May was a mental health awareness month. Something Bloom Foundation Gives will always be an advocate for. This month of May, especially, with cancer or not, because of COVID everyone's life looked different. While cancer adds stress to a pandemic for yourself and those around you trying to keep you safe from the disease, I personally didn’t have to deal with job loss, homeschooling children, or worry about how I’m going to pay rent. Still, I did have to deal with being one of the “high risk” of getting COVID you saw on all the commercials and heard about in the news, which is unsettling. But we all had something. With that being said, life has never looked like this, so give yourself grace and take a deep breath. If you feel overwhelmed, here are a few things I hope can bring peace to your situation.
Talk to someone, anyone - people tend to hide their struggle.
Don’t let fear take the wheel, have faith you’ll be okay.
Self-care. You’ve heard it. Implement it, mental self-care, at your own pace.
My first bit of advice and what made the most significant impact in my life was to tell someone. Anyone. Get it off your chest. People hide their feelings for many reasons. To be reliable, embarrassment, uphold an imagine, they don’t know what to do, but whatever “excuse or reason” you’re holding back from sharing how you truly feel, let it go. Freedom and peace are on the other side of sharing. Before I had cancer, I told a few people about my struggles with depression, but it didn’t change anything. It wasn’t until I was struggling with cancer that I found the resources I needed, found the courage to share, and found my freedom from years of wearing a smile that covered up so much.
Advice on how to tell someone. Call a close friend or family member, someone you know will listen. Meet at their home or yours, somewhere you feel comfortable. Ask them if they can just listen. Tell them you need to get something off your chest and with help with what actions to take next. Always have steps to take next so you both can stay accountable. Timeframe to meet with a counselor, plan to tell your parents or children, a weekly or daily check-in. Something to make sure you are staying accountable for seeking help. If not, the conversation may just get lost and turn into complaining as opposed to real significant support, change, and, more importantly, growth.
After my brain radiation and a round of steroids (if you know you know,) I ended up sitting my whole family down on Christmas Eve and telling them about my mental struggles pre-cancer and with survivors guilt, which happened shortly after I got my first round of clean scans early on in my cancer journey. My cancer ended up coming back, spreading into my brain, and eventually, my lungs. It helped my family, and it helped me. They understood me better and my needs. The support is there. Be open-minded and remember they may need time to digest the news too. But my most significant mental health support was finding a cancer counselor. Someone I finally clicked with understood what I was dealing with and talked to not only cancer folks but their families. Finding that resource was a game-changer for my family and me to navigate our new normal of my disease. Be patient and have faith; you will find this person. Ask cancer friends, ask the hospital, and have faith that the right person will show up.
Second, don’t let fear control you. Fear, especially when given a cancer diagnosis or when the media is continuously focusing on fear, can be hard to get away from and step into love. You have to have faith everything will be okay, and you are safe. When I was first diagnosed with cancer, they gave me the rules and restrictions about traveling, germs, low counts, how deadly getting the flu or sick at all could be since my body was already fighting so hard. But my faith allowed me to travel with peace of mind and LIVE despite my stage 4 diagnosis. It helped give me a purpose. I had people tell me horror stories about how they got sick while doing chemo. Someone told me not to garden because their friend beat cancer only to die of something they caught from gardening shortly after. It kept me up most of that night. Then the next day, He showed me He was protecting me. I was staying at a friends and was going to try and sleep in after the stress from gardening, but for some reason, I was up early and caught a beautiful sunset I ended up posting on my Instagram. My friend's cleaning lady messaged me shortly after and told me she had no idea I was there, and thankfully I posted that video because she had been dealing with a cold and was going to come clean later that day. Since she knew I was there, she ended staying home not to spread anything. Coincidence, I think not.
I heard so many stories of women with breast cancer who were terrified to leave their houses or let anyone come in because of what doctors told them could happen. Yet, here I was traveling all over with my hand sanitizer on deck and mask on, ready to go. Please listen to your gut, be safe and be smart, but live.
My favorite travel story is when I was given my brain metastasis news. Shortly after receiving the news, my friend called, and I told her the update. She asked if I wanted to take a trip to Saint Lucia, and I wasn’t even sure if my doctors would let me fly with my brain, and the trip was over Thanksgiving. After receiving the scary news, my family wanted me home and not putting myself at risk flying for that long and being out of the states. But I needed the beach, and I went anyway. It turns out my cousin ended up having the flu, and thanks to my last minute travel, I had the trip of a lifetime and avoided what my only known potential encounter with someone having the flu was. Faith over fear, does wonders.
Lastly, self-care, physically and mentally, but most importantly mentally. Our bodies have their own power of healing and hold a lot of stress. Meditation, breathing, journaling, saying healing words to yourself can give a lot of mental & physical health release. As a yoga instructor, I’ve been working on mindfulness and gratitude for over two years. It has played a pivotal role in my mental health and grounding when it has come to cancer. Before yoga, when people would mentioned self-care, I would think of massage, baths, or working out. While these are all self-care techniques, I believe finding a mental self-care routine, especially when it can be hard to do physical activities when cancer takes a tole on you and you can only rely on mental activities, mental activities can be the difference between pushing through and giving up.
I started focusing on breathing, praying, and a healing meditation where I send a healing ribbon around my body, focusing on the areas of my body that cancer is wreaking havoc on and sending it healing. When I feel “pain,” I tell myself it’s healing pains. You body is rebuilding itself, growing and growing can be painful. It’s what you tell yourself that matters more sometimes than what you are physically doing. You don’t need to spend an hour doing this every day. Set aside time in the morning when, before bed or whenever you feel like you need it. However, during the pandemic and not being able to get my routine acupuncture or massage and with cancer spreading to my lungs and not being able to get my occasional walk or daily yoga in, has made an impact physically. But it really allowed me to focus on my mental self-care and allowed me to keep peace of mind with my mental self-care.
Love always,
Erika & BFG