Episode Overview

What if one of the hardest parts of healing isn't the diagnosis, the treatment, or even the symptoms?

What if it's the timeline you've created for yourself?

In this deeply personal episode, I share why there was no podcast episode last week, what I've been navigating physically and emotionally over the past few months, and one of the biggest lessons this experience has reminded me of.

Acceptance.

Not giving up.
Not settling.
Not pretending everything is okay.

Acceptance is acknowledging where you are right now instead of fighting against reality and exhausting yourself trying to force life to unfold according to a schedule you created months or years ago.

So many of us carry invisible timelines.

We believe we should be over the fatigue by now.
We should feel like ourselves by now.
We should be further along in healing by now.
We should have reached our goals by now.

But who decided that?

In this episode, we explore:

• Why acceptance is different from resignation
• The emotional toll of resisting reality
• How self-imposed timelines create unnecessary suffering
• What psychology teaches us about the gap between who we are and who we think we should be
• The connection between acceptance and emotional well-being
• Why healing is rarely linear
• How to hold frustration and peace at the same time
• Finding meaning during difficult seasons
• Giving yourself permission to be exactly where you are

This episode is a reminder that healing doesn't happen on a schedule.

And sometimes the lesson isn't about getting where you planned to go.

Sometimes it's about learning to trust where you are.

Resources Mentioned:

Work with Laura:
https://www.thebreastcancerrecoverycoach.com/health 

Download for iPhone: 

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kajabi/id1485646310

Download for Android: 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kajabi.kajabiapp&hl=en_US

Let’s Connect!
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Read the full transcript:

0:00
You're listening to Better Than Before Breast Cancer with the Breast Cancer Recovery Coach. I'm your host, Laura Lum Erm. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills on the insides and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis. If you're looking for a way to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started. Hey friends, you're listening to episode 464 of Better Than Before Breast Cancer. I am your host, Laura Lum, and I got a lot to talk about with you today, but I have a question to ask you first. If you are listening to this podcast, if you're a regular listener, if you're watching this on YouTube, and you get something out of the podcast and you enjoy it, please take the time to like and or subscribe wherever you listen or watch, because it's really quite amazing how the high percentage of people who watch or listen to the podcast, but don't subscribe and follow, and it really does make a big difference. So, when it comes to getting exposure and helping to find other women who need this information, who had had a breast cancer diagnosis, then liking and following really makes a big difference, if you could take the time to do that, I would really, really appreciate it. So, if you are on my email list, then, and if you listen to podcasts regularly, then you know that last week there was no show, and I sent out an email explaining why, and it's because a lot that I have been going through recently with a tremendous amount of pain and just dealing with health issues, and I didn't have the energy, I didn't have the focus, I didn't have the frame of mind to do a podcast, and then I came this week, and I had already had a couple of podcasts that I had outlined for a little nutrition series, a little nutrition mini series, and as I went to record that, I thought this feels weird. It feels weird for me to have gone a week without doing a show to have sent out an email sharing with all of you what was going on with me, and honestly receiving a tremendous amount of support, which I'm so grateful for thank you so much to those of you who responded to that email, who sent me good thoughts and prayers and love. I really appreciate it, and I really believe that makes a difference. But as I went to record the podcast I had planned, I thought, this doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel right to go from that to just jump right into something on nutrition without talking a little bit more and acknowledging what just happened, and you know, here's what came to mind. Also, is I thought, I think we do a little too much of that, right? I think that we go through something, and I got to tell you that last two and a half months has probably been the most challenging two and a half months since my stage four diagnosis. It was really, really rough on me physically, which then makes it rough emotionally and mentally, very, very draining. And I think too often we go through things like that, and then we just move on, right. We don't acknowledge and really just hold space for that, and go, "Who, dang it, that was a lot for me. That was a lot. And, honestly, I've got a little, little tiny bit of PTSD. I'm so nervous about the way that I move or what I do, because I'm like, "Please don't come back, because right now I'm just doing great, great, great. The pain is very, very controlled, and I'm so happy, right? I'm getting good sleep, I'm feeling so much better, and so I'm just very tentative with that fear of is it going to come back or not, right? So again, something I have to work through, but what was interesting is that I was talking to one of my clients yesterday, we had a call, and she has stage four metastatic disease, and just like anybody else who's going through treatment, it's not linear, right? We're always learning more about ourselves, we're always learning more about our body, and she's really at a phase where she's tuning into her intuition, trying much harder to listen to what her body needs and what she needs versus what everybody outside is telling her to do, and so she says to me, you know, Laura, in the whole naturopathic, homeopathic, right, holistic approach to wellness, they often say that pain is a messenger and pain is trying to tell you something, so do you think that after everything you went through that there's some kind of a metaphysical lesson in what you've been going through, or what that pain was telling you? And jokingly, I said yes, the pain was telling me to take the damn Vicodin, because you know resistant, we could be to. Taking pain medication, it was like surrender, let it go, take the pain meds, but in all seriousness, when she asked me that question, I stopped for just a second, I thought about it, and I said, yeah, I really truly believe that if we can find a lesson in everything, mine was everything happens exactly the way it's supposed to, and what made me feel like that and think like that is because I had blocked off a lot of time for the month of May since the beginning of the year, I've been trying to get some behind the scenes projects done in my website to make it easier, less confusing, easier for people to access, and there's some other things that are just going to be so much better for everybody when I get them done on the back end, and so I realized I was just spinning my wheels, and I thought the only way I'm going to get this done is if I block off time, and I don't want to block off my time, because I like to spend time in front of clients and speaking with them, so I did. I think I talked about this. I blocked off some time in May, and said, "I'm putting my nose to the grindstone. I'm getting this behind the scenes work done. And then I couldn't, right? I couldn't get it done, and I had cleared the calendar specifically for that work, and yet it wasn't happening, so what I looked at, the way I looked at things, at first I was frustrated, right? I was really frustrated, and on top of what I wanted to get done, I had just finished a mastermind that I made a significant investment in, and it was for speaking from stages, and I was very, very excited to get started, but I knew that I could not reach out to people in the condition I was in, right, and pitch what I speak about, and yet on social media I was watching some of the other people that had been in that mastermind with me, and they were getting up on stages, and they were talking, and I was very, very happy for them, but at the same time thinking, I want to be doing that, right? I want to be doing that, and I can't, because not only was I not seeing people, but sometimes I was just laying on the floor, hard surface, one position, not moving, because that was the only place I could find that I wouldn't be in pain, but when I stopped to think about it, when my client asked me that question, I said, you know, it was a blessing in disguise that I had blocked off that time, it wasn't productive in the way that I wanted it to be, but I needed it for healing, I needed it not only to support myself but to take the medicine to help with me, and then I didn't have the focus to be in front of people. The energy that I would have shown up with is not the energy that I want to give to people who come to work with me. So it was really just a great thing that I had that much time off, because my body needed me to take time off, and I had a lot of appointments and stuff, trying to figure out what was going on, so when I say that everything happens exactly when it's supposed to be, that doesn't mean it's easy, like at first I had to really hold space for the frustration that I was feeling, and I do think that's important, just like I do think talking about this episode is important to have come through something that was challenging and to not just brush it off as if it didn't happen to hold space for it to talk through to process it and then just that's how I release it right acknowledging it and then releasing it and then deciding to move forward so once I was able to just really drop the resistance. Right, see that I'm resisting this. This is how I'm feeling. This is what's happening with me. I don't want to be feeling like this. I don't want this to be happening to me. That's the resistance. And if I stayed in that space and held on to that resistance, I would be creating even more frustration for myself, even more anger, even more resentment for myself, but acknowledging that it's not where I wanted to be, and then deciding that it's where I need to be, for whatever reason, it's just where I am, right? Surrendering to the fact this is where I am, and thinking of where I want to be is not going to help me. I could spend the same two hours laying on the floor, either frustrated that I'm not doing what I want to do, or saying, 'Thank God that I have these two hours to lay here on this floor and help my body not be in pain. Right? What I think about when I say that is the pressure that we put on ourselves over some imaginary deadline over where we think we should be in our life, where we should be in our healing, where we should be financially, where we should be in relationships, in weight, in energy, in careers. You know, we decided at one point. This is where I'm going to be. Right, I decided the beginning of the year by this time in the year. This is where I'm going to be. This is where my business is going to be. This is what I'm going to be doing. So it's a timeline that I made up, and we make them up for ourselves all the time. And then when we don't get there by the date that we picked, we treat ourselves like we failed, like we failed something that was real, like there was an objective measurement somewhere that said you're supposed to be over this by now, you're supposed to be over the fatigue, over the pain, you're supposed to have your hormones imbalance by now, you're supposed to feel like yourself again by now, but Who decided that? Us, you, me, we did. That's it. There is no external truth to it. There is no objective law out there that said this is where you're supposed to be. And when we do that, when we hold ourselves accountable, instead of looking and saying, well, I had a different plan, but that's not what worked out, so let me just see where I am now. Let me re-evaluate. Maybe I move the marker a little bit, you know. Here's an interesting thing about that. There is a researcher back in the 1980s his name was E. Torrey Higgins, and his work is still really a foundation for what a lot of psychologists, or for the way that a lot of psychologists understand self judgment, and you know, dropping self judgment is a big part of what I advocate for. Stepping into curiosity alleviates self judgment. When we're curious, we can't be in judgment. The two cannot happen at the same time, and so what this researcher found was that the gap between who we actually are and who we think we should be is one of the main sources of emotional distress, because when there's a gap between our actual self and our ideal self, we feel sadness, disappointment, dissatisfaction, and it isn't because anything is objectively wrong, but it's because we're constantly measuring ourselves against a version of us that lived only in our mind, so the pain we're experiencing, the emotional pain, it's not coming from where we are, it's coming from where we said we should be, and comparing ourselves to that, and then on the other side of this, there's also a body of research on acceptance in chronic illness, and I would say unrelenting pain can be equal to a chronic illness, right, and it backs up what a lot of us in the integrative space already know that people who move towards acceptance of their condition report greater psychological well-being and reduced stress, even if their illness progresses. So, studies consistently show that quality of life is positively correlated with acceptance of disease, and I'm just going to say of situations, whether it's a disease, whether it's a chronic pain situation, it's positively correlated with acceptance. It's that accepting what's happening helps us human beings come to terms with the changes, and then stay hopeful about moving forward. But if we're in resistance, we're just fighting, fighting, fighting the whole time, whereas we can move into acceptance, which is not giving up, which is not resignation. It's not saying this is fine, no problem, I'm not frustrated, that's all BS. Resistance is the refusal to acknowledge what is actually happening, and that is what keeps us stuck in fear and frustration, acceptance is letting it be what it is, so you can actually respond to it instead of fight with it, right? That fight energy is so exhausting and so hard on our body, and we just.. it takes so much energy out of us, so when it comes to supporting ourselves, two things can be true at the same time. I can be frustrated that I'm not where I plan to be, but I can also choose to trust that slowing down is happening for a reason that maybe I can't see yet, right? And I can surrender to that trust, so I don't think that we have to necessarily process and be over, right. We don't have to be over everything we felt, over the anger, over the frustration. There might be moments of that, and so I don't think we have to let everything go before we can move into acceptance. I think we can decide to pull ourselves out, you know, we're going to feel frustration, we're going to feel sadness, we're going to feel grief if we're going through a difficult time, and we can allow ourselves to feel that and say, okay, now enough, I need to move on today, and then we can take action towards moving forward in the way that we want to move forward, so I do believe. That we can hold both. I think we can be in pain and at peace at the same time. I think you can be behind on something you planned for, but right on time for something else that's real. And if we're willing to do that, if we're willing to be present with that, I think it's so much easier on us emotionally because being in pain, being sick, being in treatment, being in a bad place in your life, a rough spot, a dark spot, that's exhausting enough, that takes enough energy from you, and believe me, it takes energy that if we were to add to it with our own mental struggle and refusal and resistance, it's just exacerbates that exhaustion. So I'm going to offer you this, if you're listening and you feel like there's somewhere in your life where you're punishing yourself for not being where you said you would be in your healing, in your weight loss, in your energy, in your career, in your finances, anywhere, and want you to ask yourself one question. Who decided you were supposed to be there by now? And if it was you, what else could you decide to think? How could you see this situation differently? How could you give yourself more space, a little forgiveness, a little grace, how can we move the needle so that it works for where you actually are now in your life, instead of beating yourself up for where you aren't. And then the next time you catch yourself comparing where you are to where you think you should be, just see if you can do something different, let yourself be frustrated or disappointed or sad, and process it, but then ask, what if I am exactly where I'm supposed to be, not because this is easy, but because this moment, the one I'm actually in, has something to offer me that the moment I planned didn't. All right, friends. Thank you again for all of your kindness, for all of your understanding, for all of your good thoughts. I appreciate you so much. And I'll be back next week with our mini series on a really special part of nutrition that I love so much. And until then, please be good to yourselves and expect others to be good to you as well. Take care,

Speaker 2 17:17
you've put your courage to the test, laid all your doubts to rest. Your mind is clearer than before. Your heart is full and wanting more. Your future's at the door. Give it all you got. No hesitating. hesitating, you've been waiting all your life. This is your moment. This is your moment time. This is your moment. Shine.