What are the three words that spread fear throughout your body? You have Cancer. Yep those are the 3. First you want to throw up and can’t retain any information so why anyone tries to give you more than that at that point is beyond me. Then you freak out, and then at some-point you go okay, now what? This call all happen in the matter of a minute but you ultimately go through all of those feelings.

So I was diagnosed with a chronic blood cancer about 4 years ago, and while they say it isn’t hereditary my mother also the same thing I have (got diagnosed in her 50’s and is now almost 80) and her aunt had something that was related to it (hers was much worse). So I don’t really trust that they know too much about why it happens. Luckily since I’m familiar with it, while I wasn’t thrilled and I was freaked out I wasn’t as freaked out as I may have been or as my mother was when we first got her diagnosis.

It’s not always easy to put it out of your head when you are living with something with a scary name. I’m actually thinking of naming it, something less scary than what it actually is. Maybe Oscar, after the grouch who lives in the trash can on Sesame Street. Then when I’m feeling angry about it I can just say I’m pissed at Oscar. Or maybe I will make peace with Oscar and just say we spend time together thinking up silly games to play. I don’t know but even just writing that made me smile and laugh a little so there is that. Besides it’s hard to be scared of something named Oscar.

So why am I sitting her writing all of this…well I guess it’s because we never really know what is going on inside our bodies. But we know that stress negatively affects us in many ways. In the past 6 months I have been under enormous stress…heck who I am I kidding the past year I have been under enormous amounts of stress and it is definitely taking its toll.

As I mentioned in a previous post I need to learn to focus more on myself. Putting my self care first, and this is never more abundantly clear than now. Keeping a positive mindset is much easier when you are taking care of yourself. No one wants to think that they may wind up sitting across from a doctor giving them this type of news but even if you do get this kind of news staying positive and taking care of your mental health is just as important as taking care of your physical health.

It’s easy to go down a negative path and think horrible thoughts or what have you but instead try focusing on the positive. Which is not always easy but don’t dwell on what you don’t want stay focused on what you do want. Make those plans, focus on the future (even if that future is 3 hours from now or 1 day from now) and focus on your mental well being.

You don’t have to live in fear and stress, you can live in life and abundance. When you feel yourself slipping into those negative thoughts remind yourself of what you want not what you don’t want, because what we put out there is what we get so when you focus on the negative nothing seems to go right, but when you focus on what you want and positive things you start to see the world a little brighter.