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I think it’s most important to trust yourself and trust your gut because everybody will
find a different way to reduce your stress. I tried yoga – didn’t work for me. I tried
meditation – it didn’t work for me. I tried music – didn’t work. I was, as I
said, paralyzed.
Ironically, I’ll tell you what worked for me and it’s very different for somebody
else but I strongly suggest that anybody who for instance, if you like gardening, if you
like knitting – whatever you like often, those little things. For me, believe it or
not, I was always a writer. I was never artistic.
One day in the middle of cancer, I have hardly ever felt like I saw my children and I took
my son into one of those little paint-it-yourself pottery workshops and I painted a cup, a mug
and I am telling you, I am not exaggerating – his was better than mine. I had no artistic
talent, but something about that, I was concentrating so much on the painting, I got up and I realized
‘oh my gosh’, an hour passed and I didn’t think about cancer once.
Now that’s another thing I want to just say to everybody, at the time that you are
at, at the beginning, I remember thinking I couldn’t get through five minutes where
I wasn’t thinking about cancer and I was convinced that it would be like that the rest
of my life and I am here to tell you anybody with cancer, that will change – definitely.
I now actually, the other day someone said how many years, and I had to stop and think,
which it never occurred to me but as I was saying, what got me was the painting and you
can see behind me – if you can see, I don’t know all these tea cups I painted – every
single one of those. The painting saved me. I mean it’s what forced me to focus. I am
kind of a high strung person and I needed that. For me, it was that. Other people find
it in digging in the garden, digging in the dirt. It’s anything that works for you but
it’s when you feel it yourself. So I mean you can try all these other things and whatever
works for you, but I think it’s important to listen to yourself and go for things that
really have some resound
for you.