When you face your mortality in any way, it puts you at a crossroads – you either become a victim of the thing or a victor of it. You also have the opportunity, if you survive, to start over, re-create yourself and your life, because you realize that you’re the artist and at your desire, you can draw anything you want on that canvas. My breast cancer diagnosis devastated me, but even more so, I know that many other things had to fall apart at once, for me to be pushed to the point where I begged God to show me my purpose, because I had nowhere to look but up. I had fallen so far so fast.
After my surgery, my fiancé walked away, unable to cope with my diagnosis. As my hair fell out and I lost my eyebrows, eyelashes, I felt parts of myself falling away. As I saw my career came to a standstill, I had to move in with my mother and give up my home, saw the way some of my friends now looked at me and watched my body become weak and frail, I learned that so much of what I had prioritized in life was unimportant. I had, first of all put other people, my career and material things first, and me and my passion last.I realized that so much of my life was a façade. Most of all, I realized that if I died, I would not have given a fraction of what I wanted to the world, and no one would really know me and the big, crazy love that I’d kept hidden so deeply inside, lest I be judged by others in some way for being too open with my heart.
Losing “everything” that wasn’t important showed me that I had everything to lose by not showing up. I began to live my life by giving all that I had away – my time, my love, my passion – to help others, through my organization, Tigerlily Foundation, and as I gave, God gave me more in return than I ever imagined. He gave me time with my daughter, blessed me with the ability to service others through my “work”, which isn’t really work to me, he gave me joy, faith, quadrupled all that I lost, and most of all, he gave me passion, and he restored me to the person I had been seeking all along. I also learned that life is not about wanting to take for oneself and garnering things, but about the moments we can commune with, affect and empower others.
Maimah Karmo is a breast-cancer survivor and the founder of the Tigerlily Foundation, an organization that educates, empowers and advocates for young women affected by breast cancer. The idea was born after her second chemotherapy treatment, and when she appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to tell her story, Oprah's advice was emphatic: Maimah must write a book. So Maimah did. Fearless: Awakening to My Life's Purpose Through Breast Cancer (Brown Books, October 2012) is about her transformation, and how she learned that a challenge can be a gift. Fearless is a stunning account of Maimah's upbringing in Liberia—which was uprooted when she was 15 years old, and her family was forced to flee to the U.S.—to living the American Dream, watching it all fall apart with a breast cancer diagnosis, and ultimately, bouncing back. Today, Maimah has made her mark in the world of breast cancer, and her work has been celebrated everywhere from The Oprah Winfrey Show to Redbook Magazine to Good Morning America. Dedicated to changing the breast cancer landscape, Maimah's goal is to create a legacy of a world free of breast cancer.
No comments:
Post a Comment