For decades I have been living in the world, as an international human rights photographer, but not living in my body. When the Pandemic hit, I became ill with COVID, followed by lung cancer, followed by lung disease. Not only was I stopped from forty-two years of travel, but I had to reckon with my life style, my health, my compulsiveness, my negative thinking and my disbelief that I could survive through this onslaught of surgery, pain and grief. I was not just physically scarred from the lobectomy but also emotionally scarred.
And then Jenny arrived in my life.
We have worked together (via zoom) for about a year. I began to realize that I had a limited idea about self-care.
I was, as many of us, programmed to believe that cancer equals death.
Jenny’s “program” said “YOU GOT THIS, THERE IS NO DOUBT”.
Jenny guided me into another belief system. She reminded me to give gratitude to my body (and showed me how), to recognize what I had already accomplished, to appreciate the beauty around me and to know I am worthy.
And as I slowly move back into the world, not in the way I did, but in a new way involving self-care, I see that I will be able to honor my body and in doing so, to honor the world in a way that I never recognized before. I am learning how to center, how to ground, how to believe in the possibility of not being a sick person, that illness does not define me and to turn negative thought patterns into positive ones.
Thank you, Jenny, for your guidance, clarity, meditations, truth telling and LOVE.
