#179 With Love From Other Survivors

What would you think if I asked you to tell me something every day for a month that you loved about yourself?  

Well, I asked my members to do just that. In this week's podcast, I want to share some of the things they had to say about learning to love themselves unconditionally. 

 I have to say that people were a little nervous at first, and some had to process blocks even to say loving things about themselves. 

But, when you hear what they have to say, I know you feel inspired by what they've discovered. 

As you hear the prompts they were asked to respond to, I hope you also explore those questions for yourself so you can drop more judgments and love yourself unconditionally. 

Read the full transcript below:

Unknown Speaker 0:01
This is Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm a healthy lifestyle coach, a clinical Ayurveda specialist, a personal trainer, and I'm also a breast cancer survivor. In this podcast, we talk about healthy thinking and mindfulness practices, eating well, moving your body for health and longevity. And we'll also hear from other breast cancer survivors who have reengaged with life, and have incredible stories to share. This podcast is your go to resource for getting back to life after breast cancer.

Unknown Speaker 0:38
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. And I am just in the best mood, I gotta tell you, this has been a really good month for me. I mean, I tend to be on the optimistic side of life most of the time anyway. But as I think I said last week in the podcast, I took a spur of the moment trip to Costa Rica. Last week, I met my sister there and spent Wednesday afternoon Thursday, Friday and flew back Saturday morning. So literally just this quick turnaround trip to Costa Rica, which was amazing, and still has me just glowing. I love that. I just love going to places like that getting away getting to, we had these amazing lunches like on the sand, we spent one whole entire day out on a boat, we saw Well, we saw manta rays breaching the ocean. And it was a small boat that my sister and I went on. I think there were a total of 18 people. And there was music and they served us lunch. And they took us way out into the ocean. And we jumped into the water and swam around and just met people from all over the world, from South Africa, from Nova Scotia from Minnesota, from all over the world. And it was so amazing. And for me doing things like that for yourself, whether it's traveling or anything else that you enjoy, is just a profound act of self love. You know, my sister called me she had a much longer trip plan, she was on vacation for a while and said, hey, you know, one of my friends couldn't make it, we have a spare room for a few days. So can you grab a ticket and fly down? And I did have to first combat those thoughts in my mind of should I spend the money, it's only two and a half days, and all that travel and all the things that come up in your brain until I stopped and said, you know, what is my true value here? And now what do I value the most in life? What is my intention in this life? And for me, that intention is supporting my healing, living with as much joy and happiness every day as I possibly can. And I thought, okay, rather than jumping straight to talking yourself out of this trip, why not first say, let me see what it would look like, right? Let me open my mind and leave that space to check it out. And I had an incredible time. I'm so so happy I did. And then add to that this month's lesson, this month's theme that I'm working on in my membership groups, and that we're sharing also in the breast cancer recovery group. And that is unconditional love. And I gotta tell you, it's really interesting because some women have shared with me that they had a block to posting things that they love about themselves. So if you haven't listened to previous podcasts, a reminder is, each day in the month of February, we're posting one thing that you love about yourself or something that you do for yourself out of love. And in the beginning of this challenge, there was a little resistance, a little bit of fear started to come up for people, they were judging themselves or questioning themselves and asking, you know, is this bragging is this immodest? Is it okay. And then also, I heard a lot of this is really hard. I'm having a really hard time finding things I love about myself, which I shared a little bit about that last week in the podcast, and it's so incredibly sad. But overall, there have been amazing, amazing insights, so many posts, about how these women love themselves and things that they are digging up in the value that they're seeing in themselves. And that just makes me so happy because not only are they opening themselves up to appreciating themselves, but while sharing this inside the group, it gives others this inspiration and motivation. And there's no judgment. There's not been a single person who's like how can you love that about yourself? You know, they're so full of yourself know every time we

Unknown Speaker 5:00
See someone posts something and express love for themselves, we'd feel more love for them. And it helps us to drop this boundary, this self loathing this tendency to judge and hold ourselves back and play small in this life, and to take the things we don't like about ourselves and make them bigger. So we get to see this practice of self love. And so many women jumping in and doing it. And so I thought, I have felt so happy and so good and heard from others, how good and how happy they feel, seeing these working on this unconditional self love, that I wanted to share the voices of these other women here with you in this podcast. Now, I'm going to read to you some of the things that were posted. And I'm going to tell you the prompts for these comments, I'm not going to reveal anyone's name so that you don't dishonor or violate the privacy of these groups. But I want you to hear because if you're not a part of this, if you're not seeing this, I want you to hear it for yourself, I want you to get here with these other women, all of them breast cancer survivors have dug deep and found and shared that they've love about themselves. And I want to do that because I want you to understand that it's okay, I want you to give yourself permission to look at the good in yourself. And to also forgive the things you judge yourself for. And let go of all the conditions and blocks you put up to loving yourself. Now, I've also seen in the group, some women post in response to to the statements, some women have posted, hey, I'm not there yet. Or I can't do that yet. Or I don't see that in myself. And that's okay. And so I want to say that right up front that that's okay. Like you are where you are, and you are exactly where you need to be. And you may still be in grieving. And you may still be in working on releasing and letting go. And you may not have that space yet in your mind and in your heart for some of these things. But I want to offer them for you. Because I want you to know that you can borrow a hope from these women, that you can hear these things. And you can know that there's a possibility that you can see this for yourself, that you can think these things for yourself, that you can feel this way for yourself at some point. If you're not ready now it's okay. Don't add more self judgment onto that. Just know, you're right where you're supposed to be. Okay. But listen, take it in. And then maybe ask yourself, Is it possible that I could find something today that I love about myself?

Unknown Speaker 8:11
Is there a possibility that some of these things I've just heard actually do apply to me and my life now? And just let it percolate? Let it hang there for a little bit? And if you love these things, and you think yes, I need this, I'm here Yes, I need this kind of thought and this kind of positivity, not in the sense of just making things up and affirming. But these are real truths that these women have dug deep to find for themselves. And, in doing so, have begun to evolve and have begun to see, I can let go of the things that make me feel like shit I get to choose. And that's the beautiful thing. Right? We get to choose at any point in time.

Unknown Speaker 9:00
Love,

Unknown Speaker 9:02
we get to choose self love, we get to choose to feel love, it is always a choice. So if you are in that place, or in that space, where you're choosing something other than love for yourself, know that this is an option that's there for you

Unknown Speaker 9:24
know that it's okay if you choose that option, that no matter what else is happening. It is not only okay but I asked this question to my members the other day.

Unknown Speaker 9:38
Is there ever a reason not to choose love? Is there a good reason not to choose to feel love for yourself?

Unknown Speaker 9:48
And if so, why? How does it serve you to choose something other than loving yourself?

Unknown Speaker 9:55
And just think about that and know that you get to move on

Unknown Speaker 10:00
When you're ready, that option is always available to you in any moment in this very moment. So I want to start off by reading you some of these amazing insights from some of these incredible women.

Unknown Speaker 10:19
So this prompt was, for the sake of self love, what's one thing you forgive yourself for? And I wanted to start here, because as I just said, when it comes to self judgment, beating ourselves up to comparing ourselves to the past, telling ourselves how we're not good enough, how we're not worthy, how we're not pretty enough, how we're just not enough, we are flippin experts at that. And I wish that wasn't the case. I wish we were experts at forgiving ourselves. Because all that other stuff, it doesn't serve us. It doesn't support our healing. It doesn't support our happiness. And so I want to share with you some insights to this prompt. What for the sake of self love, what's one thing you'll forgive yourself for? Here are some of the comments for the times I yelled at my kids, when they were little, I always regretted it. And we all turn out fine. I forgive myself for all the dumb things I did in my 20s that people I chose to be around and basically just not knowing better, I did survive. I forgive myself for not seeing the sunshine in every day. Because I was so preoccupied with the small stuff. I love this.

Unknown Speaker 11:36
Not standing up for myself, being too hard on myself when I was a child and things were not my fault. Not being able to say no and putting myself last. And I love this because of the not being able to. It's so important to this statement. And this is why I encourage the release the letting things go and the forgiving ourselves. Because if you had the skills and the ability, and the thoughts to be able to make a different choice in your past, you would have but as this woman says not being able to say no and putting myself last she didn't know better at that point. Right? She didn't understand she didn't have the ability to say no, for whatever reason. Maybe she was conditioned that way growing up, maybe it's something cultural, maybe it's something family, maybe something society, maybe it's something her soul just came to this earth with, I don't know. But it's something that's present in a lot of us. As we grow in this life, as we age as we experience life. We don't know what we don't know. And so to hold something against yourself today, for what you didn't know better than 20 years ago, or 30 years ago. Ask yourself how does that makes sense. So think about not being able when you make that same and I wasn't able to say no, I wasn't able to see the circumstances I was in, I wasn't able to think about it differently. That's true. That is true. You were not able to. So you get to forgive yourself for what you didn't even have the capacity to do. When I went through cancer the first time, I didn't have the ability, I didn't have the knowledge, I didn't have the ability to sit in a chemo chair. And to give myself healing energy. I sat in a chemo chair with resistance and anger. When I finished treatment, I didn't have the ability to love my body. Because I didn't know I could I didn't know that I wasn't supposed to drive it and that I wasn't supposed to judge it and be harder on it and push it and push it and push it and push it. I didn't realize at that point, that I could love myself to support my healing, that I could accept myself exactly where I was that I didn't have to judge myself as not good enough. And I didn't have to hold myself up to an idea of what I used to be or someone else's idea of what I was supposed to be. I didn't know that. And so now I can look back, and I can forgive myself for how hard I was on me. Because I didn't know better. And as soon as I did no better. As soon as I started to learn, then I started to live differently. So we get to forgive ourselves for

Unknown Speaker 14:39
not being more present in my earlier life. abusing my body with restrictive dieting,

Unknown Speaker 14:47
using food to make me happy, not loving my body for the wonderful creation it is

Unknown Speaker 14:55
for allowing myself to give up and gain so much weight and problem

Unknown Speaker 15:00
undoing now 50 pounds down from January 21. Just over a year. I mean, amazing, right? Amazing. And this is so beautiful. Because again, where she says allowing myself to give up. I love that. Because again, we always have a choice to show up for ourselves, we always have a choice to treat ourselves with love. And sometimes we want to, we really want to like it's in us and we want to, but we don't know how.

Unknown Speaker 15:31
Right, we don't know how to take the next step. We don't know what to do. And so we just do the next thing that helps us to feel good, even if that feeling is only momentarily. It's only as long as the piece of cheesecake lasts. And that's okay, because that's where we're at. And we don't understand. But to share that comment that she's undoing it now, at some point, she learned differently. And she started to see herself differently. And she started to love herself more. So we get to forgive ourselves for what we didn't know better than that. So beautiful.

Unknown Speaker 16:10
Here's another one. The prompt was, you can hate your body for all the things or love it for healing and carrying you through life. Tell me why you're choosing love. Here's one, I've got to heal and get past this, I want my life back.

Unknown Speaker 16:28
I love that my body has been strong enough to battle twice now.

Unknown Speaker 16:33
Choosing love, it's been two and a half years since my diagnosis and a little over a year out of treatment. Just got my six month mammogram today, nothing but markers and scar tissues to report loving my hair just the way it came back. Loving my breasts though, sure would be nice to find a comfortable bra, loving the fact that I'm well enough to care for my infant grandson, while my daughter goes back to working as a teacher, so many things. I love this one. Remember the prompt, tell me why you're choosing love. Because I can and because it feels better. That is everything right? That is simple and perfect. You can, as I've said, we have the choice, it's in every single moment, we have the choice. And so she says I choose it because I can and it feels better. Right? It feels better. Like there's no way anyone could stand in front of me and say to me, it feels better to hate myself. It feels better to judge myself. It feels better to be angry that I had cancer, that I had to go through surgery, it feels better, it doesn't feel better.

Unknown Speaker 17:47
And so the beautiful thing about it is you don't have to choose that. You get to choose something else that feels better. That not only supports your healing, but supports your ability to enjoy the moment that you're in, in this life today.

Unknown Speaker 18:04
Here's another one today, I love my feet. I love that. Even through the aches and pains of being on an AI my feet still show up for me every day and carry me through life. And I I love that so much. Because sometimes we think that we have to love our body because it's beautiful. You know, it has to look like this. And it has to have a bed and has to be this size and all of that stuff. But what about loving it just because it still functions even if it doesn't function as perfectly as it once did. It still does. She's got feet that carry her through the day. And I'll tell you that's something that I'm always grateful for having been in the position where there was so much cancer in my hip that I was not even allowed to put weight on my hip for three months going through radiation.

Unknown Speaker 18:54
I appreciate walking every single day. I look at my hip. I'm like I love you hip. I love you for getting through radiation. I love you for being through now. 14 Zometa treatments. I love you for carrying the weight of this body. As I walk on the beach almost every single day of my life. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 19:17
Now if I had to look at my hip and say do I love the way my hips look, do I, you know, love what size they are? Do I love what texture the skin is? Or any of those questions? I might not. Right? I may say, you know, not thrilled with it. And I tell you what, I love that my hips work, and I get to walk. Here's another one. Choosing love is so much better to just accept the changes and move on and learn ways to deal with the changes. Because it is what it is. Your body did the best it could and thank God you are a thriver and appreciate every day. This doesn't happen in one day. You have to work on it. And I love that too. So many times we will kind of sit back and ask and I'll see these questions posted and asked all the time.

Unknown Speaker 20:00
When will it change? When will it end? When will I feel better? When will I be happy again, and friend,

Unknown Speaker 20:08
that's up to you. It is your choice. And it takes intention. It takes intention, it would be like the comment that I read a minute ago about the woman that says I've lost 50 pounds, right? That didn't happen. That didn't just happen. That was a process, I promise you that that woman is being intentional, that she is very aware of what she is doing in her life in her day to her body, how she's thinking about it, because that's what it takes to lose 50 pounds. And that's what it takes to maintain happiness in our life and joy in our life. It takes a process of see where we're judging ourselves, where we're comparing ourselves, where we're critical of ourselves, and intentionally deciding to process the pain that comes with that into choose different thoughts. It takes energy, and it takes intention. And it is a process. You know, when we talk about there's that term, toxic positivity. And that means just saying pugs like, really just suppressing your emotions, not allowing yourself to feel what you feel. But telling yourself you have to feel positive, that somehow positive is better than anything. And so no matter what's true, you're just going to be positive. And that's great. And it may work for some people, but really processing those emotions. That's what's going to bring you long term change and long term happiness, knowing it's okay to feel it's okay to feel in fact, it's important to feel it's so important to understand what you're really going through and allow yourself the experience so you can process it. And then have the space to make other choices. So be patient, be kind to yourself, and know that it doesn't happen in one in one day. And you've got to make conscious decisions, be intentional and get the support that you need in order to make the changes that you want. Another comment here is, it isn't worth it to be negative life is much too precious not to enjoy. I love that one. I love them all. I know I keep saying that. I probably say I love it 100 times on this, but it's true. And that's why I said I feel so good. And I know that I've hearing so many positive things about this because these comments are from real people who've been through breast cancer, breast cancer treatment living with breast cancer. And these are real and true statements. Now I really like this one, here's the prompt, share one way you use time to support self love. Because one thing that I come across all the time, one thing I'm definitely guilty of having done throughout my life, and I know so many other people who are, is not making time for yourself, not creating time for yourself, telling yourself, there's no time for what you need. And then feeling frazzled, we've got to have time, we've got to have space, we've got to be able to take care of ourselves. And we have to have that space to process it think about if you're a parent, and you have a child and you can see when the child is too tired or too hungry, or there's been too much going on. And you see that child's behavior change, right? They they become cranky, agitated, anxious, everyone has to have a certain amount of space. And as a parent, it's a lot easier sometimes we just say like, okay, you know what, we're not going to do anything this weekend, because there's been a lot going on. And it's time we just need to let my kid chill for a little bit, right? We're just gonna have some downtime, some chill time. We've got to do that for ourselves, too. We're all just people. We're all just humans, you know, and the emotions we have are the emotions children have and the the experiences children have our experiences we have overwhelm, right, too much going on and needing time to just be you to just be okay, so the prompt again, share one way you use time to support self love. And here's some answers. Every morning I sit with my dog and a cup of coffee and I meditate. These are all of the things I love in the morning and make appointments for myself to go work out, get a massage, etc. Also allow myself to go to bed at a decent time. Instead of trying to keep going cleaning usually and short myself asleep. So, so, so important. I make time for exercise. I'm using time right now to slow down and rest. Also make time for self love appointments like acupuncture. Having in using the gift of time each day is everything and it is so true. And again like the previous posts that I talked about what's important here

Unknown Speaker 25:00
Is that that just doesn't happen, right? Time just doesn't create itself, you've got to make sure that you take the time for yourself that you block the time for yourself that you look at your calendar and you say, not what so many of us say there's no time It can't happen. But what if there was enough time for me? What would have to change? Here's another one, share one healthy boundary you created out of love for yourself. And I really like this one, because so many times we think that boundaries are just these brick walls that block people out. And I have a way of looking at that, where when we build these walls around ourselves, that to me is not a boundary. A boundary is something that is said out of love, out of self love, out of intention, out of love for other people also.

Unknown Speaker 26:01
And when the opposite of that building walls, limiting ourselves, judging people may give you an example. If I have a wall and I say, no one that has blue hair can ever hang around me, I hate people with blue hair.

Unknown Speaker 26:17
That's not a boundary. Right? That's a manual. That's a judgment that doesn't come from a place of love that doesn't feel loving, right? saying something like, I will never hang out with anybody who has tattoos, right? That's not a healthy boundary. That's a judgment.

Unknown Speaker 26:36
And the importance of having a healthy boundary is this is how I preserve my safety. This is a place that comes from love for me. This is how I established the standard of care for myself, and then show other people that this is where the standard is, this is how I expect to be treated. Okay. Here's some answers. No one curses at me. No one all caps, I demand respect. Not inserting myself or my opinions in circuses that aren't mine. Nice, removing yourself from the drama right, having a healthy boundary saying I'm not going into the circus. It's too draining. It's too much. That is a boundary for me, I won't do it beautiful. Here's another one. I love my parents, but I had to start keeping them a bit more distant. Remember, we cannot change other people. And it's not for us to change other people. And sometimes we can decide that people can't be in our lives or can only be in our lives for a limited amount of time. And we can still love them and say I love this person. But some of those behaviors of those people might violate a healthy boundary might take a tremendous amount of energy to manage your mind around. And so coming from a clean place of love to say, I love you. I don't have negative emotions towards you. I'm not going to change you. And I'm not even going to try to change you. So I can only take you for this much. That's okay. Right? That's a healthy place to be. Here's another one. I've learned to guard my joy and not allow negative people into my space for too long. Right? And we all know there's that energy, right? We know that when people are in a negative space, there is an energy and we know that some people are more than in a negative space just are continually coming from negativity. And again, that can be very draining and that energy is something we feel profoundly so that's very nice, healthy boundary. Another one is some people ask me to do something when I don't feel up to it. And I say no and I walk away. I'm not apologizing for my health. Love it, love it. Love it. So many of us need to learn that. So many of us are like Shel Silverstein's giving tree we give and we give and we give until there's nothing left of us to give.

Unknown Speaker 29:10
That does not support our health. So coming from a healthy place and being able to say I will feel up to it. And that's okay. Because you're taking care of yourself. Right? Here's another one. I'm giving myself permission to restaurant tired. As I returned activities, I'm giving myself permission to say no, I'm maintaining quiet time for me and God in the morning. So beautiful.

Unknown Speaker 29:38
Sometimes we have to stop and ask ourselves, Am I honoring my own boundaries? Am I respecting the boundaries for me that I set for others? For example, if I say others can't curse at me, call me names. Do

Unknown Speaker 30:00
As respect me, be rude to me make fun of the way I look. Do I honor that for myself? Or do I run myself ragged? Do I call myself names? Do I criticize myself? Do I tell myself I'm worthless? I'm too fat. I'm too ugly. My hair's too thin. I'm so stupid. I'm so clumsy. Do we honor our own boundaries? Do we use our own mind and our own time to love ourselves more to regenerate and refill and heal ourselves? So that we can be the fullest version of ourselves for those around us? Or do we beat ourselves up? Do we give the gift of our time away until we're so rundown and exhausted, we've got nothing left to give

Unknown Speaker 30:54
something very important to consider.

Unknown Speaker 30:57
And if you haven't participated in this challenge, if you're not in my membership, or you're not in the breast cancer recovery group, I encourage you to go back and listen to these prompts. And answer them for yourself if you weren't doing it as you went through the podcast, because they're really great questions to ask. And there's so so so many more in the group. So I invite you to join me in the life coaching membership that you can find at the breast cancer recovery coach.com, forward slash life coaching. And I want to remind you, I think I said in the last last week's podcast, that I have opened five very, very special spots. They are lifetime memberships. And they come with 12 hours of personal one on one coaching with me, along with all of the benefits of being in the life coaching membership, which is all of the content that I already have in there, the videos, the mini courses, the monthly themes, and also everything else that is coming up lifetime. And that includes workshops and challenges that I do within the group and future mini courses that I add to the group. And also first access to other live events that will be coming up in the future. So I highly recommend you check that out. If that sounds like something appealing to you. And there are other membership options as well. So go to the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash live coaching, and join me I would love to work with you. I also want to thank everyone who participated and is participating in the month of February in this challenge and sharing their insight. You know, we all come together initially in this space where we look for a membership, we look for a group we look for support, because we need it right we're out there feeling alone feeling like something is broken or needs to be fixed and just looking for help to move forward. And then once we get in there and we get a little bit stronger, and we learn to love ourselves a little bit more. It's such a beautiful thing to give back. And the support that I see in my memberships and in the breast cancer recovery group is just fantastic. So I thank you all for sharing your insights and sharing your thoughts. And I know that my sharing them on this podcast is reaching so many other women as well and you are supporting them with your honesty and your transparency. And I appreciate that and I love you for that. So thank you so much. I will talk to you all again next week and until then please be good to yourself and expect other people to be good to you as well. Take care

Unknown Speaker 33:29
courage to the test laid all your doubts

Unknown Speaker 33:36
your mind is clearer than before your heart is full and wanting more your futures

Unknown Speaker 33:47
Give it all you

Unknown Speaker 33:49
know

Unknown Speaker 33:52
you've been waiting on yours

Unknown Speaker 33:58
this is your