Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.

Robert Breault

A few years ago, I shared a story HERE about my sister and her experience when first diagnosed with cancer.  Her journey has provided some rich learning for her and many of us close to her, she recently shared another powerful experience.
After several years of chemotherapy and multiple surgeries with some success in controlling stage 4 colon cancer my sister was given news that the maintenance chemo wasn’t working anymore.  The doctors presented her with a few options: she could go back on heavier chemotherapy and extend her life for probably another year but have to experience the side effects of the treatment or she could forego any further treatments and probably experience life a little more comfortably but shorter.  It was a weighty decision for her to make and after previously experiencing the heavier chemotherapy with the consistent nausea, discomfort and other side effects, it really did give her pause.  In the end she chose the route of heavier chemotherapy, noting that her comfort level was deteriorating without it anyways.

With the heavy decision came a heavy heart.  She experienced each day as a struggle to get up … knowing what was coming.  Her mind kept asking the question “why me?”.  “I’m only 41 years old, I have two 11-year-old boys and a husband who need me … why me?  Why do I need to do this again?” She explained that this type of thinking occupied her thoughts for a couple of months. 

Then one day she woke up with the thought “Why me? – is irrelevant! … It has nothing to do with me or my situation, it’s just a thought, that’s it.  It’s up to me to choose what I think and feel so that I can live my life to the fullest.”  After this experience she has been able to live with gratitude in her heart, gratitude for each moment with her family, gratitude to be alive, gratitude for everything that might present itself to her each day.

It struck me how empowering her perspective shift was. It gave her energy to change her thinking from being at effect (a victim of circumstance) to living at cause (owning what is real, and choosing how to see and experience it).  We give up our power when we choose to have a victim perspective.  May we all choose to live an empowering life!  Thank you Karen, for teaching me this beautiful lesson!