Breast Cancer

Whether you have experienced a breast cancer diagnosis, bilateral mastectomy surgery or not, you can benefit from a fresh look at grief. Could grief be good for you? I say, ‘yes’. Kubler-Ross proposed stages with which she disagreed late in her life in 2004.

Until we grieve, we can be in a place of suffering from the effects of “unfinished business”. Grief is a teacher in so many un-expected ways that I like to share what I’ve experienced after breast cancer, surgery and moving from grief into joy. Grief is natural to our human experience and can come from:
• Old wounds
• Losses
• Death of family member/loved one
• Death of pet
• Death of former (in my case pre-cancer) life
• And more

In our western culture, grief can be messy; we’re mostly uncomfortable with it. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross did research to make it easier to discuss, yet somehow it’s almost more acceptable to be in depression, anger, denial or acceptance, but not grief. Grief is such an individually experienced emotion. After my surgery I felt sort of adrift, forgetting my sense of purpose, not remembering the sense of meaning that I’d felt before the quick concentration after diagnosis preparing for, then recovering from treatment. I was grieving for my lost life of being cancer-free person. “It doesn’t run in my family.” I used to say often. Well, now it does.

Turns out that grief is one of life’s experiences that we all share. It is also one that we rarely discuss. Here’s the good news that leads to joy. Grief is not an illness. Grief does not need a cure. Grief is not a mental disorder. When we grieve, we go through a process that isn’t “charted out” by any theory that makes sense (even though Elisabeth Kubler-Ross put our her stage theory, she later stated that it was not an orderly process as she’d first theorized). How can I speak of joy in the same sentence with grief? Here’s what I’ve noticed: Grief brings feelings of isolation, loneliness, weakness, sadness. With each of those comes an opportunity to seek out their opposite.
• To whom might I reach out?
• With whom would I like to spend time now?
• What activities can I do to feel stronger or do I need to go to a gym, hire a trainer or plan short walks around the block?
• What is the source of my sadness? How would the opposite look? What brings me joy?

By focusing on the components of grief, I was able to get to joy. A word of caution here, there is no ‘official’ time frame for feeling grief. Even Kubler-Ross said so. You get to do it your way. What I know is that you can go from grief to joy even after bilateral mastectomy and a breast cancer diagnosis. Yes you can!

The eBook,Yes After Cancer: Digestible dollops for Well-being after Treatment was created to broaden the post treatment possibilities. It offers specific suggestions from the life coach for creating the life you’ll most enjoy right now. Support and encouragement and optimism are what you’ll find among the dollops in this eBook. It makes a terrific gift and would be an asset to any waiting room whether a beauty salon or medical office! http://www.lesliegebhart.com/cancer-ebook.html
This information supports you or a loved one to take action with ease, compassion, generosity, joy and the spirit of possibility no matter what the age, diagnosis or prognosis. And, this eBook does it with a lightness of heart and a touch of what-the-heck whimsy written from the perspective of a survivor/thrivor. What a gift! In addition to the purchase place, you’ll find a complimentary excerpt: http://www.lesliegebhart.com/cancer-ebook.html
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