How Getting Cancer Made Me Plant A Garden.

The Dr.s office was cold, I had been sitting there for almost an hour waiting to be seen. I fidgeted with the crisp paper robe they give you to wear and go over every possible scenario, playing each one out in my head. She finally arrives looks at my spot right on the top of my head, and pronounced it cancer. It was so blunt and to the point I wasn't prepared. The kind I had wasn't aggressive, I was lucky. Then she looks at me and says cancer is normal and just a part of life. I was stunned, how could something that was almost unheard of 150 years ago just be part of life?

I when home and looked it up, she was right. The numbers are really bad, a large portion of us will have to deal with cancer in their lifetime. This time in the worlds timeline there is so much pain and story with the word cancer, most of us have lost an loved one to it. I was always a healthy eater but our world is toxic, and without proper intention those toxins both physical and emotional get locked into your body. Dealing with all the attachment and story I had around the word cancer was intensely complex and I am so grateful for the experience ultimately.

Two weeks went by and I had my surgery, it left a large row of stitches across the top of my scalp.

A week after that I was in a three day all Women's ceremony. The women that I know from my circle are the strongest most amazing people. I was siting with a girl I had just met, she was a breast cancer survivor. We were talking about cancer and its effects on society. She was a therapist and a week after her honeymoon found out she had stage three breast cancer. We spoke of the things we thought may or may have not contributed, a lot of blame was put on our own actions. Wither it be the food we ate or the emotional things we suppressed.

The next day she found me at breakfast, she had had a dream. In her dream she saw a soil with sickness and a woman harvesting fruit from a plant grown in the sickness. The that fruit going into her system and giving the sickness to the baby she was pregnant with. She said the message she felt was the world has become toxic, and the sickness in our body is no fault of our own. To love and embrace our bodies and to change the way we work with food and our health by a more complete connection.

@happymoneyman and I planted a garden, and little by little it grew. The more my hands tended the plants and the plants tended to me the stronger I felt. I grew confident in my skin, the hair on my head grew back. I believe in a future, one where we rise up out of our hardships to embrace a future. One that is created through logical problem solving with good intention towards others directing our way. We must take responsibility for ourselves to help learn a new way. Mine is growing food now, I hope to help others do the same.

It has been over a year now cancer free and gardening, now urban homesteading. I am grateful everyday for this life that is so multifaceted. How it always gives us opportunity to learn and grow. To shed old habits and create new paradigms for ourselves. And to connect with others on the same journey but a different road.

Thank you for being a fellow traveler with me.

Big Love.
Ren