33. Resilience
Episode Description: Last week, I alluded to some good news about my mom. Today, I bring you this good news with a reminder that we all have what we need to fuel and fill us when we reach for and trust it—all of us.
Episode theme music “Like a Feather” by Ziv Moran
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TRANSCRIPT
Hey there. Welcome back.
Last week I mentioned something about my mom, and I said that I had good news regarding mom and wanted to talk about that today. So from the title of the episode, resilience, you can probably glean that this story has something to do with my mom's resilience. And it does. In fact, it also has to do with my family's resilience, my dad, mine, my siblings, and everyone who loves her.
But this is really more about my beautiful mom.
So by definition, resilience is the ability to adapt to a difficult situation. Last year, Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, and we kept this on the down low for a few reasons.
One, that's Mom's preference. She's not someone who takes to announcing her personal life to the world, but also unspoken because we're a family that believes that our words have power, and we didn't want to give that fucking cancer power by spreading the news to and.
On that same note, we believe our word is powerful in prayer, and we believe in the collective power of prayer. So you can imagine how much prayer was offered up for mom. We kept it within an inner circle of, well, her immediate family—which, God knows, are 70+ people. So we had a lot of people at the very onset of this, praying for Mom, along with my tribe, who has a pretty longstanding and powerful connection for holding space for these types of things for as long as we've been.
To back it up a little bit, the day I received the call from my dad was, Ugh. To this day, it's still hard to talk about because it shifted something in me, similarly to how any bad news shifts something in us. For me, it was incredulous, like, why my mother? Why of all people, she doesn't smoke, she doesn't drink, and she eats well.
She's the kindest, most compassionate human being on the planet. She's an advocate for anything and anyone that needs love, I mean, So this news hit me hard. It also hit me hard because I'd watched friends and other people go through breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, and I did not want this for my mother.
We go down this road with her, and it's aggressive cancer. Interestingly, it was originally described to us with all these negatives connotated, right? Like it's negative, this, and this is negative, and this negative and this negative. We're like, "Oh, yay, negative."
Well, turns out these negatives are in alignment with the actual definition of the word negative, which is not.
So it's not like you're doing a covid test and it's negative, and you're like, "Yay, it's negative. I don't have covid."
This is like bad news.
And so the family, we went into a mode of obviously support what we need to do to support my mom in the decisions she's making about her health. So Mom goes in with my sister, whom we all know (if you know my sister) is an undying health advocate, and she's definitely somebody I would want to go into battle with me if I had to go up against anything relative to my health like this.
So between my sister and my dad supporting my mom and her appointments, and my brothers and I supporting her kind of from afar, she's in good hands.
But the most obvious trajectory at the onset was to get that damn thing out of her breast. This little lump that took up residence in her breast unknowingly that he was very unwelcome.
But then something interesting happened, she went in for an ultrasound, and the tumor had shrunk.
We were like, “Oh my God, the prayers are working.” You know, like we were very, very hopeful and thinking, “Well, what if she doesn't have to have surgery?” and, you know, thinking that this thing was gonna suddenly disappear on its own.
And you know, as a daughter of this woman, I don't want her to go at her age under anesthesia. Nobody does, right? Nobody in their right mind wants to go under anesthesia if they don't have to.
And so, and again, you've heard it, we're not Christian Scientists, but you know, we're not running to the doctor every five minutes—that's like a last resort.
Well, this was a last resort.
My mom has to get this out of her. And so she does the surgery goes well. We are all there, and I'll leave all the specifics for her to share because this is not my story other than I'm telling it. and I did get her permission, by the way.
Anyway, my parents changed their entire diet, their lifestyle, so much so that they looked 20 years younger and had the energy and vibrancy of people 20 years younger.
It's pretty amazing. So much so. My girlfriend Deborah, when she saw them, was like, “Okay, I wanna know everything you are doing.” And she actually made my dad write it down because it's pretty compelling.
To the point of resilience. My mom has historically been an avid worrior. She's maintained the worry-posture for a lot of her life.
However, I recognize that she worries about other people. She doesn't worry about herself, and throughout this entire journey, she has maintained the most positive outlook imaginable. I mean, people often comment on my positivity; well, my positivity and positive life vibes pale in comparison to hers when it comes to outlooks about herself.
For her, she knows something bigger has her. God. She always has known it. It's the reason we all know it because of her and my dad, that is, but her unwavering commitment to her health and making sure she got back to it fully and her willingness to lean on my dad when she needed support through it, and most of all, that she knew even though this diagnosis was not good, that she was gonna be okay, she stayed with that.
What I know about our ability to bounce back is that we all have access to something deep inside us that is connected to where we all originate from. Call it what you will. And it's connected to one another. It's a place of limitless support that will fuel us, fund us, raise us up, and recharge us, no matter what we're going through and where we fall on the spectrum of despair or doom.
And my mom taps into that. She tapped into that on this cancer journey.
One of my tribe sisters, Mic would often reach out to me during this time while Mom was going through this, and she would ask how I was doing and remind me to be like the tree bending and not breaking to stand firm in my resolve. That all was well in my support of Mom, but to bend and not break.
And what I faced as the daughter of a mother, going through something like this was obviously not fun, but it was nothing compared to what my mom was going through.
Mic’s analogy of the ‘bending, not breaking tree’ made me hopeful because that's my mom. She is the definition of resilience. She can bend and not break, and she's proven it in many ways in her life—while one of the most challenging ones was likely this one.
So she sprung back into shape and health better than before. Not only because of foods she was consuming and not consuming or the new way she was committed to moving her body and taking care of her spirit. But because she made a choice to survive. And despite her strong emotions around receiving a diagnosis that for many women has been fatal, she rose to believe that she could beat this and that her actions, her mindset, and her reliance on God would be part of what helped her beat it and fully recover.
So I'm happy to report today that mom is a hundred percent recovered, and she is doing incredibly well.
The human spirit is resilient. We are resilient. Don't give up. Whatever you're facing right now, you've got this. Keep going. Reach down deep to that place that fuels and funds, and revives us all.
And again, it doesn't matter what we call it.
It's there.
Resilience and the human spirit. Talk about a powerful combination.
Okay, I'll see you tomorrow.