My Answer to Breast Cancer

In front of everyone. And I have been wanting to come out and talk to everyone about their journey because life is strange now for all of us and we're all kind of navigating this new path. And especially when you're navigating a breast cancer diagnosis in addition to this new path, it gets really confusing. And I want everyone to know that everyone's path is different. Everyone's journey is different. No two breast cancers are the same, and no two people's experiences are going to be the same. And what people need to do in order to get from the place that they are to a place of wellness is going to be different for everyone. And I know in traditional medicine, everyone is kind of lumped together and that there is like a period of diagnosis where you're told that you have breast cancer and then you go through this traditional treatment plan, which includes surgery. And for some people it's chemotherapy, and for some people it's anti hormonal therapy, and some people get radiation and some people don't. But that by and large, there's a generalized treatment paradigm, and then you're supposed to be better and get on with it. But the truth is that that paradigm doesn't really work for most people. And as they're struggling to find this new nor they really haven't made any substantive changes to change why they were on that path in the first place. And so to really heal, you need to start to look at the reasons why the breast cancer developed in the first place. And that goes to your root causes. And for everyone, that's going to be different, which is why breast cancers are so very different and why those traditional treatments don't really change anything for people. So everyone's journey, their discovery journey and their healing journey is going to be different. And not only is that difficult, but many people also experience the issues of the fact that they are essentially somewhat forced to leave their tribe in their healing journey. And I'll explain to you what I mean. Real healing from breast cancer comes with significant changes. And Kelly Turner talked about this in her book Radical Hope. And her, her first book was Radical Remission, the second book Radical Hope. And in that book, and if you have not read that book yet and you have a breast cancer diagnosis, then like, this is something that you need to do immediately. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Like you need to read this book either one of those books. And in that book, she talks about all of the characteristics that people who have radically recovered from cancer. It doesn't just talk about breast cancer, although there is a lot of breast cancer stories in there. But these people that have radically recovered from stage four cancer and are alive and well 10 and 15 and 20 years later, when they were giving prognoses of six months, these factors that they all have in common, and we'll talk about all of them, but the one thing that they've all significantly changed is the way that they eat. And so oftentimes, truly healing from breast cancer means that you're going to eat in a different way than you ate before. And I'm just going to use my family as an example, because that's not always easy. It's not always easy. Maybe even if you just have a spouse, unless your spouse is interested and motivated to make those changes. It's hard to make significant dietary changes when everyone is not on board. Add children into the mix and it's even harder. We ran an experiment in my house because I am a vegan and my family, let's just say they're not vegans, and I asked them to go one week without any animal products and they barely made it two days. So listen, the struggle is real and the struggle is real for everyone. Everyone has that issue. So in terms of making it work, and women suffer from this constantly in that we are almost always putting other people around us. And healing from breast cancer is a time when we have to put our basic needs first. And our basic needs are nourishment. Now, nourishment is not only from food. Nourishment comes from a lot of things. And anyone who has studied at IIN and I studied at IIN and my entire team of health coaches has studied at iin and at IIN we talk about this concept of primary primary food versus secondary food. And people think of the food that you put in your mouth as primary food. And the thing that is responsible for giving you the most nourishment. But the truth is that the food that you put in your mouth is secondary food. And we get most of our nourishment from all the other things that nourish us. So air, water, love, affection, touch. I mean, think about, like a baby who is fed and cared for in terms of cleaned and all of that kind of stuff, but isn't held, that baby doesn't survive. So we know that there's so much more to nourishment than food. And, you know, we can live without food for weeks, but we can't live without water for weeks. We can't live in isolation. And so really changing the way that we're nourished from the time before our diagnosis to the time after our diagnosis is very important and contributes to our overall health. And that often means some kind of significant paradigm shift in how your house is run. And we all spent this year under a significant paradigm shift to how our home life is. And I mean, in my opinion, for the most part in the United States, we are blessed that Covid, for all intents and purposes, is really over, and we can move about with a lot more freedom and participate in a lot more things outside of our home, getting back to some semblance of what we remember as normal. And it's time to rework our homes so that they become nourishing homes again. Because for a lot of people, I think it became confusing. It was really easy to work too much from home and to. To neglect things because oftentimes, like when you're surrounded by these things all the time, you don't see what's there. And so really taking a look around and making sure that your home environment is nourishing, and sometimes that means, like taking a look around and seeing what's toxic in your environment and getting rid of it. I recently feng shui'd my space, and I think that it's really important to do that. I did a lot of purging. That's really important to do. But more so than that, I think that this is a time for great understanding. We have become very, very divisive throughout this virus escapade. It has become a political issue. We have. We have been led to judge each other and to. It really has become something so much more than the virus. And I hope that we can put those issues to rest. I hope that we can see each other with love and acceptance. And at the same time, that whole you do you. That needs to apply to your breast cancer journey because you need to take care of you. And you can't compare yourself to someone else's breast cancer journey. And what works for you and your healing journey may work for them, and it may not. So it's really about finding out what is best for you and living that journey. And, and if your family will come along with you, if your friends will come along with you, great. If not, there may be some situations and circumstances where you have to leave the tribe, where you're not going to be part of the barbecue club anymore, where you're going to make plans with people that maybe are not centered around food, if that is an obstacle for you. But you need to do you. You need to take care of you. You need to have a lot of love and acceptance. You can't be perfect. No one can be. You will stumble. You will fall. The courage is in getting up again and trying again and living another day and making each day better than the day before and rising to the challenge. But. But again, knowing that this is your journey and not to compare yourself to everyone on social media. I know that there are a lot of loud voices and most of them are out there and are seemingly perfect. And remember that the struggle is real and it's real for everyone. Every single person is struggling with something and no one's life is perfect. And no matter how beautiful they look on Instagram or fun they look on Facebook, I'm telling you that for everyone, the struggle is real. And you just need to do you own your struggles, conquer what you can. Be loving, be forgiving. Know that your journey is yours. And know that if I can help you along your journey, I'm here. So with that, I'm going to say goodbye. See you soon. This is Dr. Jenn Simmons from Real Health MD and all for now.