Words I chose to heal CANcer

I recently got the title “cancer warrior” awarded in a group for my contributions and my powerful story of going from breast cancer stage 3 to zero present.

While I was honored, and understand that the title is meant in an empowering way, it brought up an important topic for me that I want to share:

I do NOT use words like “cancer warrior”, survivor, “kicking cancer’s butt,” or other other war-like lingo.

I choose words like THRIVING. And SPARKLING. And living with JOY.

Here’s why:

I found that words affect my wellbeing.

Words evoke emotions. And different emotions create different responses in our body.

If a word scares us, (like “chemo”) our body sends “danger and defense” signals and can cramp up. When we’re relaxed, we allow our immune system to be strong and support us.

There’s an interesting experiment about the effect of words by Masaru Emoto who took photographs of water crystals: when exposed to negative words he found them to be irregular, whereas beautiful words seemed to make beautiful crystals.

Water crystal photographs from the Masaru Emoto experiment.

While this particular experiment is still deemed controversial by some, there has been a growing body of scientific evidence around the effect of thoughts and words on matter - and there are even home-experiments that can be done around that:

Like the rice experiment (Google “negative words effect on rice,”) according to which rice that is spoken to with positive words stays preserved well, whereas rice exposed to negative words actually soon gets moldy (!)

I didn’t have any of this on my mind when I was at the beginning of my CANcer journey. 

But I was in a deep dark mind storm.

I was speaking really harshly to myself internally. Telling myself things like “I need to make money, but I’m sick, and can’t.“

I also thought that I’m not good enough, and I have to ‘fix my mindset’ and pay expensive business coaches, even if I didn’t have money, (even during chemo!) in order to survive.

I put myself in my own inner mind HELL.

On top of my financial and body challenges.

At one moment, I very tangibly realized that my body felt like CRAP with all these inner pressure and “not enough” thoughts. And if I wanted to heal, I had to think GOOD and empowering FEELGOOD thoughts!

That’s when I chose to stop all this crazy thinking and to focus on JOY.

That moment was a catalyst for me. Even just with the DECISION, I instantly felt a fresh feelgood breeze in my body.

I felt the wellness energy of JOY in my body.

I dropped the mindset coaches (declaring I had learned all I needed to know about negative mind patterns and HELL thinking and that I can choose to not do that anymore.)

I chose a different business support group with a mentor who is all around empowerment, creativity, and JOY. No one was trying to fix me, and neither was I.

I even wrote positive words on my chemo bags. Like LOVE! And then visualized LOVE flowing into my body! That really helped me relax!

And I’m certain that it contributed to me having only very gentle side-effects.  

The moment where I decided to STOP using negative words in speaking and thinking (as much as I CAN) and choose JOY instead, was me giving myself PERMISSION TO HEAL.  

And here I am today!

Zero CANcer present.

Surrounded by abunDANCE.

Doing what I love!

And all started with me choosing JOY and empowering words.