Our older daughter, Meredith, gave me another amazing book by Donald Yance, entitled, “Herbal Medicine, Healing, and Cancer.” His chapter on “Spiritual Focus” is especially enlightening and inspiring. He quotes the great Medieval mystic, Meister Eckhart, “If the only prayer you say in your whole life is thank you, that would suffice.”

Cancer is by definition radical. Most changes we make in life are incremental and even unconscious with stumbling starts and stops. The focus that cancer brings to the need to change has been life-changing, and in hopes of not sounding trite – a splendid gift.

Here are some specifics we have incorporated into daily living:

We walk briskly for 40 minutes – 6 days a week. (Saturdays are heavy gardening days for us)
We measure our waistlines instead of watching the scale.
I have a very much loved organic herb and veggie garden which I gather from each day, and recently, we have incorporated some berry bushes.
Our meals revolve around fresh and varied vegetables, fruit and foods that have stellar nutrition.
We prepare almost all of our meals at home, rarely eat out, and avoid processed foods with empty calories.
My refrigerator and pantry consist of nutrient dense foods.
Our friend teases us about our carbon footprint by going faithfully every Saturday morning to the Farmer’s Market and going out of our way to hit other markets when we are traveling. Our menus revolve around what is in season- particularly disease-fighting super foods.
We avoid white sugar or any kind of artificial sweeteners or white flour products in our food preparation. Trans fat, fructose, or anything harmful to eat is banned from our kitchen. We have come to appreciate that we are all hard-wired to crave sugar, fat and salt, but you can re-wire your brain after a time for these cravings to significantly subside – it’s consistency that is the key.