by Fiona McGovern
Last week as I sat in the over-full waiting room for my oncology appointment, a woman passed me by handing out questionnaires on the chemotherapy and cancer services in our local health board area. I asked if I could have one and she apologised as she had not recognised me as a cancer patient. She explained that the number of cancer patients was predicted to rise by 9% in the next few years and the services could not cope as they are at present, so the questionnaire was to establish where their resources should be spent in order to best cope.
I pondered on how best to answer the questions. I felt supported by the present system but knew too well that some basic questions were not being asked: why do so many women have breast cancer? How are women living that creates such an illness in their bodies? How can we educate and support our young girls to be, so that breast cancer is not inevitable for them?
I looked around and observed my fellow patients: there were women of all sizes, from all backgrounds, most with children, some like me with none. There were those who dressed elegantly, some sexily, some plainly, some were chatty, others kept themselves to themselves.
What then linked us?
When I have chatted to them many have questioned why it is happening and most will then find an answer in the environmental pollution around here, the nuclear fallout from Chernobyl. None buy the genetic explanation, many have experienced bereavement or family fallouts, a few will say as women we are under too much stress to be perfect at all things…. as yet I have not met one who will take responsibility for the life and choices they have made to date, although they all nod when I say I know it was the choices I made and how I pushed myself.
I took a deeper look at the eyes of the women and I saw fear, anxiousness, a bewilderment, a shutting down, a giving up; they said “let’s just get this over with and return to how we were.”
What links us – we are all women.
But do we know what being a true woman means?
I know that before the chemotherapy and the esoteric healing I had no idea what being a woman truly meant. I looked outside for an answer on how to be a woman. With the healing I have found that me being a woman comes from inside, from reconnecting to the beauty within and rejoicing in that radiance.
How different the ward would feel if all the patients and staff knew that the healing lay in this reconnection.
So is the marriage of Western Medicine with Esoteric Medicine the way the health services can address the ever-rising numbers of women with breast cancer? I feel it is the only way.
It has empowered me to be me and that is why when you look into my eyes you see a sparkle and a playfulness, a stillness and light, a commitment to life and love, a woman who is reconnecting to being a woman, the woman she was born to be.
Medicine and Serge Benhayon 
Fiona, I agree with you that from very young both male and females are molded to look outside of themselves for acceptance and recognition and this is I feel where we start the divergence of who we truly are to become something we are not so that we fit into mainstream society.
Until we reconnect back to our core essence we have no idea just how beautiful it feels to live in our bodies, that there is a warmth and settlement so that there is very little nervous tension or anxiousness in our bodies, it is so worth healing any impediment that gets in the way of these feelings so we can again, as you say, rejoice in our natural radiance.
I couldn’t agree with you more that the ‘healing…comes from inside from reconnecting to the beauty’ and ‘that the healing lay in this reconnection’. When we connect to this reconnection, then many other things happen, we become more than what we appear to be. We become someone who is here for some others, in other words everybody.
In that asking – what it is to be something that we already are – we can easily set ourselves up to disempower ourselves by seeking an answer outside us. When we do know we are already that – regardless of whether we live it, or to what extent etc., and all it takes is to reconnect and surrender to what is actually most natural to us, it completely voids our assumed position of not knowing and feeling lost.
Fumiyo, this is very common, we seek answers outside ourselves and yet deep down inside of us, we all have the answers if we just allowed, and trusted ourselves.
This is a great question posed by Fiona, and a great reminder that cancer is non discriminatory and that we probably all know someone who has been affected by cancer, for every one diagnosis there will be many others that are also affected by that diagnosis.
This is true Sally I have a friend who has been supporting her family member through the diagnosis of Breast Cancer and all the treatments thereafter and has actually made her ill in the process. She has admitted she is worn out and cannot cope emotionally anymore and the stress that she is feeling has resulted in an illness that she is now dealing with herself.
Cancer is definitely on the increase and what was once occasionally talked about it is now an everyday occurrence, and a great reminder of how important it is to self-care and to honour ourselves as women without any compromise.
It’s a powerful image of women of all different shapes and sizes sat in a waiting room waiting to be treated for breast cancer, to me it shows that no one is exempt and that our day to day choices are so incredibly precious.
Great and wise questions asked Fiona. Noticing that this was written over 5 years ago and today the rate of women falling ill with breast cancer in still increasing. The answers are available for us to understand how not only it is that we become ill but also how we can heal ourselves in the true sense of the word, and not just a band aide or a diminishing of the symptoms yet leaving the root cause of illness still active. Esoteric Medicine offers a way that the answers as to why we fall ill can be explored and understood, one that is complementary to Western Medicine, which together have a profound impact in arresting illness and offering the opportunity to truly and deeply heal the body and being from within.
We could say that our way of living leads to cancer, but before that our way of living disconnects us from the love and beauty we innately are within. We have no idea how precious we are nor the way we could lovingly care for and nurture ourselves everyday.
This is so beautiful to feel – a radiance, warmth and total embrace of one’s self: the choice to live like this is available to us all, at any time, and embracing and enjoying the fact that nothing is of greater value.
‘…although they all nod when I say I know it was the choices I made and how I pushed myself.’ Maybe we could reflect on the possibility of this common link that seems to be between women with this condition and, apart from the medical attention they receive, take this into consideration as a way to prevent and support the treatment of it. What you show here Fiona is that invaluable as it offers another way to approach this condition and the possibility of making other choices to not arrive to that point.
These are such important questions that you have asked here. I especially admire the one about how we should perhaps begin to consider how to educate our young girls so they may grow up not with breast cancer as an inevitable condition.
I love your inquisition here… could there be more that links us? If 50 women have breast cancer then what if that’s 50 women who have denied what it means to be a woman, all we would need is for one woman to start claiming back her sweetness, start deeply nurturing for the other 49 women to be inspired to also make that same move back to themselves.
Feeling supported – I am beginning to wonder if this entirely depends on the system that provides the support. The fact that you did not even look like a cancer patient sitting amongst other patients at hospital gives much away already. There is a part we have to accept as our own responsibility and contribute to our own healing.
On seeing Fiona for the first time, I was totally drawn to connect with this sparkling, bright eyed, joyful woman before me. I only learnt she had cancer after we had been speaking for a while.
What a joy to meet a woman so deeply living from her inner radiance.
“With the healing I have found that me being a woman comes from inside, from reconnecting to the beauty within and rejoicing in that radiance”.
There are some who slam Universal Medicine by saying it blames people for being sick which would be the natural response from those who want to deny (mostly to themselves) the responsibility and the power we have for and over our own health and wellbeing. UM does not blame people for being sick in any way, in fact it is full of love and understanding, but it does encourage and support discovering the fact that what we choose, how we live, the quality in which we are with ourselves and others is a key ingredient to our well being. This is not blaming, it is empowering, as you so beautifully show by your own livingness with this illness Fiona.
Fiona reflects a connection here of a continued commitment to life, full of purpose to show that illness is not there for us to give into, but to surrender to the healing that is offered.
It is a great topic of discussion to consider how young girls are being raised and if they are being given the opportunity to know and experience that responsibility for oneself goes way beyond being able to function in life and how simply life can include self-nurturing and quality that need not ever be compromised and yet there can still be fulfilling careers, relationships and the kind of joy that goes beyond momentary glimpses of satisfaction.
Coming back to this beautiful blog I can feel how if we were open to connecting to each other as women and supporting each other to explore what it truly means to be a woman then the numbers of women filling the oncology waiting rooms would start to decrease as we not only took more responsibility for ourselves but also let go of the idealised pictures of how we should be in the world.
‘a woman reconnecting to being a woman, the woman she was born to be’ … and how great is it to read that and know that this is possible no matter what, that whatever life presents us with we can choose to be us in it and consider how we live and what can truly support us to just be ourselves.
“How are women living that creates such an illness in their bodies? ” This question is never addressed in the western medical model. It used to be all put down to your genes, but now there is more concentration on alcohol and food consumption – gestures towards lifestyle being implicated. But what if there was something much deeper – the way we regard and nurture ourselves – or not? Do we as women allow ourselves to be naturally who we truly are – and were as young ones?
It is very normal to hear women describe their roles as mother, wife and whatever job they happen to be in, without ever mentioning themselves as a woman. This omission is the heart of the problem. If we don’t even acknowledge and relate to our core being as women how can we connect to it? This self-forgetfulness feeds conditions and symptoms that may lead to cancers.
It’s quite tragic that a woman can go her whole life without truly knowing who she is as a woman, and by that I mean her amazing qualities, her tenderness, her delicateness, her ability to nurture. I think these moments like when we are diagnosed with breast cancer, or even just have a cold are great opportunities to rediscover the amazing things about ourselves that we may be missing out on.
‘ With the healing I have found that me being a woman comes from inside, from reconnecting to the beauty within and rejoicing in that radiance.’ I love this Fiona, when women reconnect to their Sacredness their beauty and wisdom has a powerful ripple affect that is felt far and wide.
What is being a true or real woman though? Let’s nut it out more now, together, Fiona has kick started the conversation with this stunning blog, I think it only fair to flesh it out, for God knows, if we had nailed this, the hospitals would not be as overwhelmed with this disease as they are. For me, being the true woman is bringing more awareness to the way I move, even if I am rushing or hard, just watching myself so at least I can feel it and then decide from there what I want, it is knowing I am enough, even if I get nothing done that day, it’s allowing my words to match my beauty, it is letting go of my muscles when I feel them tighten or harden. It’s remembering it’s okay to laugh and that I am not responsible for everyone else, all the time. It is remembering I am sexy without trying, it is knowing that I am nurturing by my quality and that I am love.
Fiona brings up a great subject here, personally for me I feel I made equality with men a big part of me, and now I understand that equality will only come through embracing myself fully as the woman I am first, and from there moving in a way that honours myself and everyone else too.
It is these little encounters that make all the difference, somebody very experienced not recognising that we are very ill for example that show just how different life can be.
“But do we know what being a true woman means?” No, I don’t feel we do, I know I didn’t before Esoteric Medicine gave me the insight and understanding that we need to live as a woman from our inner heart and not from the ideals of how we think we should be. Natalie Benhayon has been a rock solid example of what it means to be a woman, not from any ideals but from her own understanding of what it feels like in her body and what feels true for her. She is for me a constant inspiration and marker for me to live by as a woman.
I certainly did not know what being a true woman meant. If being a woman in this world is giving us cancer, we certainly need to look at the way we are being a woman.
Yes, that is what is happening to a third of all women and half of all men and we need to look.
“a woman who is reconnecting to being a woman, the woman she was born to be” everything is being said with this line, as to me it states clearly that we already are everything we need or want, we only have to let all our ideals and beliefs of how life should be go and return to the way we were when born.
To return to the truth of our essence and fully embrace the innermost beauty, stillness and sacredness of the true women waiting patiently within us all equally so, is the greatest gift we can bring to ourselves and thus serve the all, by bring this quality to the world in full.
“With the healing I have found that me being a woman comes from inside, from reconnecting to the beauty within and rejoicing in that radiance”.
What is remarkable about what is shared here is so few are indeed asking the questions, truly asking the questions of what is going on here, with so many women having breast cancer as but one example here. Many of us just want to battle on when we are faced with any illness or accident, but the truth is that we are offered a stop in these moments in a very clear and definitive way, and the question then becomes what do we do with it? Do we dig deep and look at how we live and make changes to more clearly support us or do we battle on, determined to get it over with so we can get back to how we were? Do we live the depth of the women we are, and do we see that each thing offered to us might in fact be allowing us to find our way to that, for some it will be cancer, for others something else. Are we willing to look underneath? Are we willing to change?
That the number of cancer patients in your area was predicted to rise by 9% in the next few years Fiona is alarming. And though it is very practical to ask all of the patients who are being cared for within the system at that present time to do a survey, I cannot but wonder if that survey was also considering the root cause of why so many people are getting cancer in the first place.
Magic, there is no judgment and pure love, thank you. The subject of what it means to be a woman truly is often avoided or over looked.
It is so gorgeous to read how esoteric medicine has empowered you to be yourself and find the woman within so that you can rejoice in the radiance of that. This is a rarity and yet would be transformational globally should others know of the healing that lay in the reconnection your have found from this. Currently we are suffering in the fall out of disconnection and the ill health world wide is a stark reflection of this.
True and deep healing comes from within and our willingness to be honest and take responsibility first and foremost and then conventional medicine can do what it does so well with much more efficacy and genuine support from the patient. The two work hand in hand then.
Allowing space in my body for the qualities of tenderness and delicateness, of purity and innocence, of sweetness and playfullness of sexiness and grace, of strength and power, all these and more , allowing them to surface from within rather than adopting their ways as we have been taught or told they should be. A new way of being that can start even way past menopause. A way of being that can be initiated whatever our state of health, even with a terminal illness. The marriage of Western Medicine and Esoteric Medicine supports this return to living and being a true woman in the world.
In our search for what is the cause, what is responsible, what is to blame for the illness and dis-ease that we are experiencing within ourselves and in our bodies, we so often negate the possibility that we are the ones responsible for every part of the way our lives are lived. In being open to this possibility we begin to understand that our every choice shapes the quality in which our lives are lived, and that this is in essence a reflection of the degree of love within us that we are choosing to surrender to or be in union with.
I agree whole -heartedly with what you have shared here Carola with the way in which we negate how it is our choices that have lead to illness and disease in the first place. What I find interesting about this is how when people find out they have cancer they typically feel extremely helpless and ask “why me???” , as well as feeling powerless or giving up their power to the medical field completely. But the irony in this is that they are completely power-FULL all along and if they simply accepted that it was their lifestyle choices that got them there, they can make different choices to heal themselves. Quite empowering, indeed.
I’ve read many testimonials in regards to Cancer and the support Esoteric Healing can bring to those going through cancer treatments (or any other medical conditions) and there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that shows that these two can and do work beautifully together. The health systems don’t have all the answers, otherwise wouldn’t illness rates be dropping not rising? In my own experience and in those around me health rates are increasing and this wasn’t the case until Esoteric Medicine came into their lives.
This is quite spot on. The health industry poses some questions regarding the rise of cancer, but not others. And, the ones that do not ask, are those that hold the key on the matter. The focus on management is only the consequence of not focusing enough on the cause and of not being open to explanations that are not within the current medical paradigm.
There is so much that Western medicine can do and is doing for the rising numbers of women who present with breast cancer and most people would acknowledge this but how many of us have been fortunate enough to also allow Esoteric Medicine to be the other half of the healing marriage? I know how powerful this combination can be and it really does seem the only way we are gong to see a big shift in healing diseases of any kind.
Health services are already overwhelmed with the numbers presenting with breast cancer and other diseases where lifestyle choices are a causal factor. Until we are willing to address the part that we have played in becoming a disease statistic the numbers will continue to grow and our health services will be bankrupted. Fiona was so inspiring in how she approached her life through all her treatment and her legacy lives on in her writings and the understandings she shared about her journey with a lightness of touch and her ever present joy for life.
There are some great questions about and some great realisation around cancers. Just as a note I had to look up what oncology meant, I’d heard it plenty of times but never taken the time to actually acknowledge what it meant. Anyway we make some great discussions around cancers, great research and the list goes on. But with respect if we are still rising then we need to look bigger and wider. Something we are all doing to ourselves, because we are all on this planet living together is literally killing us off. I know if there was a particular part of the world people visited that killed them in the proportions cancer did we would not visit this area at all and it would be off limits to everyone and besides the keep out signs we would be actively stopping people to go there. Yet we have smoking for instance and it becomes ‘their’ choice which is true in part but why do we just stand by? I am not saying we need to tackle every person that tries to smoke but what else can we do to support them. Can we change them or do we need to make changes ourselves in such a consistent way that no one on the planet would ever dream of hurting themselves or another. This is the link, if as a world we are rising illness and disease at these rates then not only are we all responsible but we need to action ‘our’ part now. Not only to stop the rise but to truly support people.
What a joy it was to meet Fiona McGovern a few years back – there was a quality in her eyes that was irresistible and drew me from across a room to see and speak with her. A beautiful woman living from her truth.
“It has empowered me to be me and that is why when you look into my eyes you see a sparkle and a playfulness, a stillness and light, a commitment to life and love, a woman who is reconnecting to being a woman, the woman she was born to be”.
“let’s just get this over with and return to how we were.” Thank you. I was at a meeting yesterday where there was very much a ‘let’s get this over with’ attitude and now I am wondering where that came from. Is there a desire to move on or to go back to where we were? It certainly feels like a kind of giving up, as if we are tired and don’t want to really engage fully with the situation but sweep whatever is getting in the way under the carpet rather than acknowledging what is getting in the way and sweeping it clean.
Fiona presents a great point ‘as yet I have not met one who will take responsibility for the life and choices they have made to date, although they all nod when I say I know it was the choices I made and how I pushed myself.’ When we look at illness and disease more deeply especially cancer, if we are truly honest with ourselves we know that the choices we make are not coincidental to our health. An opportunity for us all to feel into the choices we make and take responsibility for ourselves.
What a beautiful piece of writing Fiona.
What a woman can be ‘a sparkle and a playfulness, a stillness and light, a commitment to life and love, a woman who is reconnecting to being a woman, the woman she was born to be.’ and to know that it’s always there ready and waiting. Not knowing how to truly live as women is deeply affecting all of us, yet within us is the deep knowing of what this is.