NEAR Life Experience, how to live every day of your life | w/ Fellow Cancer Survivor Willow Bradner

Another episode of the Healing Is Possible Hot Seat, where we prepare you for life beyond survival mode. Every week, Tuesdays at 10am I am coaching a brave volunteer into breakthrough or interviewing a world leader in healing on their magic and their gifts to provide you with tools to live your life fully. And that is exactly what our topic today is. Please note, this podcast is not meant to to take the place of any therapy or personal growth work that you're already doing. Take what you want, run with it. And let me, with that being said, introduce the gorgeous accidental psychic and friend of mine, Willow Bradner, to the hot seat. Hello, Willow. Hey, hey, hey.

I am so excited, Rebecca. I am so excited that we get to do this and I am so excited to get to just share our jam with the world.

I am thrilled and honored to have you. Let's dive in. What are you. First of all, does healing mean to you?

I'm going to go with one word where healing is concerned to me, and that is responsibility. I feel like healing really begins when we take personal responsibility, when we no longer scapegoat, when we no longer even assign sort of our healing to other people. It's not to say that we don't need helpers along the way, but I think it's our responsibility to kind of do a lot of the inside work as well as the exterior work.

I love that. One of my new taglines is the mission is healing. The cure is always self responsibility.

Yes.

It's what we have control over.

Well, and I think it's mastery. I think when you can master self responsibility, then it's really like the world is so freaking easy. From that perspective, once you realize that all of your shit inside belongs to.

You and you have the ability to unpack, release, transform, any of it.

Yeah, absolutely. You don't have to be held hostage to it. And nor is it anybody else's business, nor is it anybody else's fault. At the end of the day, like, when you get to really dive in and unpack all that responsibility, it's like, ooh, this actually isn't that scary or that hard. It's easier. At least from my experience in unpacking all of my wings and shit. It feels easier when it's no longer other people's problems.

Yeah. Yeah. And it might not feel like that at first, but it gets easier when it's really you doing your own work. Right.

Yeah.

I love it. And we talked about for today. I mean, we have so much to talk about, but we're talking about life and really living Our lives.

So.

So why is this topic so important to you?

I think it has been the cornerstone of my entire life and I hadn't really understood it entirely until I myself was faced with cancer and until I myself was diagnosed just this past March with cancer. And I think when somebody takes sort of years off your life, somebody being, I don't know, doctors, God, whomever, whatever circumstance cancer is, when you realize that years have been taken off, away from you, you have sort of, all of us have sort of this checklist in the back of our minds of how much time we imagine we have. I think cancer for me really showed me the door, that the door wasn't as far away as I assumed it was. Does that make sense?

Like, I completely relate.

No longer, right. It's no longer an enigma. And I think for so many of us walking the planet, it is an enigma. And we are scared of it and we are scared of failure and we are scared of death, but we are not living in its place. And that was the part that has always confounded me, is that as I was being shown the door, I had another friend kind of walking cancer alongside of me. And the difference in our characteristics of how we chose to cancer was so different. One chose sort of a. More I feel sorry for myself, more vitality, more I'm going to lay under the covers because I got this thing. Whereas I was like, oh shit, look at this list. Does anybody see the list behind me? I have 100 million things that I have to accomplish. And oh shit, the door is closer than I thought. And so now all those things that I thought I was afraid of, all those things that were sort of stuck and holding me back really have eroded it completely. I'm not even afraid of getting cancer again. I'm not afraid of its return. I'm afraid that I have got to get some shit done stat because the door is closer than I thought it was.

Yeah, I can so relate to this in my own way. Last year in 2020, I was a machine producing courses this community, multiple shows for this very reason. I mean, I think we wait. So to everybody watching, I want you to just really be asking yourself, A, are you waiting? And B, what exactly are you waiting for? Because just like nobody actually gets married thinking they're going to get divorced. Nobody thinks they're going to get cancer or nobody thinks that there's going to be this life threatening situation or crisis. Life begins in a moment, it ends in a moment. And what are we doing moment to moment? And I really believe that each Moment is precious, each one. And if we're not powerfully and intentionally choosing our moments and who we're being in the moments, because we can't choose the circumstances, Will and I both with cancer diagnoses, cancer survival stories, we're not guaranteed the cancer is not going to come back. We're not guaranteed either that just because we had cancer, there isn't going to be some other thing. I mean, I think that's the other thing we think about, right? Like, ok, I had my hard time, so I, I'm done. No, we're not done. And that's good news because we're still here. But are you choosing your moments? Are you being intentional? Are you waiting? And what for? Because to Willow's point, I mean, we literally don't know. And for me, last year I definitely had almost like a fear based anxiousness around, like, I want to make the impact, I want to make the impact. This year I'm relaxing more into all right, you know, it's happening and I have to have the lifestyle I want in the midst of all of this creation. And, you know, so I guess my point with that too is just recognizing that we all have phases. So the phase I'm in right now, the way I'm living powerfully, intentionally, moment to moment, this might not be what works for me in a month or in six months or in a year. And we have that ability to reinvent over and over as well. So it's like, what are we waiting for? And don't be afraid to reinvent. And don't be afraid once something becomes a toleration, to reinvent again.

Well, and I want to speak to that point, Rebecca, because I think you glanced at it as you passed through it, which is every moment is actually the present.

Yeah.

And so if we're really clear also about living big and living purposeful, I think we get really caught that living big or living purpose means that we're living in the future. I think actually we get really caught up on our mission, our calling, and we forget to take deep breaths in the day that we're in and to really assess. So I have sort of a project, Willow, right now in terms of my day to day. I'm literally, I think about four months post chemo, post radiation. And I had a pretty radical sort of healing process for my type of cancer. What I noticed while I was in the incubation of healing, meaning in the structure that they have for curing cancer, I was only able to look at every day as it was there I couldn't get a day or a week past the day I was in because then I would get more sick or then I would get anxious that I was not going to make it, or then I was going to get to a point where I was like so sick that I wasn't going to make it through that. If I looked too far in advance, I would see how many more days I had left on my schedule because I was a five day a week chemo radiation person. So five days a week, they were murdering me in every way to get rid of cancer cells. So it was a good murder, don't get me wrong. But I could only be in the proxy of the day. So what I do now, being out of it when I notice that I'm getting more anxious is when I start looking really far out into my mission. When I start looking at how I want to accomplish or who I want to help or how I want to serve, I get really fast forwarded out as like the book, the people. How am I going to Instagram, who am I going to market to? How am I going to do this? And I get real messed up outside of my body. So what I have noticed is if I wake up every morning with the intention of really sitting still with myself and really getting clear about who I want to be today, what I'm capable of energetically, truly, without lying to myself, am I really up for going on the interwebs? Do I really have something profound to say? Is today the day that I'm going to change people's lives or is today the day that I have to work on mine? And so that's where I am. And I wonder for those listening who are in the healing plan, which aspect they are in because again, like what you said was every moment is sort of an opportunity to change and transition. And some of us are still in the day to day transformation, Some of us in our healing, we need to have more permission to incubate on a day to day level versus like six months at a time even.

I love that. Yeah, yeah. And I would love for you to expand on what you're saying about being truly honest with yourself because I think that the should based filter can be so subtle that we miss it. And I think it's easy to be intentional through that lens of what we think it should look like. And you're talking about being really honest with yourself. And what I'm also hearing and feeling as you're talking is, you know, our best in every moment is different. Yeah, right. Like some Days our best is literally cuddling up with a blanket on the couch and taking a nap. And that's it. And that's enough. So how do you get truly honest with yourself about where you are? What's your process for that?

It's. It's a process. Let me just say that I am a type A person. I'm a hustler by nature. This is the first time in my life I've been confronted with the idea, notion that I cannot be or do what I feel in my bones or want to be and do on a, on an exterior level. So let me back that up. I have been a professional entrepreneur my entire life. I went from owning a hair salon to becoming a psychic to running always six figure plus businesses. I'm a mom and a wife. We are super outdoorsy, mountain biking, four wheeling, like hiking. I am a nonstopper. This brings me to my knees on a daily basis. So if you had seen me yesterday, you would have seen me under the covers with a stomachache and there's nothing I can do about it. And it's like quite literally just part of the healing process. And so I'm very fortunate in that I have a devoted, loving spouse who has unfortunately for himself, lost two people to cancer. So he is more empathetic, I believe than most would be in the situation that I'm in. But we are every day navigating and he's a part of my team in this is that we are every day navigating the that my body is having. So my brain is very much ahead of the game. But my body is still a little bit behind and lagging. So I have to wake up with such grace every day for my body. So that is number one. I would say it is like a true permission. My true honesty is being graceful is number one. Number two is really checking in to see what I have in my battery pack because my body is sort of like an iPhone. Like it runs out of battery now.

Yeah.

Where I didn't have to plug into the wall and wait for my battery to recharge. I now have to plug my battery in and I think I always had to before if I'm totally honest. It's just that I didn't have a true physical experience for it.

Well, I'm glad you said that because I think, you know, at least for me, I just want to say this real fast. After cancer, it's almost like I'm so connected to my body I can't ignore it anymore. Whereas before I was maybe more disconnected than I realized. So I was able to p. Push harder and farther than I even knew it was costing me.

Yeah, and I wonder, and I really, I hate saying, but I'm going to say it anyways, I wonder at times, and this is my imagination because I come from the psychic spiritual world and I don't know how many of your listeners are of the woo variety, but we have a lot to say about manifesting. We are always talking about manifesting money and manifesting houses and cars and lifestyles and careers. And if you put your intentionality in it, you can manifest it. And I want to say very clearly that I don't believe that cancer is a manifestation. I don't think anybody intentionally create this in their body. But what I will say is this in terms of the manifestation or in terms of its sort of actualization in our bodies is I do believe that there is stagnation in our bodies or stagnation in our energies that we are ignoring. And from my perspective, what I can tell through now, having done so much therapy through this process and therapy before this process, but what I can tell you now is that my favorite yoga position, it used to be my stand up joke and still is a little bit, is tight butt, not breathing tight, but not breathing. What that means is that I was holding energy. I was so nervous and so scared. In my body is where I would hold it on the outside, you would see an extrovert. On the inside, there was this tiny little person, we call that the inner child, that was quite literally holding her breath the whole time, so scared to do the things that I was doing. I was a bigger life personality, so I was pushing past my comfort zone. When cancer arose in my uterine space, it was almost laughable for the joke that I had been telling all those years of tight butt, not breathing. And it turns out, well, I didn't get colon cancer, got that vagina cancer. I'll say it out loud, I was holding it there too, by the way my feminine energy was being held and suffocated all the time because I was kind of overreaching my comfort zone and not working through why I was uncomfortable. So again, I wouldn't say that I manifested it, but I pushed past comfort zone so much that I ignored energetic, energetically a certain space. And that stagnation that took place there definitely became, I believe, a stomping ground for what became cancer. Now, I could be wrong and I'm sure not out there saying that you can manifest this because no one would choose it in the whole wide world. But I can tell you that energetically it makes sense for me why it was where it was.

Well, and I think you're modeling really beautiful responsibility back to where we started today. Because I don't think people cause cancer and I don't think people cure cancer. I think we get to be responsible for the emotional cancer that we chose meaning to or not. And we get to decide if we're going to continue once we're aware, to ignore and avoid facing, moving through and conquering that emotional cancer or are we going to transform it. And for me, one of the things that I think saved my life was just focusing on where is the emotional cancer. Because that I can do something with.

Yeah. And I want to speak to that in that what I'm noticing. And this goes back to that permission or that. Am I being honest with myself?

Yeah.

With uterine cancer, with the pelvic cancer. Anytime you get a pelvic cancer, the radiation really affects the pelvic floor. It creates trauma. The pelvic floor is part of our fight or flight. It's connected to the. Am I saying the word right? Amygdala in the brain. It's connected and correlates directly with. So if your amygdala has been hit, if your fight or flight is up, what we generally do is that tight but not breathing. We generally do kind of put ourselves in a fight or flight pattern. And so what I've noticed now, this is what I think is so radical and so wowza. Is that I can no longer ignore the little girl inside because I've gone to events or I've gone even out to coffee with people, or I've done too many humaning moments in the week where I noticed that my stomach hurts. And I don't mean like a stomach ache, you guys. I mean like the muscles in my belly, like you can feel them. As if I'd done a million sit ups and I haven't done one. And in speaking to my therapist about it, she was like, okay, let's back this up. How long have you been afraid of people? Holy cow. So those are the parts where I'm getting so honest. The inner hustler, that energetic hustler that I've been my entire life, the one that pushed past all those limitations, all those fears, really now is getting a wake up call to where I can't physically ignore that I'm afraid of people. Where I was able to physically ignore that people make me uncomfortable and scared, that I actually am just absolutely terrified 100% all day. Every day of humans. I love humans. And let me just be really clear. Like, I am such a people person. I love people, but I am also terrified. And my fear is obviously what all of our fears are, right? I am so woefully afraid that you will not like me and that if you found out who I really am, you would really not like me. And my rational brain, I know, is all. That's all a lie, and that's not true. But my inner child, that little tiny person who is the muscle inside my belly now, I can tell you unequivocally, without a shadow of a doubt that I can't people as hard as I used to, until I heal back to that word and until I take responsibility and ownership for why I'm afraid.

Yeah. And we were talking about this before we started recording, too. This piece of when we get really honest, when we get fully committed to living our life with the time we have, how does that impact relationships? And I think what you're saying now is the big piece of that, right? Because it does get confronting to think about. Okay, if this is how I've been and I'm recognizing it doesn't work for me anymore, and I'm recognizing that other people are basically trained and used to me being this way, how do I have the courage to risk the. The new beingness that I am really needing and wanting for the life I want, knowing this could potentially disrupt and ruffles and feathers.

Yeah. I feel. I'm so. There's two places that I feel super disruptive right now in my life, and one is with my marriage. I cannot be all the things that I was before. And so again, luckily, I have a beautiful partner who is constantly reassuring me that I'm not that disruptive. But in my brain and my irrational self, it's like, oh, my gosh, I can no longer drink like I used to. I can no longer play like I used to. I can no longer people like I used to. That's definitely challenging. Now I, unlike many people who are confronted in this way, got super lucky. I'm in a reinvention pattern. So we moved right after treatment. So I'm in a brand new town, brand new village, where people don't know me at all. And so there is no pattern that I have to break with them. It's rather my own personal belief in myself that's being really worked out. Like, I now am very clear with people when I meet them. I really want to come to your dinner party or your book club or your thing that you have going on. And I'm going to say yes on a tentative level and I really spill this out, you guys, this is literally how I talk to people. This is how I behave on the outside because I have my insides. So I say to them I want to be there, but I don't know who I'm going to be on that day. I don't know if my energy is going to be able to arrive or not. But I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt I want to be there. I just don't know if I'll be able to be there. Number two thing that I do with people right now because I am also meeting people for the first time. So I don't have any equity with these people. I don't have any history with these folks. So you can imagine my fear muscles are really up meeting new people constantly. So I say to them what happens to me on the inside. And I say to them, I know that we've just only met and I don't know if you're anything like me, but I can tell you that I really like you as a person. I'd like to see you again, honestly. And I'm going to go sit in my car and beat myself up about all the dumb things that I probably said in this date. But I just want you to know that you're okay in my book. And every woman has turned to me bright eyed, big eyed and has said holy shit, I do the same thing. I get in my car and I beat myself up after I've met somebody. And I don't want that to happen to you either. I really like you also. And so then my muscles can go down.

Yeah.

Right. So those are the things where I don't know if I answered the question in terms of being honest, but that's how honest I'm being is like I'm literally wearing my. What I, what I continue to say is I now wear my insides on the outside and now we're the insides on the outside. And I say everything out loud because I can't protect myself the way I used to. I can't pretend my way out of this like I used to.

Yeah, well. And I almost hear it as like you just won't. Which is even more powerful.

Can't. I just can't. Yeah. And I won't. And I've. I mean, yeah. To the responsibility aspect and this is, you know, high level mastery is like I, I kind of did a lot of self development before the cancer. So lucky me, that I had a lot of Runway for this, that this is only making it even better and even deeper and even more awesome.

Yeah, I can relate to that. I said to myself while I was sick, this is the ultimate seminar. This is where I get to really meet myself and put into play everything I've learned, and I get to decide who I'm going to be now. And I think when it comes to relationships, the three things I like to say, when you get more real and honest, it'll shake up what needs to get shaken up. And people will do one of three things. They will either work with you easily, they will get mad and get over it and work with you, or they go away. And in my experience, when they go away, it's heartbreaking, but they were always going to go away. So. Bye. And I'm not trying to make that, you know, over simplified. I'm just saying I think part of the gift of cancer, at least for me, part of the gift of fully committing to my life as long as I have it, because I don't know how long that is, is knowing that I'm not going to try to coerce or convince or manipulate my way into the way I think people outside of me or circumstances outside of me should be. I'm going to stay focused on me, moment to moment. And that's. I think, Willow, what you're doing such a gorgeous job of modeling today is just being you in this moment, committed to that. And it was funny also, before we recorded, Willow was doing a little Eminem rapping. Right. Because we. Do we get one shot.

Yes, one shot, one moment. Don't blow it, y'. All. Yeah, I think that's. And I want to go back to again, the sort of intro that you were talking about how right now you. You are in this build out of your business and creating your. Your tribe, your posse, your. Your peeps, so that you can really create a larger wave of impact. Like, I really do see the work that you're doing, Rebecca, as being one of those meteorites that lands in the ocean that creates a giant wave, but not in a. Not like it landed in a safe place, let's say that. Okay. Because sometimes meteors might feel like it's very caustic, but it lands in a safe place. Place. And it makes a really big splash without hurting anybody, but can be seen all aspects. And I. That's what you're working to create. What I think is really interesting is I relate to you. I want to be you. I. I can't wait to be in that energetic space. And it's so wild to. To be on the sidelines witnessing others and not have the energy to join them.

Yeah.

And back to that place of, like, we're not gonna blow it, guys. Like, what I'm noticing first and foremost for the first time in my life is I have always been a pusher because I was always pushing myself. I was then automatically and accidentally also pushing everybody else. As an accidental psychic, as somebody who works in the psychic realm, I actually see energetically how much potential is in everybody's bucket. I see how much energy everybody has and really what they could be doing with it. And as a pusher, I feel like I'm a life pusher, if you will, like, drug pusher for life. I want people to achieve ultimately. I want everybody to end up like Rebecca. I want everybody to have their own meteoric rise. I want everybody to have that thing that creates impact for themselves, their family or their. Their community, whatever that is. Because I can see potential in every one of us being such that we are all born change makers. If we decide to step outside of the society norms, if we decide to not shut all over ourself and our friends and the people around us, if we can, like, really burn those threads around us that kind of keep us imprisoned and trapped, we have potential to change. We have potential to impact. We have potential to become whatever it is that we desire to be. Now, that said, on a smaller scale, and it's not even small, sometimes the biggest impact we can make is just in our own house.

Well, and I was just thinking that too, Willow. Like, the change maker muscle inside of ourselves starts with us getting real about ourselves and how we're being and how we. We're living, you know, And I just want to say this too. Like, you're not on the sidelines. You're here. And I think one of the things that we're all guilty of is comparing where we are now in this moment, honestly and truly to where we think we could be or should be. And there's. There's a way. It's complicated, but it's. It's real that this is possible to be committed to that big picture while we're honest about where we are now. You know, and I'm literally next week. I am so 7 years out from my diagnosis. My birthday is next week. I got diagnosed right around my birthday. Seven years out, and I couldn't walk until two years ago. Wow. Took five years. This show came out at six years post cancer. And I just play this game with myself. And this is what I want to encourage everyone else watching that is committed to fully living their lives and taking their lives back. You know where you are, your best is enough. And you gotta freaking wait for it. You gotta know where you're gonna end up and you gotta wait for it. And you're never gonna know when that moment that the energy shifts and the stars align and it pops is going to come. But live like it's gonna, and it will. And it's. It's an interesting dichotomy. We don't know how much longer we have. We don't know when we're gonna die. But we also don't know the moment that everything's going to come together. And both are real. And it's okay to be aware of both. And I think it gives us a lot of power when we are aware of both.

Well, and to sat. I so agree. So agree. And hallelujah to your seven years, by the way. That's amazing. You are definitely walking the. In my personal opinion, the Shero's journey, if you will, of getting through this stuff because it's. It's real. And again, I think as pop, when it is absolutely meant to. And back to the living aspect. We're not living for the moment that life pops. We're not living a moment even that the clouds lift and suddenly we know what's going to happen in our lives if we slow it back down. I want to go right back to the present moment. If you're waking up every day and you're deciding who you want to be in that day, that's step one. Step one is wake up. What do I want for breakfast? Who do I today? Fuck tomorrow? It's not here yet. You don't even have it. And if you get too messed up about tomorrow or you get too messed up about a week from now, you're wasting today. Okay? Living every day is living every day. Not living for tomorrow, but living in this moment for today. And I would recommend anybody reading there to check out Surrender experiment because I think he really. Michael Spruce, the author, he great of really distilling down this living per day. But for me, I think we know it's going to pop. We know that there's going to be these moments because it's just how life ebbs and anyways through these highs and lows. But like, I want to. I guess I want to start off with this. My daughter, when she was three years old, used to lay with me in her bed and put her hands on my face. And she would look me and she would say, mommy, I don't want you to die. And being that we're psychics, I often looked at her and said, do you know something I don't know? And I would look at her in those moments and I would feel so deeply into her already grief of my. My leaving. I'm going to leave. We're all going to leave. We're all going to die. I knew her grief was real already feeling that grief and that loss of her mom leaving someday. But I looked at her deep in her eyes and I heard so clearly in my soul and my spirit. And I say this to each of you who are listening, which is this. What we have right now in this moment is the opportunity to love fiercely. What is in our control at this moment in time is to live fiercely as if it is your. And so it is, again, not about the impact that you are going to make tomorrow, but rather the impact that you are going to make for yourself, your family, your community, and the people that you inspire and participate in today. And so whether or not it is just choosing the most flamboyant outfit in your closet or making sure you have enough protein in the morning so that you don't get the hangries, or picking up somebody else's kid from school or opening a door for somebody with too many packages in their hands, or whatever it is that you can do that's going to help uplift your life and somebody else's that day, in that moment, in that second that you're alive, that's what you're going to remember. That's going to be the moment of impact your life has and took. How many of you are affected daily or monthly or yearly. How many of you go home and tell your person, I totally saved a woman in the parking lot today as her cart was rolling away with all the stuff in it and her kid was in it. How many of you have crossed the street to help somebody out and that affected you? That's fucking living right there. That, to me, is living every day to get up on your worst day, your hardest day, and do your best. Anyways, that's living.

Yeah. Willow, this is so good. Thank you for being here. I love this assignment that you're giving us to really pay attention to how fiercely we're loving and how fiercely we're living, and to take those opportunities to make that difference and to connect to others and be of service moment to moment in the ways that are small, in the ways that are big. Whatever it looks like while we can do it, that is the impact. I love this talk. This has actually been super refreshing and healing for me. I hope everyone watching has some great takeaways. Post in the comments if you have any questions for us. If you have any takeaways, you can go to willowbradner.com to get in touch with Willow and to find more about her and her accidental psychic services. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Healing Is Possible Hot Seat, where our mission is to bring you along on a new journey of hope and healing. Because healing is possible, the Hot Seat is brought to you by RebeccaSilence.com RebeccaSilence.com has all kinds of free products and services as well as premium products and services. Go check it out for your next steps to healing. And if you want to join me in the hot seat, message me. Post in the comments below. Let's see what we can do to set that up. Thank you Willow for being here. What a pleasure. What an amazing, amazing episode today. Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye everyone. We will see you.