MAKING HEALTHY CHOICES

The Only Real Control We Have

By Susan Z Rich, LCH, ADLM

If I did not choose to take the traditional treatment for the Stage Four breast cancer I had been diagnosed with, I would die most definitely within a very short period of time.  Always, at your first initial visit, you sit there in stunned silence hearing the prognosis, recommendations, and the hoped for predicted outcome if you do take surgery and radiation and the absolute doomsday outcome if you don't.  Wow!  How did we come to this state of medical and fearful madness that we have to be put into a position of having to defy those who think they are in charge of telling us what is the right or wrong choice about our bodies and our life.  There are no right or wrong choices, only the choices that we are capable of making at the time.  Even making the decision to accept someone else's choice about your body is a conscious powerful choice on your part.  The only thing that keeps us from empowering ourselves with the responsibility of those choices is a distorted concept that we are not in harmony with our bodies and life. We are made to believe that when we are ill, we must do battle with our bodies instead of nurturing them.  Whatever choices we make in our life: whether it be about health, relationships, career, family or financial, if we make them from a place of empowerment versus fear, we can be assured of feeling that we are in control of our life in that moment, regardless of the outcome.

My decision of not taking the traditional allopathic treatment for Stage Four breast cancer brought about many other choices which were much harder than the simple beginning of saying, "No thank you, I don’t think so”.  “I am going to chose another path in treating this cancer."  Choosing a holistic approach that had the basis of healing versus just treatment.  The true reality of this existence or life experiment, whatever you want to call it, is we make choices everyday based on two factors: the need to feel safe and loved or a desire to evolve and change beyond what we are. At that particular moment in my life, my health consciousness was non-existent.  My idea of a healthy meal was to eat a couple of leaves of lettuce with whatever frozen dinner I nuked in the microwave, ordered at a restaurant or from the deli. Got to get your greens you know!  Yes, that's right, I did not know how to cook!  My choices from that point on, was an every day challenge of commitment.  Would I go to my radionics treatment (energetic frequency treatment) everyday after working all day?  Would I make the choice of taking all the herbs and drinking those disgusting drinks that were required to clean out my body, build it up and then allow my body to eliminate the cancer virus?   Would I make the choice every day to not buy into feeling betrayed by my body and insist that the outcome be my way with whatever little control I thought I had left?  Every single day that we make a choice to get out of bed, putting our feet on the floor, getting dressed and functioning in whatever capacity we are capable of is incredibly powerful!  We could chose to deal with a life threatening illness, family dysfunction, heartbreak, disappointments and overwhelming challenges by curling up into a fetal ball and staying in bed.   There are many who have chosen to do just that and our mental hospitals are filled with these overwhelmed and terrified individuals.  We do not give ourselves enough credit for all the powerful little choices we make everyday. Our wounded self-esteem or fearful inner child tells us that only the big choices count and the little ones don't give us any value, make us deserving of being loved, allow us to be honored, demand respect and to be visible in our lives.   We must feel that we are heard and seen based on all the powerful choices we make every single day, regardless if they are life threatening.

In my personal relationships with my husband, family and friends, the powerful choice of owning my body and taking responsibly for that choice took many challenging turns also.  To my friends who knew me from years of making just about anything happened that I put my mind to, either by sheer stubbornness and perseverance, the concept of me losing to cancer was not who they considered me to be.  They would hold their breath for a year or so but they gave high odds in my favor and the cancer running dead last.  No pun intended.  Taking charge of what I would do with the disease that was trying to win an illusory battle against my body, was viewed by my friends as: "Perfectly Susan".  It would be just what I would do.  No problem with support there.  My husband and daughter was another matter.  My daughter simply put, was terrified of losing her mom and the only parent she knew that was always there for her but she would be in my corner.  My husband was a totally different story.  We had been married for only a few months and had known each other for only a year before that.  He had not come from a family who was even vaguely familiar with a holistic approach to health or the concept of spiritual empowerment through surrender.  In the beginning, he had this gray look of distress when he realized that my alternative choice of treatment and healing was going to be a reality.  A healing approach that was totally unconventional by him and his family's standards.  To his credit, he made the powerful choice to trust his new wife's instincts and spiritual beliefs because of one empowering fact that he accepted unconditionally.  It was my body and my choice.  He would then make his decision to how he was going to surrender any fearful need to dictate to me what choices I should make because of his fear of losing me.  His powerful and loving choice was to emotionally support me!  Although sometimes with teeth chattering, heart fluttering and voice kept silent when I went off the deep end, he remained true to his choice.  Everyday, I continued to make the choices to follow the procedure of detox and I think my body made a few choices on it's own.  One of them being transformed into "Big Red"!  My body was so toxic, filled with parasites, virus and metals that for about two or three months on many occasions, my body and personality did a perfect imitation of Linda Blair's exorcist.  It got so bad that I just started apologizing ahead of time for my short-tempered remarks and behavior.  The running joke in the house was "Oh my God!"  "Look out!"  "Big Red is here!"  "Everybody run!"  Sometimes my choices on how I reacted to those around me were not of the best but I kept on reminding myself as we all should, that it is the behavior that we are apologizing for, not WHO WE ARE!  We can get caught up in a truckload of guilt by owning that little trick of the ego. 

Anyone who is holistically informed knows that dis-ease roots from emotional woundedness.  During this detox period, I had plenty of time to address old issues of abandonment and the inability to believe that I was lovable and deserving of nurturing myself.  My estrogen based cancer centered in my right breast, which of course represents the male side of our energy system.  Father abandonment issues big time!  I had a small cyst that had been there for about 25 years, always checked but was never a problem.  That little cyst was where my body encapsulated the hurt and pain of feeling rejected, unwanted and unlovable as a child.  Your body does not know what to do with those foreign feelings so it has to bury them some place.  There they remain dormant until a chosen plan of destiny is fulfilled to address those wounds and bring us to a point of release.  Dis-ease and the threat of imminent death is truly the great equalizer.  There is no one you can pay, no one to ask or demand that they do your dis-ease or death.  This is where your choices count the most and it is impossible to unload that responsibility on someone else.  Even if you choose to let someone make health decisions for you, as in your doctor or family, you must still understand the power of YOUR choice.  You only will reap the benefits or suffer the consequence of giving that power away to others.  It is still your body and no matter how you chose to do your illness, in order to heal and blossom into health, you must eventually take that responsibility back.  We do this by making changes in our nutrition, listening to our bodies talk to us, exercising, addressing destructive thought processes, (see web site for suggested self-hypnosis tool)  http://www.szrwhitewings.com/products.html  and being in gratitude everyday for the miracle of just being alive.  Being happy about your life depends on several important perceptions.  Being sure that you do not view yourself as a victim but look on it as an opportunity to evolve and grow.  That you do not look for someone to rescue you from the responsibilities of taking care of your own body and life.  Understand that your body is an intelligent being that thinks for itself, reacts and responds to every emotion, thought, food-stuff and drug that you have put into it.  Everything from the moment of your first breath is in there.  Choosing to not feel entitled to do what you want to your body because of whatever excuse you can come up with.  Last but not least, not blaming yourself or others for the situation that you are in.  This anger will consume you and you will miss the most precious gift you can give your body, yourself and others: forgiveness. Forgiveness and unconditional loving acceptance of self, the only true healing there is for dis-ease.

Finally, we get to the last part of recognizing the power of making healthy choices.  How in the heck are we going to pay for this?  Finances will challenge even the most devoted alternative health seekers.  I have been told by many that when I share what the cost of doing alternative therapy versus traditional western medical treatment, that we got off easy.  Our bank accounts would most likely disagree!  The cost was an enormous undertaking and put us into a big financial squeeze. It did not help that my husband lost his tennis contract at the country club three weeks after I was diagnosed.  Leaving him without any substantial income for eight months.  Then of course, just about when we were seeing the light of day, 911 happened and everything came to a grinding halt for all of us.  Do we ever regret taking the choice to pay for it all out of our pocket and not using traditional treatment that the insurance would have paid for?  Not on your or my life!  I can look in the mirror everyday and see both of my beautiful breasts staring back at me and know that it was worth every penny!  We made our financial choice of having the spiritual faith that somehow the money would be provided for us to make ends meet. Sometimes, eleventh hour savior energy came into play but my husband and I never faltered on believing that the money would be there to cover all the treatment and it was. 

It has been nine years since I made that powerful choice to heal my body of cancer with non-traditional treatment.  A choice made against great resistance from others because of the fear that the medical profession gives us.  I have been cancer free for over seven years now and in glowing health.  Everyday I take the holistic approach of “cleaning out toxins from the body, (BBS detox footbaths- http://www.szrwhitewings.com/detox.html building up the immune system, (herbs and supplements) healing and changing belief foundations of loving self, http://www.szrwhitewings.com/products.html and then maintaining a healthy environment for the body”. (exercise, as much organic food you can get, as little processed food as possible and good pure water)  If someone would ask me of I would recommend my choice of treatment to anyone else as an absolute solution; I would have to say no.  My choice based on my faith and convictions worked for me but I can only give the advice to pursue what works for them.  It makes no difference if you chose traditional treatment and then take the path of healing and strengthening your body from the aftermath of surgery and chemotherapy or choose the path of alternative and natural treatment.  The end results are the only thing that matters.  That should be one of joyous and fearless expectation of the right outcome for you, whatever that may be.  Fearlessly and lovingly embracing life to the fullest and counting every day as a precious gift. Every part of my life was affected by that one simple empowered choice of believing that there were other possibilities to have a healthy future and a healthy and whole body.  I truly believe the only true control we have over our life and our bodies is the acceptance and responsibility of those powerful choices.  If we recognize how truly empowered we are in partnership with this awesome higher power and healing intelligence, we can then honor our bodies and our lives with our choices.  Being in gratitude and awe of our simple everyday healthy choices.  Knowing that those choices have the potential of committing us to the fearless responsibility for our health and our happiness.

Namaste

Susan Z Rich is a 12 Step Addiction Counselor, Certified Alternative Healing Therapist, Licensed ADL Minister, Reiki Master, Intuitive Counselor, Creator of Recovery Hypnosis Therapy©©, Licensed Hypnotist, Certified in Reconnective Healing and Author.  She has a successful practice of Recovery Hypnosis Therapy©, Counseling and Healing Therapies in Longwood, Florida. She believes her combined program of audio CD Empowered Thinking therapy program, intuitive counseling and healing therapies based on "Empowered Thinking" was a significant contributor in her ability to successfully heal herself of Stage Four Breast Cancer without surgery or chemotherapy.  She may be contacted at (407) 862-6902 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information.

www.szrwhitewings.com