Accepting Breast Cancer as a Messenger from the Soul, Continued

Part Two: Breast Cancer and Repressed Mother Rage

I had lots of time for long periods of meditative contemplation during those painful weeks of post-surgery recovery. It was not until my Self-questioning shifted from “Why did this happen to me?” to “What has breast cancer come to teach me?” that the light of understanding began to dawn: the malignancies in my breast had their beginnings way back in childhood.

I grew up with an alcoholic, abusive father; and a mother, so deep in denial, she would constantly ask me, “Why are you such a sad little girl?” As if I were something apart from her and our family circumstances. My very visible unhappiness must have posed quite a threat to the illusion of a happy home she wished to present to the world. And so I learned very early in life to repress my psychic pain and put on a happy face in order to gain mommy’s love and approval. But where did that pain go? All is energy. Energy is all. Energy cannot be destroyed. It is Energy that creates form. Like creates like. Energy creates form like itself.

And so, when I was seventeen years old and my father had finally permitted my mother to work outside of the home, I confronted her. I challenged her to leave the abuser now that she was earning her own money. I pleaded with her. I needed her to take revenge, retribution and to make amends to me for the years she did not protect herself or her children from our abuser. We could finally be free of him, I pleaded. Her blithe response to my frantic urgings to leave her husband…my father…was: “Oh, I’m not leaving him now after suffering all of these years with that man. No. I need his income to continue supporting us so that I can save and invest every penny I earn.”

And so she did. And I felt betrayed. Sold out. To the seventeen year old “me,” it felt as if my mother had traded in my childhood and early teen years of suffering—for money. Not only was that the beginning of my own very unhealthy relationship with money, I also carried the anger of that perceived betrayal in my heart from that day to the day—many years later that breast cancer showed up in my life as a messenger

Through the ensuing years—right into and through my adulthood—mother and I continued in a relationship that could shift abruptly from its usual cool civility to her slapping my face and my screaming bitch at her. Of course, anyone outside the nuclear family would never have suspected the murderous rage that seethed beneath the dutiful daughter façade I wore; a rage for which I could not—or would not—find a healthy release; a rage that eventually went underground where it quietly went to work; diligently undermining my body’s immune system and natural defenses; allowing insidious malignancies to take root in the most vulnerable and pertinent body part; which for me was the breast: symbol of nourishment, sustenance…of mother love.

I offer this story of mother rage and breast cancer as food-for-thought and not as proven, scientific evidence of a causative relationship between a lifetime of suppressed anger and rage felt towards one’s mother, and its eventual manifestation in the body as breast cancer—or any other disease. I do, however, share the beliefs of many holistic healers that what we hold in the psyche will eventually manifest in the soma. Nothing happens to us out-of-the-blue. Our thoughts and strongly held intents, beliefs and emotions are what give form to our lives and our bodies. This especially applies to the diseases we humans love to believe happen to us or are visited upon us as punishment from some patriarchal and cruel “God.” At present, mainstream medicine has not caught up with what the most primitive shaman understands about the nature of human reality: we are the co-creators of the very universe—right down to the pimple that just popped out on your cheek.

Hopefully, my story will ignite a spark of recognition and acknowledgement in the heart of even one woman who will find the courage to go against the dictates of religion and culture about “honoring our parents” no matter what. She will be led to ferret out feelings of anger, rage—even mother hatred—which have lain long-hidden in the dark recesses of her heart and thus she will take her first step towards wholeness—which is our true and natural state of being.

May the Wisdom of the Mother continue directing your ways.

Watch for Part Three: Invoking the Healing Balm of Forgiveness