If you’ve been waiting for my update, based on my last blog entry, I thank you for your patience. I’ve been trying to complete this entry for sometime now and just can’t seem to do it. Hopefully today is the day. I’ve done a lot of processing over the past few weeks and spent 15 beautiful days on a healing vacation in November that I’m so grateful to have experienced. I’m now ready to share.
On November 5th, I travelled down to Akumal, Mexico in the Riviera Maya, about 60 miles south of Cancun. The organization, Healing Journeys out of Sacramento (healingjourneys.org) was holding a healing retreat at Tao Inspired Living Wellness Center. If any of this sounds familiar it is because I went on a similar retreat last year with Healing Journeys to Tao and Tao is ran by Jonathan Ellerby (the organizer for the trip I took to Africa). Fortunately, I had the courage to ask Jonathan if I could have an opportunity to speak to the group. As many of you know, speaking is a new passion for me and one I choose to continue to pursue as a career. On a funny note, it also meant that on my speaker’s resume, I could now list an international venue. Yes, I am now, technically, an international speaker. Jonathan asked that I speak about my journey and tools that I’ve learned along the way. I spoke on subjects of joy, self-love, living life fulling, and techniques to use to change limiting beliefs. I felt great about the presentation, and received wonderful feedback, as well. Besides the wonderful sessions of the retreat facilitated by Jonathan, I was also able to swim with the sea turtles, see the ruins in Tulum, visit the beach, play in the ocean, and enjoy the company of a wonderful group of people.
From Cancun, I flew to Washington DC to visit my friend of 37 years, Sonja. She has 8 month old twin girls, who happened to have their first tooth break through while I was visiting. Despite the fussiness you would expect with teething twins, the girls were, overall, very happy. Sonja and I had many opportunities to sit and chat as she dealt with the many needs of the girls ALL day long. Over the past three years, I’ve dealt with grief over losing my own fertility with the cancer. At this moment, I realized what a challenge it would have been to focus all my energy on my healing if there had been a small child in my life. I felt very grateful that I never had to deal with feeling torn between caring for myself and feeling like I couldn’t give my complete care to a child. A definite highlight of my trip to the DC area was Sonja taking me to this place called Spa World. It is now one of my favorite places in the whole world. In addition to the healing Bade Pool with ionized jetted water, there are 7 different poultice rooms that provide healing and detoxing through natural material and stones. It was wonderful!
From DC, I flew to Boston for the Infinite Possibilities workshop with Mike Dooley. Are any of you familiar with messages from the universe through TUT.com. The message is your thoughts become things and by directing your thoughts you can help life take the direction you intend and desire. I am now a certified trainer in Infinite Possibilites and can facilitate workshops if anyone is interested in putting together a group of people who would like to change how they think and how to help to make their dreams come true.
I hopped on a short flight from Boston down to New York City to visit another friend of 37 years, Adam. The hospitality Adam offered was beyond what I could have ever imagined. He had truly gone the extra mile. We were able to enjoy the 9/11 Memorial, the Cloisters, the High Line, Wicked, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and lots of time just catching up with each other.
As healing as the whole trip was, unfortunately, it was trumped by increasing pain. I had a little bit of pain on/off prior to leaving, but 5 days into the trip the pain began and never let up. It was unbelievable to me how intense in such a short amount of time the pain took over. I felt desperate for relief and to know what was going on in my body. I emailed by oncologist and asked to have a PET scan set up for when I returned. I gave myself permission to change my travel plans at any moment and go home if I felt the pain was too much and I was no longer having fun. Through that permission I was able to take it day by day, at times moment by moment and truly enjoy each opportunity I was able to experience without taking anything for granted.
The lab work upon return jumped much higher from 53 to 221. And, as expected, the PET showed cancer growths throughout my abdomen once again. Considering the huge amount of pain, I started chemo immediately on Nov 29th. The past few days have been rough. I will write more as I feel better but I felt pressured to at least let everyone know what was going on. I appreciate any healing energy you can send my way.
In love and health,
Denise
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