I Keep on Rising

The name of my business, RISE, is a reflection of a mantra I heard during a meditation

session early in my diagnosis. Somewhere in the fuzzy days between the discovery of a malignant tumor in my rectum to my first rounds of CT and MRI imaging, I sat down with a meditation app to help keep my mind from running into a wild abyss.

I don't remember many details from those days, but I do remember being struck by four simple words the narrator spoke during that one meditation session: face everything and rise. Instead of being consumed by FEAR, we can choose to Face Everything And Rise.

A cancer diagnosis offers an overwhelming abundance of emotions, most of them being brand new, hard to identify, and they reshape everything you ever thought to be true about who you are and your place in the world. I have never experienced the type of fear I experienced nearly every day of the 365 days it took for me to be declared cancer-free. But when I felt the fear loom at the seams of where my soul integrates with my physical body, I reminded myself of those four words, face everything and rise. I would feel immediate comfort knowing I could control how I responded to what was to come my way.

I used to think that the label survivor was only given once someone had completed a harrowing experience and lived to tell the tale. My cancer diagnosis changed that. I believe that survivorship begins on day one of a cancer diagnosis. We immediately become survivors when we are living and moving beyond the unchosen circumstance that is cancer. And surviving is rising.

Rising can look and feel different every day. For me, I have found it easier to rise from a sturdy base built on simple, sustainable, affordable and achievable rituals, habits, and ethos. And some of them have been temporary and some are enduring.

I will soon be celebrating three years cancer-free. And I still RISE everyday, because survivorship is forever. A part of my personal ethos is to share my story so that it may empower others, to create community, to offer comfort, and to support healing.

Ready to join the RISE community? Make sure to sign up for the monthly newsletter here to learn how you can support your own survivorship.