The Stories We Carry

But MAY NOT Tell Us Who We Are....

I have always loved reading and writing. Now I am unable to do much of either. I feel groggy and foggy. All I want are the gentle comfort of loungewear, large pots of ginger tea, the soothing hum of my diffuser wafting soothing scents like serenity and frankincense, the kind voices of my favourite guided meditations by Deepak Chopra or Steve Nobel. Coming to terms with a cancer recurrence, this new diagnosis of inoperable stuff (one doctor referred to the stuff as “mass”, the other as “fragmented irregularities” - the way different words resonate is on the list of topics to revisit down the line) is a rather consuming process right now.

After the first expression of “there is nothing we can do” early on a Sunday morning following a ride in an ambulance and admittance at the ER, I went home and spiralled into days of blind panic. Friends and family came over. We either sat staring at each other in disbelief or we held each other while sobbing uncontrollably.

“Sorry” was the first thing I said to my mother.

Not that long before this, during a walk in the woods with the dogs we had talked about how lucky we were after the first experience with cancer, which I had so miraculously survived. Against all odds. It became my mission to outlive my mother, out of love. So she does not have to bury me. And now here we are. Again.

This had become my story. I experienced a spontaneous remission. I was a medical miracle. But over the years I lost my sense of wonder. My warped way of relating to the world weaselled its way back into my subconscious, sneaking past an increasingly more distracted and exhausted mind. I got totally lost. The past year and a half I consider the worst of my entire life. So much needs to heal, the loneliness, the abandonment, betrayals, the loss, the grief. This can’t be the last of me. It cannot end like this. I will not have lived my last days in despair. If it is a story, it does not end here.

My human inclination to reason is still there, incessantly asking questions non stop. What type of cancer. How much of it. How long has been here. Was there anything I could have done to prevent it. Why is this happening again and why now. What do we do to “fix” it? I let the questions come and go. Without answers. I just let go.

There is a deeper knowing underneath this flurried and hurried mind. The questioning, the knowing, the being have become separate. Somewhere, somehow, what I one was able to experience in terms of oneness or wholeness, disintegrated.

Everything needs to become one again. Body, mind and soul fully embraced, completely aligned, serving a single purpose: Living. I meditate, pray, take walks in nature, do breathwork. It takes away the helplessness.

I remind myself: I am not the helpless victim of my fate. I can still create whatever life I want. With every breath.

My cancer cells are not the enemy. It is not an alien invasion. Although my brother and I did joke about this… maybe it is an alien… In that case we can politely ask it to return to its own planet. Thank you for visiting. Bye bye. The joke contained a core of truth. Where my first cancer experience felt very clearly to be concerning me directly and solely me, this time around it feels like I am carrying someone else’s burden. It is up to me to experience this, resolve and release it, but it is not mine.

This distinction feels crucial to me. Maybe that is why I took someone’s advice and sold my cancer and everything connected with it for 8 lei to a friend, who accepted a contractual agreement to release it back into the universe. Alien invasion, my emotional pain manifested, or someone else’s, in any case I do not believe cancer cells have bad intentions. Life wants to be lived.

ALL IS ONE AND NOTHING IS REAL

I recently spoke to a man, a type of shaman person. We talked about the truth and origins of discomfort, illness, fear. What is your story? What is it you tell yourself he asked. Who are you? Are you your body? Are you your mind? I am nothing, nowhere, no time, no body. Yes, Joe Dispenza whispers to me every day. Let go and allow for endless possibilities. The magic word being “allow”.

But what if it is just a story? What if it is no longer true. No longer who I am.

I get lost in these questions. Who am I? What does anything mean? If it changes, does it have value? Meaning is subjective, contextual, dynamic. Everything is a story. Myth, folklore, fairytales, brands, the bible, our personal narrative. Is it all a mere illusion?

There are events in my life from early childhood that were dark and ugly, painful and scary. There have been plenty since. I recently thought about writing it down. All of it. From the first time I wanted to die, around the age of 10, to the last time this summer. When I buried my last dog, the love of my life, My main man Muki and said: Just bury me next to him. I had literally, again, lost the will to live. I had started writing while finding refuge at a friend’s house. No Dogs, No Gipsies; Life in a Village Fit for a King. I even submitted it for the Bridport memoir prize.

In 2014 I wrote another memoir, All Day A Good Day. I had started reading it again recently, after deciding to study to become a therapist. Now cancer is back, and that feeling very real still, I suddenly have lost the desire to revisit what I wrote about it in the past. My writing also abruptly halted on that Sunday at the hospital. Because I don’t if any of it matters. Does the way I string words together hold any meaning. Is it valuable. Is it worth my time? All I have wanted my entire life is to write. Yet when my life is on the line, I don’t write. Huh!?

Whatever got lodged in my body and manifested in the form of “fragmented irregularities” needs to be addressed, acknowledged, purged and released. I need to become a cancer free person again, that medical miracle I believed and embodied for 13 years.

I need another spontaneous remission.

I may sound utterly nuts to you, and to a certain extend I don’t really give a fuck. As contradictory as it may sound from a perspective of “oneness”, healing we do alone. We don’t need anybody to heal. Your fears, imaginations, projections and judgments of me do not touch or move me. My healing process is also in now way a reflection of everyone who did die. Eventually we all will. But until then, I am healing. I am taking quantum leaps back into the womb, just in case I have been conditioned by the story of my oncologist that tells me I was born with these rogue cells, which were thought to be destined to be part of generic soft tissue, but accidentally got lost in my organs.

They don’t belong there. Maybe it was my lack of belonging in this life, in this world, was what sparked them into existence. I take leaps forward, picture myself healthy again. I stare into the future, while dropping out from all timelines, to see who I have to become to get through this. Today I heard another whisper. Not Joe, but the higher me. The one that does not cling to crap, the one that never wavers. It said: Body knows how to do this. She has done it before. Just get out of the way…

WHAT WE NEVER WERE

What makes us us? What is a personality? If not just a string of repeated behavior that we could choose to change at any random moment? Then what is the value of memories, anecdotes and stories?

I am attempting to read “I am That” by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, recommended by the shaman who says my cancer does not exist. Who said cancer isn’t real. It is a fear program. At the same time he said biopsies (I just had 4 bites taken out of my back last Wednesday) can do more harm than good. I know that some rare sarcoma are brittle and they tend to wander off. But how can cancer not exist and yet the risk of a biopsy causing metastasis exist, at the same time? I imagine myself whole and healthy. Yet I lay in bed at night listening to healing frequencies. It is there, yet it isn’t there.

I read about the potential risks of cells spreading through biopsy interference back in 2011 and it made me briefly question if I wanted to go through with it. I recently had a CT-san and a PET-scan. The CT-scan shows stuff. Thee PET scan doesn’t. You see, again it is there, yet it isn’t there… My kind oncologist must have been a bit confused when I started laughing when he told me this. He emphasized that a clear PET scan means no activity, which means time… it is a good thing. He had no idea why that made me laugh.

When I was lying in the PET machine and it was time to start scanning I said to myself: Now everybody HIDE!!! instead of everybody say CHEESE!!! With nothing showing up on the PET it looks like my “instructions” worked.

It made me laugh, and it brought back the fear of what a biopsy could do. A don’t poke the bear kind of thing. Let sleeping dogs lie and all that, you know?

Despite all the questions, this time around I am not looking online for medical trials, statistics and studies. I have let that part go. Instead I turn inward until there no longer is a distinction between inside and out. I meditate until I fall into the universe, connecting to every spec and spark of stardust out there. Which includes you, by the way. I meditate on this. Let the biopsy lead to healing. Let everything lead to healing.

I am navigating a deeply introspective and transformative period in my life. It brings profound questions about identity, memory, and the stories we tell ourselves.

The pivotal question: What if it’s just a story? Stories shape how we perceive ourselves, yet they are not the entirety of who we are. Our past often defines our present, but, it doesn’t have to. Writing it down—pouring out the darkness and the light—can be a way to externalise those experiences, examine them, and perhaps release their hold on me. Even if they are "just stories", they may contain wisdom I’ve gained or patterns I am now ready to change.

If personality is a collection of repeated behaviours, beliefs, and reactions, then yes, we can choose to change them—moment by moment. But change requires awareness and the willingness to let go. Memories serve as both anchors and reminders, and their value depends on how you relate to them. They can be tools for self-understanding or weights that keep you stuck.

Non-dualism, like the I am That teachings, often speaks to the realization that opposites—good and bad, self and other—are illusions. Yet the journey doesn’t end there. Many find value in coming back to the “human experience” with its messiness, its joys, its physical and emotional realities. Perhaps the key is balance: Embracing what is while also recognizing it as transient.

Healing, awakening, and creativity often have their own rhythms. The ginger tea, the diffuser, and the meditations might not be distractions—they could be part of my path. I trust that this pause has a purpose, even if it’s not clear yet. Instead of running around like a headless chicken, forcing myself to get everything “back on track'“, to force solutions, fix things, I lean into the fog.