You Are Not Worthy.

an examined life.

Something happened on the way to the desk.

I was suddenly aware of what it was like to be made to feel unworthy.

It was something I’d hoped not to feel after putting my heart and soul into something I knew a lot about.

Yet there it was.

I had done a great deal of work on myself and knew without doubt the things I was really good at, the things I do that others find challenging, the creativity, the ideas and the way I can communicate the thinking.

I was shutdown.

Dismissed.

You are not important, what you have done is not important.

Blow after emotional blow came forth thinly veiled as fighting for the bigger cause.

Yet I realise that as miners we were not digging for the same seam of gold.

It has taken years to understand who I am, my life choices and I continue to work on my “examined life” and years after my parent’s passing I start to understand their prose and stance on life.

I read something the other day that alerted me to an area I may be dabbling with no intention and that is patient advocacy. I have no desire to be a patient advocate, nor do I wish to push the equally popular survivorship band wagon.

Ain’t my gig, ain’t my thing. I have absolutely no interest in being a peer of anything nor competing to be the “best” in this arena. I don’t even know if that is a thing.

As a cancer survivor I don’t need to validate who I am or how I did it, or why I feel compelled to impart my knowledge and what I have learnt to others, if they need, if they ask and if they are looking for answers, as I was.

All I know is that I fought hard.

With everything I had, I fought to live, I fought to regain my life, I fought to eat, breathe, speak and make a living. There is no one coming to save me or you. It is what you experience every day, no past no future just what is here right now.

You learn some things in going through this battle. You just intuitively know things you perhaps had ignored before, but their life importance becomes the swinging lantern, the canary in the coal mine.

When you go through this traumatic experience and someone then makes you feel unworthy, you must dig deeper, again.

Find the peace within. The acceptance, your true north, your true self.

By nature I try to be kind, accepting and listen. I know I have “my ways” but I always try to see the point of view from another’s perspective.

When you mine for gold, the seam is where the seam is.

There’s no real room for diversion.

Find it, mine it.

The skill and talent comes in the finding.

The skill and talent comes with the knowing how to dig.

The skill and talent comes with years of experience and being successful in the past.

The skill and talent comes with having the correct pick, shovel and bag.

The success comes with making a difference and solving the problem to be able to live to mine another seam.

The success comes with using the lantern and listening for the canary.

Survivorship is living your new life, past life, reincarnated self. It becomes your superpower and that scares people.

They don’t know how to deal with it or you.

Being made to feel unworthy is a sign of someone else’s inadequacy not yours.

Remember that.

Eat Well.