I like to think that I don’t consider myself a victim, but that may not always be the case. It’s usually the trivial things that happen where I assume a victim mentality…like someone wasn’t nice to me or someone in traffic cut me off.
But when the big things happen, I never say, “why me?” I don’t know why that’s the case but I just don’t. I’ll say it about someone else though. I’ll ask the question “what did they ever do to deserve…?” That question just never applies to me. It doesn’t mean I assume responsibility for what happened, although I believe my previously questionable lifestyle choices may have contributed to my breast cancer, so for the lifestyle part I will own that.
You can’t always control what happens to you but you can control how you react to it. So when life throws you a curveball, do you take the “why me” approach, or do you pick yourself up and face the issue head on? It’s not easy to do that, especially when whatever happened is completely mind blowing and forever life altering.
You or a loved one may have been given a devastating health diagnosis, you may have hit a financial pothole, maybe a natural disaster took away all your earthly belongings. Any one of these occurrences can knock you off your feet and you can either stay down there or get up and deal with the situation the best you can.
When I found out I had breast cancer, the first order of business was to get this thing out of my body. I then underwent the awful treatment that comes with the territory. During the time I was ill, I had plenty of time to plan my next move.
At first it was all about me. I wanted to get as healthy as I could to ward off, as much as was possible, any recurrence of cancer. Once I discovered the holy grail that made me healthy again, my motives became a little nobler, but still about me in a different way. In order to make sense of what happened to my health, I became a health coach so I could help other people learn what I know and to feel as well as I do.
Fast forward eight years and I find myself in another health crisis. I had a rare type of cardiac event that resulted in a heart attack with no idea why it happened. I wasn’t in the demographic for this type of event…at least that I knew of. So again, I worked on my health and became a WomenHeart Champion Community Educator so I could help educate women about the resources available to them, their risk factors, symptoms and how to self-advocate if they found themselves having a cardiac event.
I don’t do these things because I have some kind of hero complex. I do them because I need to make the situations my body presents me with, make sense. Otherwise, I might become a victim and that prospect really doesn’t appeal to me.
I also don’t think everyone who develops a disease or health condition needs to be as drastic as I was and still am. That’s just my way of coping. You can find your own way of dealing with your unique situation. The important thing is, I hope you do everything you can to figure it out, because everything is figure outable. It must be. There’s a book about it.
As a health coach, I work with women who are facing serious health challenges like heart disease, metabolic syndrome and diabetes or who have been diagnosed as having a precursor to a serious health issue such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol or high blood sugar. I help them make food and lifestyle changes so they can get healthy, live longer and enjoy a fuller, happier, more energetic life. If you would like to have a free consultation about the health challenges you have and the improvements you would like to see in your health, click here to schedule a no strings attached call.
