August is like
the Sunday of summer.
Never blame another person
for your personal choices—you are still
the one who has to live out the
consequences of your choices.
—Caroline Myss
Choice: An act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities.
Disease is an individual journey and the treatment options are a personal choice. Take cancer, for example. There are a myriad of cancer treatments available using both Eastern and Western modalities. Cancer is alarmingly prevalent in the United States and is an equal opportunity destroyer of lives. We all know people struggling with it, many who have beaten it, and still more who lost their lives to it. My sister, Diana, died from head and neck cancer after years of treatment that combined chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. Four months after her death, my husband, Kevin, was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a form of bile duct cancer. He was treated with a similar approach as Diana and also had a liver transplant. Ten years later, he is in complete remission.
When my husband was first diagnosed, we looked for something or someone to blame. People we came in contact with gave us plenty of choices: the government, big pharmaceutical companies, major corporations, his ancestors. But can it be that simple? Can all the bad things in our life, including cancer, really be someone else’s fault?
As Americans, I believe perhaps we have some culpability. We live extremely stress-burdened lives as we chase the American Dream to an unattainable level. We work ourselves to the bone, which allows us to afford items such as fancy cars, big houses, boats, and often other extravagant things that we really don’t need. We work so hard and so much. How about our diet? Our stressful lives have us running at such a frantic pace that we say there is no time to cook a healthy meal, yet, in the end we will blame McDonald’s Corporation for the rise of diabetes? Nobody is forcing us into the drive-through on a regular basis to get the Big Mac combo meal. We are rushed, overworked, overscheduled humans and the majority of us eat crappy fast food, we don’t make time for exercise, and we are so busy chasing the almighty dollar that even our personal relationships suffer.
This brings me to another toxic habit we have as a society. We place blame everywhere but on ourselves. We blame fast food restaurants (or our thyroid) if we are fat; the government or our parents if we are poor; our husbands and kids if we are unsatisfied; the school and the teachers if our kids get bad grades. We blame and guess what? That may be our biggest downfall because, when we blame others, we actually minimize our own personal responsibility for the situation. I am certainly not suggesting that Kevin, my sister, or anyone who is ill currently is to blame for their disease. What I am saying is that blame, as an emotion or as an action, is worthless. I will go one step further and say the simple act of blaming is dangerous. Instead of focusing on who is to blame for any tragedy you face, it may be wiser to focus on choice.
In his book I’m No Hero: A POW Story, Vietnam Veteran Charlie Plumb said that what helped him get through six horrendous years in a POW camp in Hanoi, Vietnam (known to those held captive as “The Hanoi Hilton”), was the knowledge that, ultimately, he had available to him the power of choice. “In a daily routine, or in a communist prison camp, each of us has the choice to succeed, to fail . . . or to become the victim of circumstances.” That quote, which I had heard more than fifteen years ago at a motivational speaking event, is what I recalled and what anchored me when I faced both my sister’s and my husband’s diagnosis with cancer. Plumb was basically saying you will be faced with circumstances and some will be absolutely horrendous, but the second you blame others for the situation, you remove your own power to fix it. If I wasted energy blaming doctors, corporate America, and our genetics, then I was using the limited time available to me that I needed to actually focus on the fight. And cancer, as you know, is one hell of a fight. When Plumb was faced with his horrible ordeal he knew that he had choices. Either he could succeed as a POW by surviving or he could become a victim. The choice was his; he chose survival. What did surviving in a POW camp look like? It was a bunch of small victories, like making a deck of cards from slips of toilet paper (he said with authority, “It was hard to shuffle.”). Stuck living in an 8-foot by 8-foot cell, Plumb said they had two choices: they could walk three steps, hit a wall, turn around, and do it again; getting in a six-mile “walk” every day, or they could lie in the corner, blame the government, the enemy, and eventually simply die. “Victim or victor, that is your choice.”
When my family members were ill, people said to me, “You are so strong.” Was I really? What choice did I have? Strong is choosing to turn around and run into a burning building to save someone—to me that is strength. My “building” was already burning; I just needed to choose to pour water when and where I could and not burn myself in the process. To not become a “victim of my circumstances.” I promise neither my husband nor I would have chosen to run into that “building.” Yet we knew we had a choice, victim or victor, controlled by fear or take control. We allowed ourselves to cry, to grieve, and to feel self-pity—but only for a brief time. Then we stopped blaming the world, the environment, and God, and we got our buckets and began to pour water.
Illness for us became a fire-burning dance. There were multiple treatments, medications, and too many surgeries to count, all with their own horrific side effects. It often seemed once one fire was out another reared its ugly head. One “fix” often caused another problem, and at one point, we were in the hospital faced with the prospect of having him undergo a second liver transplant just one year after the first. We had no power over the flames. Yet we had power over our response to those flames.
If we get sick—and it’s likely we will get sick—then we need to eliminate blame from our thought process. It serves no good purpose. “Adversity,” says Plumb, “is a horrible thing to waste. If we waste the adversity by blaming other people for our problems, feeling sorry for ourselves, and denying that we have any control over our destiny, then we waste that opportunity that adversity gives to us.”
Choice is what dictates our response; blame removes us from the responsibility of our response. Which of the two do you think is better for you?
This idea of blame and choice, I believe, is paramount to the success we will have in both good times and bad. I agree with Plumb when he says, “At the end of life, I imagine it would be just as meaningful to look back and say ‘I tried’ as it would be to say ‘I succeeded.’ ”
Reflections
WHAT AND WHO DO YOU CURRENTLY BLAME FOR YOUR MISFORTUNE? PLACE IT HERE.
Release this and make a choice to take full control of your outcomes.
None of my yoga pants have
ever been to yoga.
Yoga: A Hindu spiritual and ascetic discipline, a part of which,
including breath control, simple meditation, and the adoption of
specific bodily postures, is widely practiced for health and relaxation.
Since menopause (yes, menopause, I was all done at around forty-four years of age), I have found that my fight-or-flight response is somewhat jacked up. I am a more extreme personality. If I am mad, I am furious; sad, I can cry a river; and happy . . . well at times I can feel almost a bit manic. I don’t know if it is hormones or the lack of them, but I know that I am less than halfway through my life and my emotions are not something I want to lose control of.
You, too? Do you feel so overwhelmed at times that you are crying because of a television show? If it is This Is Us, that doesn’t count! w Do you find you are running so fast and so hard at work or throughout your day that you are on a perpetual hamster wheel? When you arrive home to your family is it becoming impossible to just hop off that wheel and be the mother, wife, or even roommate that you want to be. Do you find yourself reacting because there is no more milk in the house (AHHHHH!) or worse, no more milk in the house but there sure is an empty milk container in the refrigerator (please tell me it is not just my family)? In the end, the final straw that really makes me lose it will be the toilet paper. Yup, the toilet paper that mocks me as it sits smugly on our bathroom sink and not in the toilet paper dispenser, which is located roughly six inches from the sink!
You face big and little catastrophes every day. You might be firing on all cylinders when you come home to your six-year-old saying, “Mary said I am ugly,” so it is only natural that you think to yourself, Oh hell no! That kid better run when she sees me at the next class party! Okay, that might not be natural, but I think you know where I am headed. In the twenty-first century we are going, going . . . GONE. We need to figure out how to come back. It used to be running for me, but with age came some aches and pains, and I find I can’t run six days a week.
So how can we bring it back down? How can we breathe? How can we bring a sort of peace into our lives? A few years ago, I started practicing yoga. This was not because I was searching for peace; no I took up yoga because I was searching for awesome looking arms. (Come on don’t judge! We talked about that!) A friend of mine who is in terrific shape said, “I do hot Vinyasa,” when I asked her how she has such toned arms, and a day later so did I.
I became infatuated with it after taking a class with local yogi Kat Fowler who is beautiful in mind, body, and spirit. That first class showed me this: Yoga is a workout for the mind and body, and it is entirely about accepting and forgiving. Accepting and forgiving both our own limitations and those that we see in others. It is also about breathing through resistance.
The practice of yoga requires you to get into a pose and hold it for a period of time. The truth is you can go only so deep into a pose until you feel resistance. I am a type-A personality, and when I first started taking class, I would push—and push and push—when I felt resistance. Ego wanted me in that pose deep! It took a few years for me to learn that this wasn’t yoga, and it was probably the opposite of it. The basis of yoga states that when you feel that resistance, the only thing you can—and should—do is breathe, not push.
When I first started to attend classes, they were typically a very athletic form of yoga, providing me with a strength-training and even cardio that I craved. I loved it; I loved sweating out toxins, and holding difficult poses. It helped. It calmed me. Up until the time my yoga studio changed disciplines. They moved away from “hot” and they started offering “warm” Vinyasa (That term is subjective; I mean I am freezing if it’s 75 degrees!), and then they began to offer Gentle Flow. I have to be honest and tell you that last one brought me more anger then peace. Seriously, I would look at the schedule and fume! As a type-A personality, the yoga I was looking for was very athletic yoga. I mean, hello, I was attending these classes with the goal of hot-looking arms, not for a good nap! But I had no choice; I needed to do something, so I began to explore these classes. I went with resistance.
As a self-proclaimed uncoordinated fitness enthusiast (who knew there was such a thing?), that first class with Kat had opened me up to accepting both fitness and life challenges. Yet I began to realize it didn’t make me less resistant. One day, I was in a warm, gentle Vinyasa (their words not mine) class and I was in a seated twist. I was jamming myself into the best twist possible, imagining my spine growing long, my organs being compressed, trying to force a sweat response that I felt I needed. The yogi leading the class came to me and said, “Do you feel that resistance?” Ha ha! Do I feel that resistance? Of course I do! I am pushing through it like a champ! I thought to myself. Then he said, “Yes, you do right? Okay now . . . breathe.” I didn’t realize I wasn’t. Breathing that is. Not in this class, not ever.
I wasn’t pausing to breathe at all, not when I was at work, not when I was with a friend, not even when I was being a parent. I didn’t stop to breathe when I met resistance. Instead, I pushed back.
What resistance do you have in your life? Perhaps you are facing struggles with a teacher, or new manager, or coach. You go to work every day and you outperform others and that new monster, I mean manager, keeps pointing out things you don’t do correctly. You don’t stop to breathe, and you go back at her angrily. Or you’re back at school as an adult and the teacher gives your paper an 80 when you believe it should be a 90. Breathe. Someone cuts you off on the road. Breathe. Your kids’ school calls and “Mary” has pulled your daughter’s hair or ripped her paper up. Breathe. Your yoga studio has changed its format and you fear you won’t get from the new classes what you think you need. Breathe. Because if you take the time to breathe, you may find instead of getting what you want, “you get what you need.” (So glad I didn’t close out this book without getting at least one Mick Jagger reference). 
Yoga is individual; there are so many choices you are bound to find one that suits you. You make the decision what type of yoga practice you will participate in: Hatha, Bikram, Iyengar, and Vinyasa . . . the list goes on. There is a yoga practice out there for every one of us, from 2 years of age to 100. Try it! While yoga gives me a certain amount of both strength and flexibility, it has taught me something even more important, which is how to breathe in the face of resistance.
Yoga can be a metaphor for the life you lead. When you meet resistance in life—and you will, I promise—stop the struggle and breathe. After each yoga class I take, I find myself more willing to attempt other challenges in life that require forgiveness, acceptance, and letting go of resistance. Kickball league this fall anyone? 
Reflections
DO TEN MINUTES OF YOGA. HOW DO YOU FEEL?
GOOD, NOW GIVE IT AN HOUR!
Some days you eat salads and go to the gym;
some days you eat cupcakes and refuse to put
on pants. It’s called balance.
Balance: A condition in which different elements
are equal or in the correct proportions.
“Isn’t that bad for you?” my thirteen-year-old daughter asked me. She was sick, with what we’d find out was strep throat coupled with the flu, and we were on our way to the doctor. We were talking about gel nail polish, of all things.
“Probably,” I replied. “Maybe,” I corrected. “For some people,” I stammered. “Jeez, I don’t know anymore!” I laughed. The thing is, I don’t. Do you?
We are a much more informed society today than we were in decades past when moms thought nothing of drinking cocktails while pregnant and smoking cigarettes in the car while their children sat seat belt-less in the back. Knowledge—that’s good, and this information has protected us and has decreased the number of deaths and illnesses attributed to all of those things! Yay us! But it is getting to be a slippery slope.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the world of health and wellness. For example, there was a time when we all stopped drinking cows’ milk and switched to soy. Ah, soymilk, poor misguided soymilk. Have you heard it is no longer the paragon of health? I’ve read it may actually be bad for you. So now if I go for the soymilk, after being bombarded by Internet/Google science, I might first pause and think Is this bad for me? The same might apply to gel nail polish, even regular nail polish, genetically engineered or non-organic fruit, sea water, tap water . . . and on and on and on. Isn’t it all bad for us?
Breathe (not you, me . . . okay maybe you, too). Breathe, because science is ever-changing and the places we obtain our information are often not truly scientific. Times have changed. I will let you in on a publishing secret: paper is expensive, and as a magazine publisher and owner, it is my largest cost center. In the past, people would get their information from published journals. Those journals would not publish a scientific-based article without first making sure it was a good, large, randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trial whose results could be relied on to indicate truth for a larger population. Enter the Internet. Worse, the twenty-first century Internet where, with a few dollars’-worth of investment and some key words, “fact” becomes indiscernible from fiction.
It is overwhelming for the majority of us who are trying to live healthy lives and, more important, help our children lead healthy lives. I have a confession to make, I pack such a healthy school lunch for my son that he comes home starving every day, and I’ve found him in our “just for company” food cabinet so often that I am starting to believe I am doing more harm than good. Cucumbers, snap peas, a salad, some fruit, a half a sandwich (not too much bread, mind you). It isn’t enough. I survived—maybe even thrived—on the steady stream of peanut butter and fluff sandwiches and Oreos dipped in Cool Whip. That was definitely not “good” for me but there has to be a balance.
It’s not just my kids’ diets; I have stomach issues, an irritable bowel is what they call it. I went to a nutritionist and she asked about my diet. I bragged. “A great day is eggs over asparagus, salad with almonds and shrimp for lunch, dinner is a broccoli and cauliflower casserole, and summer fruit!” I exclaimed with a bit of a smug smile on my face. Her answer had me dumbfounded, “No wonder you are in the bathroom all the time; too much roughage.” Wait, what? I am afraid of bread (I mean what self-respecting, self-prescribing Google doctor like myself isn’t?). Yet bread is exactly what she said I needed more of. Not a lot, but some. Balance.
I guess that’s the answer I was looking for. When my daughter asked about gel nails, my answer was correct. All three of my answers were. The truth is, my mom had acrylic chemicals on her fingernails for a good portion of her life. She is eighty-five years old, plays golf three days a week and bridge the other days. That chemical crap she put on her nails didn’t hurt her. In fact, I will go one step further and say, it made her feel good. She would get these nails done (seriously, living on Long Island in the 1980s, nails were important) and then she would go out to dinner every Friday. She loved those long nails, and when the diets she went on and off didn’t get her where she wanted to be weight-wise and the hair color (yes that was a chemical dye, too) didn’t come out the way she wanted, she always had her nails. They weren’t bad for her.
Things are “bad for us.” Everything seems “bad for us.” It can be overwhelming. I believe this is where balance comes in. Living in a state where “everything is bad for you” can drive you crazy because it essentially means “nothing is good for you.” That is NUTS! (Just heard the other day nuts are bad, too H.)
I think we all need to realize moderation is the key. If you deprive yourself of everything, I can guarantee you will be like me, ending your day with EVERYTHING (wine, Oreos, whipped cream combo is my favorite end-of-a-successful-day treat). So balance it out. Get your nails done if it will make you feel good; take the prescription antibiotics that were prescribed by a doctor for you (he is a doctor for goodness sake). And stop living in fear of life being bad for you and simply enjoy it. I think the only thing in this world that is truly bad for you is a life that is fear-based.
Reflections
ARE YOU LIVING A BALANCED LIFE? ARE YOU DENYING YOURSELF SOMETHING THAT YOU SHOULD, INSTEAD, SIMPLY LIMIT? WRITE DOWN YOUR WORK HOURS AND “PLAY” HOURS, UNDERSTANDING THAT SLEEP IS ALSO A NECESSARY FORM OF PLAY. DETERMINE IF THERE IS A HUGE IMBALANCE IN YOUR LIFE.