by Fiona McGovern, BA PGCE, Isle of Arran, Scotland
For some months now, when I lay in bed or in a warm bath I have been holding my right breast, the one where the cancerous tumor is… the tissue is softening around the tumor.
At first I expected to feel something, waiting to feel that womanliness I had always missed. I wanted to feel something grand or perhaps simply warmth – but in truth there was nothing. What I was feeling was the deep level of disconnection I had to me and to me as a woman.
However, I wasn’t hard on myself like I would have been in the past. Instead I waited patiently accepting that this was all part of the process. I felt how I was with the breast and could feel my touch was clinical – looking for areas of hardness and yes at times wishing the hardness would go away.
I found my touch could be tenderer, so I began to place my hands on my heart and feel the tenderness there. As it grew in tenderness whilst I held the right breast, I began to breathe more tenderly and feel the course of that tenderness through my body. I realised that in the past my breath was to get me through the day as efficiently as possible, maintaining the good, nice image of me I had created. It also came to me that my life was really a battle on the inside because this image was not the real me… I knew this but I pushed that emptiness down not knowing what to do with it or what might happen if I truly felt it.
I also observed my mind and my self-talk. I became aware of how my mind would wander off to other people, their well-being, how they were or going over what they had told me was happening for them. I came to realise how any nurturing I could feel was for others. Then I noticed that my self-talk wasn’t nurturing… it felt distant and clinical and I actually wasn’t sure how to be self-nurturing. What did nurturing truly feel like?
Next my hand would want to move, to be doing something as if I didn’t want to feel the extent of how out of touch with me I was. I stayed with all of this patiently like I would with a young child, I held my hand steady and then I got to another layer – I realised I felt no nurturing for me.
Holding my breast I felt that emptiness and the lie I once chose to live.
I can also now fully accept the blessing of the tumour, as it made me stop and begin to feel again. What I now feel is the beauty and fullness of me within, which I chose to hide from the world so much so that I could no longer feel why I had started to hide away my true self. I could no longer feel the tension between the truth and what society bombarded me with; you’re too skinny, how come you eat so much and don’t put on weight, there’s nothing of you, when you have children you will develop and why aren’t you like so and so. I used my work and study as a cushion and I became very good at being good; eating all the ‘right’ foods, exercising and doing good… none of this was done to truly nurture me but to function well in society, to gain some kind of acceptance and recognition. I had lost contact with me, so how could I nurture me?
I felt that there was a deep belief that I didn’t deserve nurturing.
This belief felt very empty and cold and uncomfortable but also very familiar and however uncomfortable, I knew this was something I had grown up with and had struggled to resolve. Dreams have since indicated that this belief stemmed from religion and I also feel there were cultural impositions too.
So I continued to wait patiently, allowing my touch to become tenderer and my self-talk to be supportive and loving. What I began to feel was the sadness of having lived so far away from being the woman and under all these layers which were not me lay my true self – beauty-full, warm, loving, delicate, all encompassing, precious, very playful, ever deepening and ever expanding love.
I had always felt the answers lay outside of me – in a book or a course. I would look at other women thinking they must have something I didn’t. Was it in the clothes? The make up? Or them having children?
Nowhere could I find confirmation that I was beautiful and that what I valued was of worth. It seemed I was really not very cool; I didn’t smoke, take drugs, drink alcohol, couldn’t understand sport or gossip, I liked to be in bed early, go for walks and giggle. I have always been slim and small breasted and that seemed to be a ticket for others to constantly pass comments on… I didn’t seem to measure up to what the world expected of a growing woman.
Patiently I have held my breast and waited… accepting that all these realisations were part of the process of shedding layers of what was there. Hiding underneath all of this was the true me.
Why all the layers when what I feel now is warm and beauty-full and ever deepening and expanding?
I guess I grew up believing that I had to look outside for what a woman was and who I was. I felt unable to find support to fully express my beauty. This beauty seemed too delicate for the world so I protected myself – I found that working hard and nurturing others gave me a place where I could keep those layers intact. I gave up on ever being or expressing the true me. I can now feel how doing the nurturing for others drained and exhausted my body, which just wanted me to be me.
So much so that it said: Fiona, now we have to stop and if you won’t feel we will show you what the result of all that hardness on yourself is. It made me see what those hard layers look like, in the form of a ‘fungating tumour’ in my right breast. What began as two small lumps grew and fungated, which means the tumour had broken the skin – not very pretty and very hard.
With medication and amazing support from the Medical staff this is now healing and the tissues are beginning to soften. With the support of Esoteric practitioners the tissues are softening even more and responding beautifully to the love I now allow myself to feel. I have reconnected to the beauty within, to that preciousness and to the joy of sharing it.
How blessed to have this time to rediscover me, to deeply feel how unloving of myself I had been in my life before I came across Esoteric Healing, Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine and to have the support to change my old patterns from ones which were uncaring to ones which support me to be more of me.
When I now hold my breast I begin to feel something deep that I have held back from the world.
I realised I placed high expectations on me and my body – pushing it, keeping it fit and healthy (or so I thought) when in fact what I was doing was taking me further away from feeling myself as a woman and from the beauty within.
I now have within the Esoteric Community loads of women who reflect back to me how it is to live like a true woman. Moment by moment I discover more depth to that beauty and the hardness on myself falls away.
The reflection of how to be me and the natural, self-nurturing woman I am, is in the deepening connection to me and the expression of this in the world is not in looking outside of me, being good, trying hard or expecting anyone to have the answers for me.
I know the way – it is deep inside of me. My heart knows, my body feels it and from that place of love and beauty I express.
As the tenderness deepens I reconnect to deeper levels of me and have the joy of sharing this.
I sat in front of my dressing table the other day and smiled. From being unable to look in the mirror and treating the dressing table as just somewhere to dump things, to now enjoying looking in the mirror and the dressing table has become a place which confirms me as a woman; with beauty-full boxes of jewellery, bottles of rose and lavender water, make up brushes and make up, I see an inspiring picture of a woman in her beauty. I smile at what is reflected back – a woman who now feels her beauty from inside.
I have found the reflection of how to be a woman! It was with me all along, waiting for me to reconnect to her…
I have met me.
Also by Fiona McGovern:
My marriage of Conventional Medicine and Esoteric Medicine
How Cancer has Changed my Life
Dedication
Fiona passed away on the 2nd of September 2013. Her loving husband shares that hers was a very peaceful passing whilst he held her hand. This, her final blog, was completed only hours before her last breath. All her amazing blogs are a genuine testimony to her deep deep understanding of true healing and that of her illness. Her words can no doubt continue to inspire ALL .
Fiona’s lightheartedness, her Joy and the Grace with which she wrote is palpable. These words breathe certain power which in turn have a potential to ignite the same in others.
What a truly amazing imprint, left by a truly Amazing Woman.
Comments are closed.