage?
I recalled the cold houses I lived in as a child, messy, empty of love. Many times I muttered as a child, “When I grow up, my house will be filled with warmth, laughter, clean furniture, plenty of delicious food and lots of loving.”
The house I lived in now was a vast improvement in cleanliness and nice furniture. But emotionally, my home was empty. But what could I do to make my home and my life ready for love? I longed for a strong and happy marriage. Now I needed to match my environment to my desires.
I believe that all books, even bad ones, are sacred. So what I did next was near sacrilege. Heart thumping, peeking over my shoulder to ensure I was unobserved, I picked up every negative book on my shelf, and I threw them away! Yep, no recycling. This information was going to the dump.
My bookshelf was now nearly empty.
The next day I went to the used bookstore. My feet took me, as usual, to the relationship/couples section. I saw only the same old titles. At first. But this time I held my ground, and kept looking. A well-worn blue book caught my eye: The Adventure of Being a Wife by Ruth Peale. I paid my dollar and carried the book home.
Pouring myself a cup of fresh coffee, I sat in my comfortable green chair to read the table of contents. Warmth spilled over me like spring honey. My shoulders relaxed, as I read the intimate details of one marriage. The author’s frankness and humor gave me hope.
I was happy. Then the dark voice inside me said, “Marriage for this man and woman perhaps, but not for you. You will never be happily married.” I fought off the little voice, but only to the extent that I decided that even if I couldn’t have my own happy marriage, I could take pleasure in the happy marriages of other people.
I finished the book, underlining my favorite parts. I returned to the bookstore and purchased at full price the hardcover book The Good Marriage by Wallerstein and Blakeslee. At home I read a story. And then another one, until I regrettably reached the last page.
I cheered as I read about challenges that couples had overcome. Sick siblings, the awful loss of a child’s life, marital fights and marital make-ups. This marriage business was not easy, not by anyone’s standards. With delight, I finished reading the book. Good marriages were possible for those lucky few. This was delightful news, and I was privy to it all.
A few days later I returned to the bookstore and purchased the book, I Will Never Leave You by Hugh and Gayle Prather. They were frank about their challenges. This kind of marriage would withstand time.
Over the period of several months, my bookshelf again filled. But this time, the titles filled me with hope and delight. Books on good marriages, including Dr. Gottman’s Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. This marriage business was a delightful thing, even if it wasn’t going to happen for me. My heart filled with gratitude that I could read and vicariously enjoy the success of others.
Over the course of time, my mind changed and softened. I no longer took part in the sad litanies of “All the good men are taken.” As I steeped my mind in happy thoughts, my attitude towards marriage changed. As my attitude changed, so changed my life.
In 2003, I met my beloved Shawn, the man I would marry. Last month we celebrated six years of married life. As we are well into our middle years, the adjustments continue. Best of all, the joy continues as well as the wonder. I am deeply grateful for the unexpected delight that my husband brings to my life.
Today, when I feel stuck in an area of my life, I review my bookshelf, which is now filled with positive titles. Are my finances in disarray? What thoughts am I entertaining? If my weight creeps up, a quick review of my bookshelf reminds me how I lost weight in the first place. A little mental check lets me know what I’ve been doing and thinking recently.
If you can dream it, you can achieve it. When I roll over in my sleep, and feel for the warmth from the large body that is my husband, I smile when I recall my “impossible” dream. And now, if you were to visit my home, you would find a new, growing collection of books on how to be a great grandparent.
~H.J. Eggers
Insomnia
Don’t fight with the pillow, but lay down your head And kick every worriment out of the bed.
~Edmund Vance Cooke
Most people look forward to hitting the sack, but I dreaded going to bed — I associated it with thrashing around until the sheets were bunched up and wrinkled, and watching the minutes turn over on my nightstand clock. I flipped my pillow so often there was no longer a cool side.
“I’m so tired!” I would moan in the morning when the alarm went off.
My husband would snort. “It might help if you went to bed at a decent hour.”
“But if I go to bed before I’m sleepy, all I do is toss.”
Sometimes I stayed up till 2 or 3 a.m., but still couldn’t count on falling asleep when I finally turned in. Every cell in my body screamed with exhaustion, but I couldn’t lie still. I was so hot. Off flew the covers. Pretty soon, I was cold — time to bundle myself back up.
When it became unbearable, I would stumble downstairs for a cup of tea, a snack, or a book. After a bleary hour or so, I’d head back upstairs to try again.
I avoided caffeine in the afternoon. I prayed. I took hot showers. I actually tried establishing a “decent” bedtime. I drank soothing chamomile tea right before my decent bedtime — and then I had to get up to go to the bathroom a couple of hours later.
The worst were the nights when the worries surfaced — everything I’d managed to push aside by keeping busy during the day. My life looked bleaker, scarier, more hopeless at night.
“I have the worst insomnia,” I would tell my friends. “I never get a good night’s sleep. When I was a little girl, I never wanted to sleep. One night, my mom decided to call my bluff and told me just to stay up if I wanted to, because she was going to bed. So she turned off the lights and pretended to go to bed, but all I did was keep playing with my toys in the dark!”
When I was in elementary school, I went through a sleepless period that went on for months. I was obsessed with worries and fears, and the only way I knew to keep them at bay was to stay up and read or play with the lights on, until exhaustion overtook my feverish brain. My mother was so concerned, she took me to the doctor, who gave me “nerve medicine,” which I now suspect was sugar pills. They helped a little, but she only gave them to me when absolutely nothing else seemed to work.
“I hate bed,” I said now — the same way I did when I was seven or eight. “I just can’t sleep.”
One day, I ran across an article with “sleep remedies.” I never passed up articles on insomnia, even though I already knew all the tips before I read the first word.
“Okay, let’s see what this one says . . . . Good sleep hygiene, limit caffeine, blah, blah, blah . . .” Then, incredibly, I saw something new — positive self-talk.
Most insomniacs, I read, tend to tell themselves and others they “just can’t sleep.” Over and over, day after day, they go to bed saying, “I know I won’t sleep.” Even people who otherwise appreciate the power of positive thinking in their daily lives fail to apply it to their sleep habits. The author of the article had interviewed sleep experts, and several had seen significant improvement in patients who had decided to change their inner self-talk.
I was dubious . . . but desperate. I couldn’t believe that just telling myself I could sleep would produce any dramatic results, as several of the article subjects claimed. After all, like Patsy Cline, I’d been “walkin’ after midnight” for many, many years. But I had to admit, it certainly couldn’t be helping me when I told myself over and over that I was a hopeless case. And, like several of the subjects interviewed for the article, I had already seen the power of positive thinking in other areas.
Could I change my thought patterns? All I could do was try.
When I went to bed that night, I smiled as I smoothed out the pillowcase and laid down my head. “I’m going right to sleep,” I told myself with a confidence I was far from feeling. “I feel so relaxed. I’m so tired.”
A worry tried to assert itself, but I just pushed it down and told myself, “I don’t have a care in the world.”
Miraculously, that very first night, I fell right to sleep! When I woke up the next morning, I felt a new sense of power — I could actually control this thing.
The next night, I repeated my new bedtime routine, despite a little lingering doubt. Maybe it had just been a coincidence. But once again, I fell right to sleep.
By now, I was beginning to believe what I had been telling myself. The following night, I repeated my routine with more confidence — and the same result.
After a while, I no longer even had to talk myself into sleeping. Of course, as time went by, I still had the occasional restless night. But they became the exception, and were no longer a way of life.
I’d never really realized the enormous power of our thoughts, even in controlling what seemed to be physical circumstances. I was sixty years old, and had struggled for so long — yet the answer to my years of misery lay right inside my own head.
~Susan Kimmel Wright
Fighting Cancer with Attitude
When you treat a disease, first treat the mind.
~Chen Jen
On March 15, 2011, I sat in my living room with a few friends, celebrating my friend Sherry’s birthday. We had both recently turned forty-four. Eventually the conversation came around to an acquaintance of ours who was dying from a very aggressive form of breast cancer. “Look around you, ladies,” I said. “With the stats as they are, there is a good chance that one of us will get breast cancer.” As if some creepy premonition were unfolding, I found it the very next day: a lump in my left breast. Life would never be the same.
Like most people who are diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, I underwent the typical stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I can almost pinpoint the exact moment that I transitioned from depression to acceptance. It was a beautiful day in October, six months after my initial diagnosis, and my body was under assault from a very difficult round of chemotherapy. I was lying in bed, looking through the upstairs window as my mother collected the last of the summer tomatoes from my greenhouse. It saddened me that I was not out there with her, enjoying the sunshine and harvesting the fruits of my labour. Life seemed so unfair.
While wallowing in self-pity, I realized that I had a choice to make in how I was going to face my cancer journey. I could choose to focus on the pain, suffering and utter devastation that is cancer. There is no denying that few things in life can rival a cancer diagnosis for the award of “worst thing that could ever happen to you.” Cancer brings with it the terror of facing an untimely death; uncomfortable and painful treatments and procedures; loss of identity; coming to grips with a new body image; strained relationships; and financial setbacks or ruin. That is the reality of cancer.
Despite the ugly reality of cancer, I still had the choice of facing it with a positive attitude. It suddenly dawned on me that feeling sorry for myself was not going to help me get well. As a psychologist, I knew that positive emotions such as happiness and joy help to boost the immune system and enhance healing. Negative emotions such as anger and depression, on the other hand, have been proven to suppress the immune system. Since I needed a healthy immune system to fight cancer, a positive attitude was vital to my recovery!
I convinced myself that cancer wasn’t that bad; hey it even had its perks. For example, since getting cancer, not once did I have to help with the dishes at big family dinners. That thought made me smile, and instantly I felt a little better. I then issued myself a challenge: if finding one perk could bring a smile to my face, I would find 100 perks of having cancer, and so a blog was born (www.perksofcancer.com).
Blogging the perks of having cancer has been instrumental in helping me to maintain a positive attitude through my cancer journey. Instead of focusing on all that cancer has taken from me, it allows me to see the gifts that cancer has brought to my life; gifts such as Perk #21: Cancer helped me find my soul mate. Perk #25: Cancer connected me to a powerful prayer network. Perk #28: Having cancer revealed to me a whole new side of my autistic son. Perk #34: Cancer made me realize my own strength. Having cancer forced me to evaluate my life and make some major changes. I ended some relationships that were not serving me well, and I put more of my energy into those which were. I identified work environments that were toxic to my spirit, and embraced a change in my career. I started to feed my body nutritious foods, and made exercise and meditation an important part of my day. As ironic as it may sound, this past year with cancer has been one of the happiest of my life.
