Embracing the Possibility of Healing: Stories and Reflections – NaPodPoMo

It has been a crazy month for me and a lot of thoughts have shown up as I’ve looked at disease and healing from so many angles. In today’s episode of Self Powered Healing, I’m going to share with you some of those random thoughts that I’ve had.

Back in 2019, my friend Karen told me about a movie called “The Farewell.” I also read about the movie recently in a book on healing. And so I put it on our watch list, and we watched it recently. It told the true story about a Chinese extended family with family members living in China, Japan, and the United States. Billi, the main character, lives in New York, as do her parents.

Her grandmother, Nai Nai, is diagnosed with cancer, terminal lung cancer, with just three months left to live. But there’s a twist! Nai Nai’s sister decides to keep the diagnosis from her. She conspires with the doctors and the extended family to keep the secret. This isn’t something we could do in this country, by the way, due to privacy laws, but it actually is common and legal in China.

So the family proceeds to plan a wedding for Billi’s cousin who lives in Japan. The wedding will be a way for the family to say goodbye to Nai Nai without her knowing she’s dying. Throughout the three days of the gathering for the wedding, everyone must hide their true emotions in order to keep the truth from Nai Nai, even though they were all concerned and sad that she might be dying.

Well, they managed to pull it off, although there were many times that family members broke down. I think they originally planned to let her know about the cancer shortly after the wedding, but they never did tell her.

I mentioned at the start that it was a true story. At the end of the movie, they told us that Nai Nai was still living six years after the wedding, and in good health. It was an enjoyable movie. With an important message about how the mind can overrule the body. And there was one line in the movie that I caught that resonated. It said that “It’s not the cancer that kills, it’s the fear.”

Watching The Farewell reminded me of a book I read a few years ago. The book is called “The Art of Racing in the Rain” by Garth Stein. Have you read it?

It’s a lovely book that I like to say is written in First Person Dog. The story is told by Enzo, an amazingly smart and philosophical dog. I couldn’t help but falling in love with him. And I’m actually a cat person. Before I tell you what Enzo said, I should let you know that it really isn’t a spoiler because you learn about this in the first chapter.

In the quote, Enzo is talking about Eve, the wife of Denny, who is Enzo’s owner. Eve appears to have brain cancer, although Enzo never named her disease in the story.
These are his words:

“While doctors are able to help many people, for her, meaning Eve, they could only tell her what couldn’t be done. And I knew that once they identified her disease for her, once everyone around her accepted her diagnosis and reinforced it and repeated it back to her time and again, there was no way she could stop it.
The visible becomes inevitable. Your car goes where your eyes go.”

In her book, “Dying to Be Me,” Anita Moorjani says, “Cancer is just a word that creates fear. Forget about that word, and let’s just focus on balancing your body. All illnesses are just symptoms of imbalances. No illness can remain when your entire system is in balance.”

When I think about my own problems with my knees, that word arthritis is used and it implies all the things that Western Medicine can do for knee arthritis and what can’t be done. They can give you NSAIDs for pain and inflammation. They can give you a steroid injection for the same purpose. They can offer arthroscopic surgery to trim the loose cartilage, although studies have shown that the placebo surgery is more effective than the actual arthroscopic surgery.

And then they can also offer knee replacement. That’s about all there is in their wheelhouse. That’s what they have to offer.

If you ignore that word arthritis, If you just assume that there’s some issue with the knees, then other possibilities open up. Maybe it could heal on its own. Maybe it could heal in response to physical therapy or acupuncture or another modality. Maybe I could even have my own stem cells injected to stimulate the growth of lost cartilage, which, by the way, I have done.

None of that is available to the person who accepts the definition of arthritis as degenerative, irreversible, incurable disease. It’s like Enzo said, ‘The visible becomes inevitable.’

Looking at some of the stories I’ve read of people who have healed, I’m going to leave you with this observation. Those who heal refuse to accept the absoluteness of their diagnosis. And many of them won’t even listen to their doctor’s prognosis. They don’t accept terms like ‘incurable’ or ‘three years to live’ or ‘living in a wheelchair.’

Instead, they have an open mind and they take action. They go in search of solutions, alternative treatments, changes they can make to their diet or lifestyle that can bring about healing.

Like the type 2 diabetic who decides that their lifestyle is part of the problem. They make drastic changes to improve their health and ultimately reverse their diabetes.

Or the young man I met recently. He had three herniated discs in his back and he was under 30. He had about a two week period where he couldn’t do much of anything except lie around. So he was on the internet looking for other answers than the surgeries his doctors were recommending. What he learned was if he had the surgery now at under 30, he’d only have more back problems later, and by his mid 60s, he’d be in worse shape than he was today. So he found alternatives and sought out a chiropractor and now practices yoga to help with his back.

Thanks for listening today. You can visit SelfPoweredHealing.com/november2024 to find all the episodes for NaPodPoMo. Leave a comment too, if you like. Thank you to all that have been a part of this 30 day challenge. Beginning in December, I’ll be returning to my less intense schedule, publishing three episodes each month, at least. I also will have more healing stories coming up.

Stay tuned.

By the way, Self Powered Healing is still looking for interviews with people who want to share a story of healing. Do you have a healing story? I would love to hear about it and see if maybe you could share it on our show. So if you’re interested in sharing, then visit selfpoweredhealing.com/share to schedule a chat.  

You aren’t committing at this point. You’re just having a chat with me to see what’s going on. It will be confidential unless or until you decide you want to share. And if you get there and there’s not a convenient time for you, send me a message because we’ll always find a time.  

And remember this always,  