Sorry I’ve been MIA in my vlog-o-sphere. I’ve been traveling and had a mini-surgery (left eye, no biggie) but I’m back in full force and dang do I have so much good advice for you this week! Basically, you and I need to move our asses more and we need regular chill pills AKA vacations. If you feel it, say YES! Come on. Be honest, are you really busting a move? Are you scheduling your chillax time as if it were a biz meeting? Well, join me! Let’s change together sister. I just got back from an amazing visit with Dr. Keith Block, a world-renowned Integrative Oncologist in Chicago and the prescription he gave me blew my mind. Hope you enjoy! I’ll be writing about my blood work in the coming weeks. My goal: Become Super Human. Look out Lindsay Wagner (Bionic Woman), I’m coming!
I write in my journal a lot: thoughts, dreams I’ve had, goals, feelings I’m having, memories I want to preserve, positive thoughts I want to hold onto, things I’m grateful for, etc. Quite a few people I know do this.
I hear much less about the idea of journaling with someone. This can really have tremendous power. I recently had a disagreement with someone, and we started running a pattern that we have had for awhile. You can probably think of dynamics you’ve had with people in which you pretty much know once it starts, you have an idea of the things the other person will say and do because you’ve been there before. It’s a pattern we have been trying to break with new approaches.
Well, after having one of these disagreements and working through it, I was inspired to grab a blank journal I had just discovered and journal about the disagreement together. We focused just on the positives so as not to get drawn back into the issue again. We talked about how we felt at each stage of this disagreement and identified what we did or said along the way that helped us get to the resolution rather than driving us in separate directions. We identified key moments in the process where a different decision or action would have led us to a different outcome. We took turns writing and kept going until we had covered the whole event, and then we congratulated ourselves for doing such a good job getting through it.
Here are some nuggets we discovered when we journaled together:
-At the start, we both acknowledged to each other that something was brewing between us.
-He withdrew and wrote down his thoughts first rather than just unleashing them with the strong emotions he was feeling at the time.
-I consciously remained upbeat rather than getting upset.
-We recognized we were both hungry and took a break to get the food we needed to put us in a better place physically.
-We realized we were tired and agreed to put this into a neutral place so we could sleep.
-He tried to keep his distance – as is his typical pattern – and I put my hand on his heart and got closer – the exact opposite of what we might typically do.
-When we started talking again, we kept coming back to the current issue rather than bringing up other issues.
-To elevate the conversation to a higher place, we paused in the middle and offered three things that we appreciate about the other – something that is challenging to do in the middle of an argument.
-We asked each other, “What are the facts, and what story are you possibly making up in your head about this?”
-He offered to make me tea … a kind gesture in the middle of our process.
-We got to the resolution and then identified the moment at which the “big bang” happened, in which we both “got” each others’ point of view and opened our hearts up wide in compassion for each other.
What a great way to turn a negative into a true positive growth experience! We ended up not only resolving the issue, but also having more positive feelings of appreciation and understanding for the other. We are more confident we’ll be able to easily break this pattern in the future because we know what we did to break it this time.
Example Questions to Ask When You Journal Together
-Can you agree to focus only on the positives for now?
-What happened, from beginning to end? When did this really start?
-How were you feeling? What were you thinking?
-What was your physical state of being? Were you hungry or tired?
-What were key statements or actions throughout the process that helped break a pattern and/or bring positive energy to the interaction?
-Were there key questions asked or statements made to turn things in a direction toward a positive resolution?
-What is this issue tied to at a deeper level?
-When did you know you got to the resolution?
Other Possibilities for Journaling Together
I could see this type of journaling really working well in a couple’s relationship, between family members, with a family overall or even in the workplace. There are potentially a lot of different flavors of this – journaling memories of a trip together on the way home as a way to remember it (you’ll be surprised what two people travelling together identify as their highlights), journaling gratitudes for a day or week or an event, journaling the elements in how a team worked together or how people focused on solutions that allowed the group to get to a positive outcome.
So grab that blank journal, another person or people and an open mind, and see what more you can discover by journaling together!
Sherrie Austin is the author of the “365 Days of Gratitude” journal and sends out a daily gratitude email from her website. She’s a vegetarian athlete/triathlete who enjoys raising money for cancer charities, such as The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team In Training, from her home in Portland, Oregon.
I’m obsessed with personal growth and have spent my life devouring everything I could get my hands on regarding how to make dreams come true, all the way to becoming a Handel Life Coach and running the life coaching arm of The Handel Group for the last four years. Many teachers of the Law of Attraction would lead you to believe that whatever you can see in your mind’s eye and concentrate on, you can have. But I have found, it is not that simple.
The truth of the metaphysics behind the Law of Attraction is that what you can feel, you can attract; what you resonate consistently with, is who you are, and you attract accordingly. Also, when you become clear about what you want, you become more likely to see signs pointed towards it and can more quickly draw yourself and it together.
But, there is a lot more “fine print” they don’t tell you.
Personal integrity (aligning your heart, your mind and your actions) is actually the foundation of being able to manifest that which you desire. To have that thing/experience you desire, you have to believe you and it belong together. How do you learn to believe? Not easy, right? Think of all that’s in the way of you believing in having:
-A beautiful body that you honor consistently.
-Deep, true lasting love.
-An amazingly successful and easeful career.
-Abiding self-love.
What’s between you and your dream is all your past experiences and choices and how they impact you, not to mention your constant inner dialogue filled with worries, detractions, reminders of your (or another’s) inadequacies, and general brattiness.
So how can you quiet your mistrust of yourself and your noisy mind? There are many ways, but the best is to develop personal integrity, which means living according to your ideals. It means doing what you said you’d do. It means making and keeping promises (this is the exercise that builds the muscle). It means lining up your heart, mind and body.
Whatever your dream is, it is the law of attraction that will determine how quickly you achieve that dream (how much do you resonate with it?). If you want to use the law to your advantage, develop personal integrity. Here are a few steps to get started:
Step 1: Articulate your dream. Dare to feel it and share it even if you don’t believe it yet.
Example: I live in a warrior’s body: strong, proud and free to experience all of life’s pleasures.
Step 2: Write out your internal dialogue about why you can’t or don’t have your dream yet. Then, analyze this for bad logic, excuses, skewed theories, unresolved past experiences, etc.
Example: I’ve never accomplished this in the past, nobody supports me, experts have told me certain things are impossible, etc.
Step 3: Undo the bad logic and skewed theories you uncovered in step 2.
Example: Try to find the flaws in your distorted thinking and replace negative thoughts with more positive ones. Be mindful of negative thoughts as they arise and question their validity.
Step 4: Make a list of promises that take you to your dream and keep them! Action makes you feel different.
Example: I will drink eight glasses of water every day, start the day with green juice, write a letter to my body apologizing for my crimes against it, etc. Tell supportive people about your dream, write up a plan, start asking for help and accountability.
Coaching begins with covering these steps in all the important areas of your life. You can see how this causes an enormous shift in how you think and act. Yes, how you feel impacts how you think and act. But how you think and act utterly impacts how you feel. The easiest access to changing your thoughts and feelings is acting in accordance with your dream. Lucky you, you can dive in and start doing that today.
One more recommendation:
Come play with Elena Brower and me for a daylong experience on the subject of raising your vibration. Yup, we’ll be “om-ing” and “saluting the sun,” but there is so much more.
Raise Your Vibration Urban Retreat
This one-day urban retreat is designed to raise your vibration and to give you practical techniques to live a happier, calmer and more inspired life. Imagine what your daily life would look like infused with (short) practices for self-awareness, self-love and manifesting your dreams. Every moment is an opportunity to raise your vibration and each one counts. Instead of waiting for your dreams to come to be happy, start being happy first and watch your dreams come, as a result.
This special retreat is led by two expert teachers: Elena Brower, founder of Virayoga, and Laurie Gerber, President of Handel Group Life Coaching. They have extensively practiced and taught the methods you will learn and they are prepared to hand over the whole bag of tools at once! Retreat includes: yoga, meditation, breathing, gratitude, heart opening, listening, writing exercises, getting freedom from your mind, how to have hard conversations and Law of Attraction practices.
November 6, 2010 2:00 pm – 9:00 pm at the Benjamin Hotel, 125 East 50th Street, NYC
Laurie Gerber is the president of the private coaching division of The Handel Group, a corporate consulting and private coaching company that specializes in teaching personal integrity as the key to happiness.
When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2008, it seemed like a pretty good joke. ‘Cuz I wanted to die.
I was at the bitter end of a 2-year break-up, the kind that scrapes away at your self-esteem until you’re a shell, wishing only that your lover might finally pulverize you and (ideally) swallow you so you never have to part. Actually, I should give the dude some credit as he did find the lump in one of our final trysts. But by the time I was diagnosed, one month later, he was long gone. He loved booze and drugs more than me.
Just because I wanted to die didn’t mean that I relished the cancer diagnosis. Mostly it seemed like a giant pain in the ass. I faced dozens of doctor appointments, a debilitating surgery, and abject poverty as this meant my long, beloved career as a stripper was over. These were the facts. I’d already lost the love of my life. Now I’d lose my breast, my hair, my livelihood and maybe my house. But suddenly everybody around me was saying stuff like, “We’ll fight this together.” Fight? Why the hell would I want to fight?! The idea seemed absurd.
I have little patience for the Pollyanna outlook. I have a darker sense of humor. And after I got cancer, I preferred to be around the same — people like my guitar player, Kevin, who’s infamous on several continents for his foul mouth and hyperoffensive sense of humor. Kevin fronts the Spider Babies. And, for 12 years, has been pantomiming penetrating me with his Vox guitar in Coco Cobra and the Killers. I love Kevin.
As luck would have it (hellooooo, Universe! Or … Pollyanna?), Kevin and I decided to get the band back together after a three-year hiatus — just weeks before my diagnosis. I’d already contacted a local club and booked our reunion show for October 31, Halloween. People were stoked. The band is a frothy mix of crass, ass and (sorry this doesn’t rhyme) the Ramones. As Coco, I wear boots and a wig and very little else. It’s a foolproof formula: naked chick + Ramones = imminently likable.
I was not gonna let cancer get in the way of our reunion. But I had a lot of shit to take care of before I took the stage — shit I couldn’t exactly keep to myself. One of the biggest drags about having cancer is telling people that you have it. I hate to be the bearer of bad news. So mostly I did the chickenshit thing and texted people:
September 1, 2008
To: Kevin
From: Viva
“Bad news. Got a touch of the cancer. F’ that!! Still want to do the show. When’s practice?”
Kevin, in a rather un-Kevin-like moment, called me instantly and freaked out a bit. But then he said, “You know what, you’re gonna be fine. Want to practice Monday? I’ll call the boys. Why don’t you plan on coming over for dinner beforehand.”
And that, friends, changed everything. No longer was I dreading September 26, the date of my mastectomy. I was more concerned about remembering lyrics, distributing flyers, and what-the-hell Coco was gonna wear for Halloween.
The band’s first practice was a few days later. Jim and Andre, the bassist and drummer, both said they were sorry about my cancer. I shrugged and said, “Well, my health insurance pays for boobs and a free nipple tattoo. Maybe I’ll get a cobra. Or the Ramones crest.” Then we flipped on the amps, and I hollered ‘til my heart felt like a heart again — for the first time in two years.
September 26 came and went. I got a unilateral mastectomy and an “expander” where my breast tissue had been to stretch my skin in preparation for an implant. My left tit looked like a Halloween movie when I took off the bandages on September 30. But by Halloween, the skin had healed up enough for me to rock a see-through fishnet shirt. My breasts were different sizes, and one required its own bodyguard (Kevin) to protect it from Coco’s legion of fans. But breasts don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things; it’s what you do with them that does.
Coco Cobra and the Killers practiced every week throughout the winter and played a riotous show at least twice a month. I (quite literally) lived for these occasions. I’d do chemo on Monday and rock out on Friday. Sometimes I’d feel sorry for myself. I was nauseous, weak, angry, broke and still heartbroken, but all that dissipated when I walked in my 7-inch black leather platform boots from the car to the club.
Several times during a particularly sweaty show, my wig fell off my bald head (turns out it’s much harder to anchor a wig without hair). My more proper gal pals nearly fainted, certain that the embarrassment would do me in. But every time it happened, the crowd erupted into an even greater frenzy — so much so that I felt a little manipulative (though I swear it was an accident!).
By April I had two new boobs and even a bit of peach fuzz on my head when the unthinkable happened: my Dad called from Minnesota to tell me to “break a leg” before a show. He was never the biggest Coco Cobra fan (he prefers that I wear clothes), but he could see how nourished I was by doing something I loved. And that while some boys can shatter your soul and make you wish you had cancer, others of ‘em — the kind that “screw” you with their guitars — can put things in perspective again.
Cancer was no match for Coco and her Killers.
Once upon a time Viva Las Vegas thought breast cancer would prevent her from stripping again. She was wrong. Her second book, “The Gospel According to Viva Las Vegas,” is out this month. Her first book, “Magic Gardens: The Memoirs of Viva Las Vegas,” is available here. Check out Coco Cobra and the Killers here.
I am lying on my bed, a heating pad on my stomach, my body a twisted, cramping nightmare. Although usually I would bemoan this monthly fate, this time I am wistfully relishing the moment. Because this time is the last that I will morph into the crabby, fat beast that bleeds like a stuck pig and sucks up chocolate like a Dyson sucks up dirt. Because in five days I will have my ovaries removed. Because I have a very estrogen positive breast cancer. Because they have to put me in menopause, so I can take medicine to block the bad estrogen. Because I am only 50 years old, and I want to live.
The irony is that I thought all of the estrogen floating around in my body kept me young, vital and desirable! I longed for my period as a pre-teen. In sixth grade, when they separated the girls from the boys and showed us the scintillatingly taboo film “You’re a Young Lady Now,” I dutifully accepted the brown paper bag with a sanitary belt/safety pin contraption and a box of gigantic pads thick enough to stem the flow of a 2-ton Amazonian warrioress. And waited and waited.
I watched as my girlfriends blossomed into young ladies – boobs appearing overnight as they fell victim to the sweet “curse” that was womanhood. I was a really late bloomer. At 15, although I did have one boob tentatively making its way into the training bra I had optimistically bought two years earlier, my “little red-haired friend,” as my mother called it, had evidently lost my address.
And when my little red-haired friend did actually arrive six months later, announcing herself with a tiny brown dot in my undies, my mom smacked me in the face (albeit lightly), as is the crazy Jewish tradition! What it signifies, I don’t know. The sight of blood in your underwear is shocking enough. Still, I was thrilled to finally join the club! To sit out gym class! To writhe in pain! I hated the vicious moods and bloated feeling it brought, but I loved how it made me a member of the fertile woman club.
When I turned 50, I was nowhere near menopause. My insides reflected my attitude – young and vibrant with my whole life ahead of me. I was living in the moment and enjoying life. And then the ax fell loud and hard. The lump my gynecologist had found during my annual exam that first came back negative was, on second look, not benign. I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Me? Breast cancer? Healthy me?
I worked out five days a week, ate organic and didn’t drink or smoke. Sure, I had a little sugar problem and might devour three red velvet cupcakes on occasion. But after having watched my 73-year-old mother struggle for the last two years with her own diagnosis of a very aggressive form of breast cancer, I stepped up the prevention. I religiously took the omega-3s, drank the green tea, doused myself with the wretched wheat grass, and ate the cruciferous greens and dark berries. And still it came.
After many scans, doctors’ appointments and blood tests, it was decided that doing chemo was not necessary, but unfortunately two lumpectomies, reconstruction, six weeks of radiation and having my ovaries out was.
Here I am, five days before the operation, and true to form, my little red-haired friend decides to make her last appearance. I feel the familiar “I’m so fat and unhappy feeling,” and then it dawns on me. This is the very last time that I’ll have to endure this. Who would I be without my monthly raging hormones? Am I a woman if I don’t ovulate? I remember reading an article that men can sense when women are ovulating and find them more attractive. Would I even be sexy any more? Would my boyfriend still want me? Would I even have a sex drive?!
I lie down on my bed with my heat pack and ponder my fate. My 18-year-old daughter, Cassidy, plops herself next to me.
“What’s the matter, Mom?”
“Oh nothing, just got my period.”
“Me too!”
Then Scarlett, my 12-year-old, appears with a crabby look on her little face.
“I need some chocolate, and my stomach hurts!”
Cassidy and I exchange looks.
“I think maybe she’s getting her period!”
Scarlett grabs onto this. “I’m definitely getting it! I really feel crampy! I need chocolate and a heating pad, ASAP!”
“All three of us are going to have our periods at the same time!”
We all take a second to digest this thought. And then I remember this will be my last period.
“You’re so lucky, Mom!” Cassidy assures me. “I would love to not have to go through this every month.”
Scarlett agrees, and Cassidy and I laugh. “You don’t even have it yet!”
As we lay there, the three of us in our common misery, I think Cassidy’s right. I am lucky. I have my two beautiful girls. So many of my dreams have come true. I have a man who I love, who loves me. I caught the cancer early; if I get my ovaries out and take the prescribed medicine, it’s not very likely to come back. If I look on the bright side, not getting my period every month would be kind of great.
As the days go by and the operation looms closer, I realize I am ready to pass the “tampon baton” and let my little girl become a woman. The next day I buy her organic pads and Midol. We wait and nothing happens. I console her, “It will come soon enough, baby girl. Pace yourself. There’s no hurry to grow up.”
“Thanks, Mom. When I do grow up I want to be just like you!”
And that’s when I realize that I will not let some eggs and two little organs define who I am. I’m still a woman – ovaries or not! And more importantly, I’m alive.
Hilary Shepard is in remission and living in Newport Beach, California. She co-invented three board games with Daryl Hannah called LIEbrary, Famous Last Lines and Call it! The games are available at Barnes and Noble, Nordstrom and Amazon.
