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7 Lessons to Survive Your Crisis

7 Lessons to Survive Your Crisis

A Blessing In Disguise

By Kathleen Kanavos

Have you ever had a gut instinct that disagreed with scientific facts, and then found that you were correct and the facts wrong? You have inner guidance.

Crisis is humbling. 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.  Nothing could be farther from the truth. Here are seven lessons to help you survive life-crisis.

The first and most important one is: Even in your darkest hour—you 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. Take care of your spirit and it will take care of you.

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, they 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 you, then use modern evaluations for validation.  Listen, then validate!  Your inner voice may save your life, relationships, and financial future.

We all have Spirit Guides and Guardian Angels. We are their job and they take their job seriously.



How often do you pray but miss the answers in your dreams? Your dreams are the way your Eternal Teacher (ET) phones home to heaven for help during crisis. Your Higher Power always answers!

But, do you believe the answer you hear in your prayers, meditations and dreams? Watch for the validation in everyday life. Validation is indisputable information.

What I seek to achieve by writing this article is an alternative to ignoring our intuition in favor of science or ignoring science in favor of inner guidance.  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. Be a part of your health and life team because no one knows you better than you know yourself. Listen to yourself.

Our bodies have been speaking to us since the beginning of humanity.

Your body uses signs, symbols and symptoms to communicate. 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 because they understood connecting with the inner-self during times of crisis. If you ask for guidance you will get it.

It’s time to rediscover your inner-guidance. In order to effectively battle illness, you must get in touch with your inner-selves and work together toward the goal of survival by using everything available to you. By searching within yourself through dreams, meditation or prayer, you will find your own set of answers to any challenge. Become bi-lingual. Learn your personal dream language for a more fulfilled life.



The first time I was diagnosed, 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 use 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—aggressive 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. Finding the life-saving information in dreams was as lucky as winning the lottery three times in a row. Luck had little to do with it. Divine Intervention did.

My crisis was a wake-up call to change my life, and trust in a Higher Power. Science goes so far and then comes God.  Another challenge was deciding whom to trust—my doctors or my Guardian Angels.  I listened to both and cross-checked them against each other. That information came to bear on me in ways I never imagined as I ran the race of life against time.

I remember my exact moment of dream validation…

“Pathology didn’t like what they saw when they cut the tumor open,” my surgeon said after closing the privacy curtain behind him. Fear replaced my nausea.

“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 Cancerland!

So my 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 across my bow. It was point-blank into my breast. I glanced down at my painful wound and wept with grief and joy. God was with me.

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(From SURVIVING CANCERLAND: The Intuitive Aspects of Healing)

As an R.A. Bloch Cancer Foundation Hotline Phone Counselor, Question and Answer Columnist for Cape Women Online Magazine and a three time cancer survivor, I have learned seven important lessons to overcome any crisis.

1. You are not alone! You are 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.

2. Believe but validate.  Inner-guidance does not want you to “blindly believe.”  Validation will present itself; more proof that you are not alone.

3. Ask and you will receive. (Whiners get nothing.) Remember to also give thanks.

4. Crisis is a wake-up call. So Wake Up! Make changes. Live a more fulfilled and joyful life. What life-lesson did you learn from your life-crisis? Don’t waste this blessing in disguise. It is a golden opportunity to grow with spiritual guidance.

5. We all have a Life Purpose. Despite what may have happened in the back seat of that old Chevy, no one is an accident.  Accidently is really “accidently on purpose.” If you are alive you are on the path (Life Destiny) to fulfill your Life Purpose. What “guided” you to read this article?

6. Life is full of crisis within circles of crisis. Embrace them as lessons for life. Dance in the rain and sing in the wind with your Inner Guide and Guardian Angel.  Nothing is permanent, including crisis, so enjoy the storm. You will turn negative power into positive outcome.  The storm will leave you in a fresher world.

7. Out of crisis comes order.  Dreams, prayers and meditation can lead us through the dark tunnel of crisis and into the light of inner-order and prosperity.

Click HERE to Connect with your Daily Horoscope!

About the Author

Kathleen (Kat) O’Keefe-Kanavos is an author, inspirational speaker, Radio Host, and three-time breast cancer survivor who penned SURVIVING CANCERLAND: The Intuitive Aspects of Healing http://www.survivingcancerland.com   http://accessyourinnerguide.com.  She is represented by  Steve Allen Media and is part of WakeUpWomen www.wakeupwomen.com.



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