Awaken the Forest Within
It was New Year’s Day 2018. My resolution: “This is the year I’m going to get my shit together.” Well, I did - but not in the way I thought I would at all.
In February, I unexpectedly lost my brother to long term drug and alcohol use.
A few weeks later, I found out I had breast cancer… the kind where you truly have to decide whether you are living or dying. While the tumor was small, it was sophisticated and had already moved into surrounding lymph nodes, an aggressive stage 3B/C. I had a mastectomy and twenty-six lymph nodes removed, fifteen were positive. Then came chemo, followed by radiation, and by the end of the year I had my ovaries removed. I refer to this as my second gestation, nine months of intense treatments, coupled with a spiritual crisis of existential proportions.
In March of 2019, I was diagnosed on the other side. I spent the one-year anniversary of my first diagnosis (which I call my re-birthday) with a diagnosis of my second. Fortunately, it was early stage. I went through another mastectomy and was spared chemo and radiation. My doctors believe it was there the year prior, but it was too small to detect and too slow growing for chemo to “see” it. I will never know.
But here’s what I do know. I had the most incredible journey and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Here are a few ways in which it touched me:
After surgery and prior to starting chemo, I went in for a scan to ensure the cancer wasn’t elsewhere in the body. While there, I met an older black man in the waiting room who I swear was an angel. He said to me, “I want to tell you something… I can feel you … and you’re gonna make it.” He pointed to his chest, where he could feel it and then to me - three times he said that. We had a beautiful exchange with hugs and prayers for each other. Freddie and those words became my rock. In times of doubt, they turned me to belief, and still do today. At my last radiation appointment, I paid it forward and placed a rock in the pool of rocks with that message on it.
Another message came from the mirror, from seeing myself to seeing through myself. I was stripped to my soul, walking around with no hair (eyelashes or eyebrows), a missing tooth (it resorbed itself and I had it pulled a week before finding out I had cancer), and a rash that broke out on my face from chemo that lasted months. I was emaciated and far removed from the athlete I had been. I was missing a breast and had a right arm that I continue to manage today for lymphedema with compression bandages/sleeves. I didn’t know who that woman was in the mirror. I really couldn’t comprehend what I was looking at, day after day, dumbfounded. I looked deeper and that’s where I saw that I was not this body at all, but in a very profound way, I was a soul…and so are you. So, I started walking around seeing everyone for the beautiful souls they are. I didn’t see the human body anymore, but this other, deeper energy.
I had surreal dreams that took me to the edge of life and death, of my desire to live and the desire for the universe to have me continue my time here on earth. I had dreams where I sat in a chair in black space and heard a deep affirming voice say from overhead, “You do not have cancer,” that woke me into consciousness each time. This happened repeatedly, and repeatedly I awoke confused. Was I diagnosed with cancer? Yes, I was diagnosed and had surgery, but no one truly knows if it’s still there. Following the regimen, chemotherapy was next.
Throughout the treatments, I never felt so loved and grateful. I had a top-notch medical care team - an outstanding surgeon, a perfectly sarcastic oncologist, and excellent nurses. I was in good hands. A dear neighbor organized a meal train and a community of families delivered dinners. My parents, who had been divorced since I was young, showed up in ways I had never felt before. I had loving support from family, extended family, dear friends, and even heard of friends of friends starting prayer groups for me. A Mohegan elder friend of mine arranged for a healing ceremony in my honor. I had a heartfelt exchange with my ex-husband, and the ironing that needed to take place in my current marriage was underway thanks to a loving husband who listened and showed up every day for our family. He has given me great latitude to grow through this experience, supporting my endeavors and pursuits. Lastly, I don’t how I would have gotten through this without the love of my kids. Each of them supported me in ways I will forever treasure.
All the while, I had an incredibly spiritual journey with the forest that revealed the truth of our interconnection. We are never alone, and we never die. I learned to ask for help from the forest: “Help heal me, so I can heal you.” Incredible things happened. I saw Mother Earth’s breath as an eternal, everlasting swirl of energy that infuses the planet into the cosmos. I had a parent tree (one tree with two trunks representing mother and father) visit me each day I went into radiation. I closed my eyes, and there it stood with branches outstretched, offering support, my human hands in its branch hands. When it came time for my second mastectomy, my parent tree didn't show up. I accepted I would go into it alone. Then, while lying on the table prepped for surgery, I closed my eyes again and saw an entire forest before me. The entire forest came, standing strong in the light as I viewed it from the meadow. I know it sounds a little crazy, but I feel I was given a gift – the door opened, and I stepped through. The forest is my channel to ‘that which is greater than me,’ to the universe and its energy, to that which is both Everything and One.
This relationship inspired me to create a nature-connection practice called Awaken the Forest Within, where I lead forest bathing walks and offer nature-based life coaching and retreats, connecting humans back to the nature from which we are already woven.
When things were at their darkest, I heeded the call of the forest. It called. I listened. I went. I had no idea what I was doing, but I showed up and the forest gave me a gift. I promised the forest I would share that gift with the world. When I stood at the cliff of my mortality, I saw that there was something more, another dimension. That something more is what I long to share with you.
It would be my honor to be your guide and coach in your own journey through the forest within, a witness and someone who holds space for you as you awaken to discover the intra- and inter- connectedness from which trust, peace, forgiveness and great healing blossom forth.
From here, anything is possible.
Thank you for reading my story-at-a-glance. The book, “Awaken the Forest Within,” is forthcoming.