7 Life-Lessons to Survive a Life-Crisis
By Kathleen Kanavos
Illness is Humbling. Like any life crisis, it is guaranteed to knock you down with its series of emotional and physical trauma, beginning with discovery and continuing through treatment, often with no end in sight. Upon hearing a cancer diagnosis, many people feel devastated, confused and alone. However, nothing could be further from the truth. One of the first and most important survival lessons I learned is: Even in our darkest hour—we are never alone!
I know because I am a three-time, thirteen and ten year breast cancer survivor who found out the hard way that not all cancers are discovered by conventional medical tests. Intuition can play an important part in diagnosis and survival. Intuition is defined as instinctively knowing without conscious reasoning. The healing power of humor, prayer, and spirit taught me to; take care of your spirit and it will take care of you.
Have you ever had a gut instinct that disagreed with scientific facts, and then found that your intuition was correct and the facts wrong? Or have you ever wished you had listened to yourself rather than to someone else? No matter what stage of treatment or life crisis someone is in, patients and their families should listen to their innate intuition when it doesn’t jive with the expert’s advice. It’s time to let that inner voice guide every decision to be made about financial decisions, relationships and the health of patients, then use modern medical tests and other evaluations to validate what that voice is saying. Listen, and then validate! The inner voice that I listened to was a special but familiar one, and it literally saved my life. Listening to your inner voice may save your life and your financial future, too.
I am a wife and teacher who is under the watchful eye of something much wiser than my learned doctors. I am under the protection of spiritual-guides from the other side who were at odds with my doctors and the tests on which they relied.
We all have Spirit Guides and Guardian angels. We are their job and they take their job seriously.
With help from my spiritual guides, I searched for a cure for cancer by challenging medical authority, with serious information from the intuitive realm of life that is available to everyone. I accessed this life-saving information through meditations, dreams, and prayers and found my life-saving “inner selves” in the process. This same process can be used by anyone concerning any life crisis.
After multiple mammograms, blood tests, and physical exams over a three-month period, I should have been diagnosed the first time with cancer, but wasn’t. My lump was invisible to the medical community with whom I consulted. However, my persistent self-advocating with the unwavering help of my spiritual guides finally resulted in convincing my doctor to perform exploratory surgery on a spot that he couldn’t feel, the tests didn’t show existed, was against hospital policy, and his better judgment. The result was a diagnosis that shocked the medical community and changed my life, forever.
I never blindly believed in anything. My dreams and inner-guidance was validated by an indisputable pathology report that stated I had aggressive breast cancer that was also in my lymph nodes.
What I seek to achieve by sharing my story is an alternative to ignoring our intuition in favor of science or ignoring science in favor of intuition. I learned that the best way to survive any health crisis is to mix intuition and science and then cross-check them against each other for answers that are indisputably correct.
Our bodies have been speaking to us since the beginning of mankind using signs, symbols and symptoms. Dreams, meditations and prayers are the phone lines to inner-information. Dr. Freud and Dr. Jung used the universal archetypes in dreams to treat patients suffering from personality disorders because they understood the importance of connecting with the inner-self during times of crisis. If we ask for guidance we will get it.
It’s time to rediscover our inner-guidance. You don’t have to be psychic to believe your intuition or inner-voices. In order to effectively battle illness, we must get in touch with our inner-selves and work together toward the goal of survival by using everything available to us. By searching within ourselves through dreams, meditation or prayer, we will find our own set of answers to any challenge. Become bi-lingual. Learn your personal dream language for a more fulfilling life.
The first time I had cancer, I did not believe the test results that came back “negative for cancer,” suggesting that the lump I had discovered months earlier in my breast was just in my head. I summoned the courage to defy my doctors and used everything available in this world and the next to save my life. The physicians and tests had missed the 2.1cm tumor that was Stage-Two cancer—invasive ductal carcinoma—that had already infected one lymph node. Five years later they missed the second breast cancer that was stage-four invasive lobular carcinoma and a year later the beginning of another lobular cancer in the other breast.
Spiritual guides, angels, intuition, gut instincts, call them what you will, “voices” have gotten a bad rap in society (just ask Joan of Arc.) Yet in addition to saving my life, they were a comfort to me while I underwent surgery, chemo, and radiation therapy. Without the intervention of those voices, I believe I would be dead and my story buried. My inner-voices are as much a part of my battle with cancer as the medical staff and treatments. Their inside information, imparted through dreams and meditations, proved that they often knew more about my cancer than the doctors and tests revealed.
My crisis was a wake-up call to change my life and that in and of itself was a real challenge. Another pressing challenge throughout my ordeal was in deciding whom to trust—my doctors and their conventional results, or my voices and their spiritual messages. I decided to listen to both! I requested different procedures and medical tests and cross-checked them against my guided information/ gut instincts/ intuition. Mystical information came to bear on me in ways I never imagined as I ran the race of life against time.
I remember the exact moment I received validation of my dreams, inner voices, and spiritual guides. “Pathology didn’t like what they saw when they cut the tumor open,” my surgeon said after closing the privacy curtain behind him.
“So, is it cancer?” I asked, while holding fast to the hospital gurney, bracing myself for the answer I already suspected and feared.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I’ll refer you to someone else now, a specialist.”
Thus began my Alice in Wonderland’s steady decent down the dark rabbit hole of cancer.
So my voices and dreams had been right. The doctors and tests were wrong. With my surgeon’s words, the first shot of my ensuing battle had been fired, and it was not a warning shot across my bow, it was point-blank into my breast. I glanced down at my painful wound and wept with grief and joy.
Dreams delivered by spirit guides and angels saved my life. I am not alone. I am alive for a reason and have guidance to keep me on the path of Life Destiny to share my “gift of crisis lessons” with others. Out of the chaos of cancer came order to my Life-Purpose.
As an eight year Hotline Phone Counselor for the R.A. Bloch Cancer Foundation, five-year Question and Answer Columnist for Cape Women Online Magazine and a cancer survivor, I have learned six important lessons to overcoming any life-threatening crisis. Life threatening includes any danger to your life-style which is directly connected to your financial and professional existence.
We are not alone! We are all born with inner-guidance but like any innate skill such as language, it must be perfected. Practice makes perfect. Perfect your dream language and inner-communication skills.
Believe but validate. No true inner-guidance wants you to “blindly believe.” Validation will present itself and belief will be natural giving proof that we are not alone.
Ask and you will receive. Whiners get nothing. Someone is always listening so remember to also give thanks.
A crisis is a wake-up call. Wake Up! Make the changes you need to live a more fulfilling and joyful life. What life lesson have you learned from your life-crisis? Don’t waste this opportunity to grow with guidance.
We all have a Life Purpose. Despite what may have happened in the back seat of that old Dodge, no one was an accident. Nothing happens accidentally. It is really “accidentally on purpose” to get our attention. If you are alive and reading this chapter you are on the right path (Life Destiny) to fulfill your Life Purpose. More proof of inner-guidance. What guided you to read this book, this chapter, this particular lesson?
Life is full of crisis within circles of crisis so learn to embrace them as lessons for life. Learn to dance in the rain and sing in the wind while holding the hand of your Inner Guide and Guardian Angel. Nothing is permanent, including crisis, so enjoy the storm and you will turn negative power into positive outcome. The storm will pass and leave you in a fresher world.
Out of crisis comes order.
Dreams, prayers and meditation can lead us through crisis and into a life of inner order and prosperity.
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About the author- Kathleen (Kat) O’Keefe-Kanavos is a three- time breast cancer survivor who penned SURVIVING TRUMALAND:The Intuitive Aspects of Healing www.survivingcancerland.com a radio host, inspirational speaker, represented by Steve Allen Media and is part of WakeUpWomen www.wakeupwomen.com.
