When I was 41, I found a lump the size of a grape in my right breast. I ended up bald, sick and exhausted from surgeries, chemo and radiation treatments. Ah, but I got to live.
— Regina Brett
We all have a personal pool of quicksand inside us where we begin to sink and need friends and family to find us and remind us of all the good that has been and will be.
Too often, we get attention and sympathy by being a victim. If we're invested in someone being our villain, we must love being the victim. We have to let go of both characters in the story.
What other people think of you is none of your business.
We all have that power to have a soul that magnifies God.
When you have cancer, it's like you enter a new time zone: the Cancer Zone. Everything in the Tropic of Cancer revolves around your health or your sickness. I didn't want my whole life to revolve around cancer. Life came first; cancer came second.
For years I heeded the warning: Do monthly breast self-exams. Like most women, I did them on a 'sort of' basis. Every few months I'd sort of do a quick feel, but never as thoroughly as the doctors urged. I didn't want to go looking for trouble. If you look for it, you might find it. Looking for cancer is unsettling. Thank God I looked.
If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
No matter how I feel, I get up, dress up, and show up for life. When I do, the day always serves up more than I could have hoped for. Each day truly is a slice of heaven. Some days the slices are just smaller than others.
Almost every month, I have a day where I get stuck in the mud of me. I used to blame hormones and PMS. After I hit 50, I blamed the lack of hormones. But men get stuck, too, so it must simply be the human condition.
It's easier to forgive those who hurt you than those who hurt the people you love.
Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
We are all on a journey of faith, and we have to polish that faith.
Before I started chemotherapy treatments, I wrote down the best advice from doctors, family, friends, books, and survivors and created an 'Owner's Manual' to help me take care of myself. It would remind me that cancer is doable.
A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.
When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
Most of life is showing up. You do the best you can, which varies from day to day.
My daughter had carried within her a story that kept hurting her: Her dad abandoned her. She started telling herself a new story. Her dad had done the best he could. He wasn't capable of giving more. It had nothing to do with her. She could no longer take it personally.
No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
It's OK to let your children see you cry.
When you write a book, you are asking someone to make an investment in their time and money. A column can come and go as the weeks pass, but a book needs to be timeless.
When you hear the word 'cancer,' it's as if someone took the game of Life and tossed it in the air. All the pieces go flying. The pieces land on a new board. Everything has shifted. You don't know where to start.
Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.
