You have cancer. This is the call I received 10 years ago. I’ll never forget standing in my bathroom as the phone rang. I knew from the moment I heard my friends voice the news wasn’t good. I sat down on the edge of the bathtub, paralyzed with fear, tears rolling down my cheeks, playing out every possible scenario in my mind, when suddenly I was jolted back to reality by the laughter, and most likely the fighting of my four young children just outside the door.

Even if you’ve not received this call, you’ve received other bad news, horrible news, and for some, devastating news. We all have experienced some form of bad news. No one is immune to it. Maybe it was about your marriage, your child, your business, your health. Maybe it came from a friend, a parent or a stranger. It’s not the news or the event that matters as much as what you do because of it.

Looking at me now you would never believe that 10 years ago sitting in that bathroom not knowing what was ahead, but knowing I would have to fight to live, I selfishly felt an incredible amount of relief and freedom in those words.

Now Who’s Relieved About Getting A Life THreatening Diagnosis? Yes, That Was Me!

You see I was a survivor before cancer. We all are. We go about our daily lives, going through the motions, doing what we think is expected or what we want the world to see, just existing.

That day in the bathroom, for the first time ever, as I stood looking in the mirror, I saw the reflection of an unhappy, worn out, over-stresed, overcommitted, imperfect, wife, mother, friend, daughter, sister, business owner and STRANGER. I had moved so far from who I was, I didn’t recognize the person staring back at me. And it was in this moment that I made the decision to start living.

Every single one of us will have to deal with being blindsided by bad news at some point. SOme of these things will be traumatizing, some overwhelming, and some just annoying, but you don’t have to be devastated by any of them.

You have a choice.
A choice to give up or wallow in your fear and pain.
A choice to live with it or move thru it and forward
A choice to inspire others with your life, not in spite of what has happened, but because of it.
I’m not going to lie, this hasn’t been easy. But I am not a victim, and I refuse to use cancer as my crutch. Instead I choose to see cancer as the event that has allowed me to ditch all the rules and expectations and opened my eyes to the gift of true-self, what it means to live, and ignited the passion within to impact the lives of those I meet.

Yes, I survived cancer, but I am standing here today because I made the choice to say yes to myself, and learned to know and love that stranger in the mirror.

(under your seats is a gift. Before you open it, I want you to think about that one thing you are dealing with right now, or that one event in your life that has been holding you hostage. That thing that has up until this point has stolen your days and not allowed you to move forward.

Life is about choices. Some of the biggest choices we will ever make will be in how we handle or don’t handle the “cancers” that show up unexpectedly in our lives.

(go ahead and open the box and take out what’s inside) (I want them to look in the mirror and connect with themselves here….any ideas on what to say?)

What will you choose?

It starts and ends with you!