If you turn on the TV or look in the magazines during October you see all things PINK – it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This has naturally led to a personal sharing on my reflections of going through breast cancer 8 years ago.

Year to year it is always interesting to observe the changes in my life since the diagnosis I had of breast cancer in 2008. In the years leading up to the breast cancer, I was convinced that I was self-nurturing by practicing yoga, meditation, having a good diet and exercising regularly. However, although I thought I was doing all of the right things to be healthy, what I hadn’t considered or was aware of is the push, the drive and protection that I had been living in and therefore the fact that how I was approaching everything in my life came laced with a hardness and lack of trust. Therefore there was no true self-nurturing in my life and there wasn’t a quality of connection and gentleness in how I was with myself.

As women there has been and is a tendency, a drive to have it all – the career and family, being everything to everyone. Our focus has been on ‘doing’ and ‘achieving’, putting everyone else’s needs before our own, thinking that this is self-less, but it has led me to ponder at what expense has this come? In all of “the doing”, have we not lost our connection to the innate qualities that we all hold within as women – those qualities of gentleness and stillness?

Since breast cancer and through the Esoteric Healing Modalities I have come to understand that the most important thing in life is not what we do or what we achieve but the “HOW” we go about it all. The “HOW” being the quality of being in which we choose to approach or attend to everything in life. The other realisation I’ve come to is that unless we learn to self-nurture we cannot truly support another. The foundation of love for ourselves must be there first of all. As an example, if we are feeling tired or exhausted it is easy to snap at our partner, friends, work colleagues or the kids compared to if we have honoured our needs and supported ourselves we are then less likely to react.

By changing how we treat our body in a truly caring way, we develop a self-loving relationship that becomes a foundation of love from which we live. Life then feels very different, there is a stillness and a connection that comes from deep within that we are able to feel as we go about our daily deeds.

A woman’s breasts on an energetic level are her self-nurturing centres. What I have come to understand is that the cause of my breast cancer was a lack of self-nurturing.

Before breast cancer I was not truly honouring the precious woman that I am which is the same preciousness that is found in every woman equally.

With breast cancer (and other cancers) on the rise is it not time we question why illness and disease have and are exponentially increasing despite the amazing advances in medicine and technology? Could it be that we have lost the connection to the innate qualities of the woman, we have forgotten the preciousness of who we are. In all of the ‘doing’ we have left behind our connection to our essence which can only be felt through a deep honouring of ourselves.

Disease stems from a dis-connection from our body. When we as women learn to truly self-nurture I feel that the current trend in breast cancer may change.

So this month, as you see pink all around you, don’t just think pink, feel your own connection, your own quality of connection in all that you presently are doing.

Donna Nolan offers Cancer Support Sessions which are complementary to medicine. For further reading My Reflections – 5 years on from Breast Cancer,  My Unfolding Path to Understanding the Root Cause of Breast Cancer,  5 Tips for supporting you through chemotherapy and Yoga for Breast Cancer.