The Impact of the Healing Journey Program on my Life
By, Nalini Mahadeo, member at Wellspring Chinguacousy

I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to complete all five levels of the Healing Journey program at Wellspring. The Healing Journey teaches and unfolds life lessons that have positively and significantly impacted me since my cancer diagnosis.

I believe it is true that you can never fully understand the cancer journey unless you are on one yourself.  Between the shock of an unexpected metastatic diagnosis at the age of 40, with two young children, no family living nearby and a prognosis of three years at most to live, my disbelief was incredible. If you can imagine your life to be a train, purposefully travelling along a track, then mine had suddenly become a high speed train that left the tracks and plunged into the depths of the ocean.  Everything around me began moving far too fast to comprehend, leaving me feeling helpless, with no explanation of how my life train was in the ocean.

The Healing Journey program helped put clarity to some of my misconceptions and provided me with an understanding far greater than I could have gained anywhere else. The program became the air that I needed to breathe while my life train was drowning. It helped me slow things down so I could bask in the moments and appreciate life despite the uncertainty. It equipped me with tools to manage pain, to help me relax and to deal with the barrage of overwhelming emotions that ranged from guilt, fear, sadness, anger and rage. The Healing Journey helped me to live while on my cancer journey.

Being surrounded by others in similar situations helped me unravel aspects of spiritual healing which aided me in letting go of resentments and attachments. I can honestly say that I found happiness in my journey and purpose in my life, once again.

I have come to realize that at any given moment, my life is exactly as it should be. Before cancer I would have thought my purpose was related to my career or maternal roles and responsibilities, but I now believe it is to seek something far greater than worldly accomplishments. I now believe my life’s purpose is to seek inner peace and learn to be in the Now.

Without the Healing Journey program I believe I would have been stuck in an eternity of egoistic wanting and doing that could never be fulfilled. I now believe my true purpose is to be in the present and know that life is unfolding as it should, and that I was intended to enjoy this new oceanic view, and bask in the glorious feel of the water. I’ve come to understand that finding inner peace and being present in the Now requires continuous work, but it is also one of the greatest lessons in the Healing Journey program.

While my doctors treated my body with five months of chemotherapy, twenty-eight sessions of chemo-radiation and six surgeries over a two year period, the Healing Journey program treated my Being. It equipped me with essential life tools and I hope that every cancer patient has the opportunity to enrich their life’s journey through this program, as I did.