Kat's Cancer World: Sacred Recovery
Hello loves,
If you are a lefty, I’m now posting on - Political Witch: Smart Crone Talking - on substack and facebook.
This post of Kat’s Cancer World starts pretty fucking dark. I am emotionally and mentally in a much better place but will not skip over the cold bleak of where I was. As of now, I am doing readings again - lot’s of readings - and they are as on point as ever, filled with the information you’re looking for…
I was in chronic pain from February, 2025, till May 2025, due to bone spurs covering my lower lumbar. The bone spurs are yet another delightful side effect of radiation, which Dr. V somehow missed on my latest cat scan until I pointed it out to him. On a scale of 1-10, upon awakening the pain was 3-4, by afternoon I was at 8 by bedtime I was on the other side of 10.
The beat-you-to-a-pulp voices in my head were vicious. Gratitude was lost and life was rooted in the soil of shame, look at how bad my life is and it’s all my fault. Trust me if you’re physically exhausted and in chronic pain, those voices will get the upper hand. I know the voices are interjects – pieces of the culture that have splintered off and gotten inside me. I know the voices are the voices of the feelings/wounds I slipped into shadow in order to survive. Scars are eternal, we can clean and heal the wound, but sometimes those scars are going to get ripped open. Even standing still, I felt like a spinning top, twirling counter clockwise, deeper and deeper into a toxic underwater pool of agony, grief, powerlessness, and rage. I honestly felt like I was being possessed, I was shaking all the time, physically weak like I’ve never been, and I couldn’t keep food down. On the worse of bad days, pretty sure my head was about to spin and I’d spew pea soup, I made my way slow down the stairs to Sheila’s.
“I’m not right in the head,” I told her.
“You’ve been so dark, it’s hard to be around you,’ she said.
The overhead light was bright, and I squinted, listening to Sheila share experience, strength, and hope and I have no idea what she said, but I’d stopped shaking and the walls of the room didn’t look porous. Making my way back up the stairs later, I knew I’d broken the terrifying sense of being possessed. I wasn’t home free, I knew that, but I didn’t feel like a flat piece of glass that nothing and no one could dent, even beauty. Clearly, I was having a breakdown of some kind. Between the pain and the shame and not having any money, what-was-the-point-of living was a little too close, but if I took myself out I’d have to clean my apartment first, which would take months because of the bone spurs.
__
I remember the first time I screamed into my pillow. Standing alongside my bed at 3 M, in excruciating pain, arms in the air, begging for help with every fiber of my being. I asked God, Goddess, my ancestors, my guardian angel, my higher self, my guides and every sacred, invisible being that’s ever worked with me for help. All I could think was come on guys, I’ve been working for y’all for over 40 years, help a girl out. Then, I fell flat on the bed, face in my pillow, and started screaming as loud as I could. I’d never done that before, it helped a lot and became a new habit for a while. I’d wake at 3 am in excruciating pain, and scream into my pillow for as long as it took. The more I screamed, the more trauma stories and bad choices from the past played through my brain. I can’t say screaming was a conscious choice, it was knee-jerk, what I had to do. Who knew watching achingly painful movies from my past, and screaming till my throat was raw, would land me in a deep pond of profound peace? No question I was doing shadow work, bumping into themes I thought I’d worked through years ago with Wise Joe. He once told me scars are forever, you can clean the wound out, stitch it up and heal, but scars get ripped open.
I know my way around shadow work but I’ve never done it ALONE, and intuitively I knew that was important – to do the shadow work alone. At the same time I was gripped with a crushing awareness that I not only needed help, I was going to have to ask for it, and be able to RECEIVE it. Fuck me. Like a lot of strong independent women who’ve lived outside society and it’s norms, asking for help is akin to sticking a silver oyster fork in your eye. I’m the woman people have come to for help for a good 40 years and I’m really good at what I do, but I suck when it comes to leaning on others. How much can you actually lean on another person? Lynne, my fire breathing Christian, has been a real anchor throughout the last couple of years and I worry about that. Trust is tricky anyway and I’m never quite sure how much reliance is too much, and I’m way to vulnerable for rejection, sharp remarks, or criticism which will either infuriate me of make me cry hysterically. Apparently my only two switches these days.
I take care of Lainie, 3 days a week, 2 hours a day. She’s 93 and can’t walk without her walker. I took the job to keep some money coming in and because 3 days and 2 hours are all the energy I have. Lainie watches Fox all day. I’d never seen Fox news till I started taking care of Lainie and the lies are beyond overwhelming.
Readings are great when they happen. I don’t think I’ve ever been a more powerful psychic and readings don’t make me tired.
I always find the book I need with the information I need in right and perfect time. This is a great gift and a great blessing. When I was going through treatment, my friend Neelou sent me a copy of her book – The Art of Sacred Smoke. I didn’t have the band-width to really read the book but I had the bandwidth now. What the Joy of Cooking is to food, The Art of Sacred Smoke is to smudging, rite, and ritual. Her’s was a language I understood; conscious sacred feminine speak; magick, imagination, the delicious interconnection of all things, and a smart lushness to the writing. This is a woman who knows her subject inside and out. Reading Neelou’s words was like a giant reminder from Spirit – Remember this? Remember who you are?
I read The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller – clearly the man is a witch and this is the best book on grief and grieving, I’ve ever read. Weller taking a strong stand for the NEED to grieve is absolutely revolutionary in a culture that demands toxic positivity.
Weller writes - “Grief is alive, wild, untamed. It cannot be domesticated. We move in jangled, unsettled and riotous ways. There is something feral about grief, subversive, undermining our society’s quiet agreement that we will behave and be in control of our emotions…”
Finally someone talking about grief the way I felt grief.
Tom Ahern in his remarkable book, Sim 1, speaks of his “life reinvention business,” following the death of Simone, his beloved wife and soulmate of 33 years. With the exception of Didion’s, The Year of Magical Thinking, there aren’t any grown up love stories that speak to the death of the beloved. Ahern’s work is raw, cut to the bone writing, and everything is up for review. He’s refuses to shy away from the dark and light side of his actions, and is haunted by the ever- lasting question: could I have done more to save my wife? He could not have. Ahern’s whole idea of “life re-invention business,” resonated deeply with me.
Eckhardt Tolle’s The Power of Now, gave my such tortured soul relief I moaned. I started exploring the Light Lane in 1981, and landed in an affirmation, meditation, channeling group. We called ourselves New Age – yes indeed, we were New Agers here to bring light to the world. One of the first teachings was ALL IS MIND, followed by - you create your own reality - followed by you are responsible for everything that happens in your life. No matter what happens you created it. I seriously doubt the women in the Congo herded into rape camps woke up thinking it was a good day to get raped, or the starving child in the Pulitzer winning photographer, with the vulture standing behind him, thought it was a good day to die. (PS the photographer would ultimately kill himself. Save the child or get the photograph?) The New Age group told me that’s what they chose – the women in the rape camps and the starving child. So what if they did? Isn’t it is our responsibility as human beings to be part of the solution, NOT make bullshit excuses for the reality and look in the other direction.
The Seth books by Jane Roberts are a channeled treatise on Hermetic philosophy: As above so below, as below so above, as with-in so without, as without, so with-in – and of course All is mind. During the early 80’s, Hermetic philosophy would become the common connecting denominator of a rising New Age spirituality, with which I was heavily involved, until I began to witness how it was used to attack and to blame. There was no room for any feeling other than toxic positivity. I’m remembering a woman crying hysterically, in one of my twelve step meetings, trying to figure out what she’d done to create her cancer. That’s what the guru told her, and if she could just figure out what she was thinking to create her cancer, she could cure herself. The guru’s response was simplistic and cruel and he was fucking young girls.
Having worked with cancer patients for over 20 years, the stark reality is for all the reasons given for the causes and treatment of cancer, there are an equal number of exceptions.
I have assiduously avoided reading Tolle for fear it was more of the same – all is mind and kill the ego. When I read Tolle’s theory that all is NOT MIND – ALL IS BEINGNESS – I felt myself relax. There’s a witch exercise called – Entering the Silence. You slip low in body into the velvet dark, into the silence. I think of that quiet, that connection with ALL as beingness. Tolle refers to mind as the “tormentor,” and has some great guided meditations on you-tube that can help slow and shut down the voices in your head.
Psychic alchemy is about turning emotional damage into gold. All of the above have helped me tremendously; the cherry on the sundae of all this is the show, Resident Alien, on Netflix. The show starts slow but picks up and I haven’t laughed that hard since smoking pot was still fun back in the 70’s.
After a particularly rough night of screaming into my pillow, I heard – “you’re in a constellation with your mother and grandmother…” Great, 3 o’clock in the morning and I’m in a fucking constellation. I called Jen later in the day. A “constellation,” is a Jungian term and she’s a Jungian analyst. So was Wise Joe. A constellation is composed of unresolved issues or patterns within family systems that are impacting your life.
Jen and I have been best friends since the 7th grade, we know each other’s hard times, and family histories, and I can tell her anything without the fear of being judged. Talking to Jen was like taking a scalpel to the boils on my psyche. Lots of very painful mother-kicked-to-the-curb stuff and the death of yet another dream. Was I a bad mom? Did Brooklyn never happen? Did I make it all up? Was there any love at all? Am I just a terrible person, a loser like no other? I am afraid to have a dream, and I would rather be in the honest of my feelings, then pretend to be happy. I could go deep with Jen and I did. Once anything’s out of your body, it’s well on its way to being manageable.
If you’re wondering why I didn’t call a doctor re: the pain, I did. I live in rural upstate New York; it takes about a month of phone calls before you actually reach a human being and 2-3 months before you can an appointment. I did have an appointment coming up with a new primary care physician that I was really looking forward to. Dr V continues to prescribe Xanax for me to sleep at night, which I take with 2 capsules of thc tincture. I have not slept for more than 3 hours straight since February because of the pain.
My Goddess niece Mel is supposed to come for a Kat Day: reading, lunch, and reiki but I don’t have the strength and the pain is at 8. I call her to cancel.
“Can I still come?” she asks.
My mouth is dry. Screwing my courage to its sticking point, after a moment, i say, “Yes,” which I attribute to phone calls with Jen, who is gently pushing me to ask for help, from people who can actually help me. Jen also suggested I watch Conclave. I do, and figure my book, The Passion of Emma Ray Earle, could be an ever better movie if someone with structural power had the balls to advocate for it.
It never occurred to me I would get old or sick and have to depend on people for help. Having watched “Conclave,” this would not be an issue if I was an old priest living in the Vatican. Hand to Goddess no one is meaner to seniors than the United States, and they are particularly old women. Patriarchy hates old women.
The life-force that is Mel banged into my apartment with a cooling cream, essential oils, and love beyond all reason. The cream gave my back immediate relief – from 9 down to 3 – alleluia. Mel teaches yoga so she knows her way around the body. She knew exactly how to hold my feet and gently rotate my legs to re-position and re-align my back. She knew exactly how to press-release-press-release the muscles, working her way up my thighs. i start to cry. I can’t quite believe how lonely I am and how lonely the last 3 years have been. Yes, there are way worse things happening in the world – I write politics, I know this – at the same time I’m not terminally unique. If I’m feeling this lonely, other people are feeling it equally as hard. If I’m having this kind of pain, other people are having the same pain. Commonality is what connects humanity; divisiveness, created by money for money, is destroying it.
Mel is an artist, in her 40’s, still trying on different mediums, and has no idea how talented she is. Part slow moving bull and part Tinkerbelle, she’s a Taurus with lots of Gemini in her chart, and returned to help me again and again. Periodically, she would mention the chiropractor she was seeing. I had chiropractic back in the day and wasn’t mad for it. Came the day I honestly couldn’t take the pain anymore, I asked her for the chiropractor’s number.
Leaving a message for Genie, the chiropractor, tears choking, I related the salient details of my story, left my number and hung up. An hour later she responded by text that she was on the road and would send me a time for an appt when she got back to the office. An hour later I had an appointment for May 5th, all of a week away. I was in shock. And since the chiro’s in Kingston, and about 2 hours from me, Mel offered me her guest room.
Genie the chiropractor closed her eyes – I’m going to take a reading of your body now, she said. Her energy moved into my body, I felt her in my heart, and psyche opened to reveal what it was willing to reveal.
“Your guides are funny,” she says.
“My guides are hysterical,” I tell her.
She channels some things that I know - There is no cancer in my body, and stop feeling bad about having no money. She also tells me to think about my vagina. I seem to have forgotten I had a vagina. I tell her it’s been so long since I had sex, I grew my cherry back. She grins.
The table is low to ground, nothing like the tables chiropractors used in the 70’s. One minute later I had no pain. For the first time since February I was pain-free and there was no noise in my brain. I made another appointment on my way out, drove to Mel’s and passed out.
I still have bone spurs and am still periodically in pain but nothing like it was; a few weeks after Genie, I met with my new primary care doctor, who prescribed tramadol for the pain. I took it that night and slept for 8 hours straight. I hadn’t slept for more than three hours straight since February. I’d like to say I was dancing ecstatically over this turn of events; I was not. What I am is cautiously optimistic. I am still cautiously optimistic but I can’t deny the tide feels like it’s turning and I’m no longer barking up the wrong tree for help. I am writing this from my brother’s house in Delaware. He invited me down but I didn’t have the energy to do the bus and train thing I usually do, so he came to collect me. Mel made sure I had everything I needed including thc tincture, necessitating a quick trip to the pot store.
I love Delaware beaches, I grew up on these beaches, I even know the exact house where my brother was conceived. The air is soft here, the people are kind, and sea air is healing. I can’t gulp enough of it and as I feel health and strength coming back, I am aware of how far down I was, how far gone. My mind juxtaposes where I am now and where I was in Feb and I am grateful to be alive. I am clear of cancer and tumors but I know whatever created it is still in my body. Cancer comes back, killing fast if you go with standard of care and less fast if you’re using alternatives. I will be getting a cyberscan with a woman whose work with cancer is cutting edge. From there we will work out food and supplements.
As ever thank you for reading. I feel your prayers, I feel your support.
Love and light, Kat x0
Ps: the table Genie used is called a drop table and this is how it works:
A chiropractic drop table is designed with sections that can be raised and then dropped with controlled force, aiding chiropractors in performing precise and comfortable adjustments. This "drop" feature is integral to a technique known as the Thompson Technique or drop table technique, which is used to assist chiropractors in delivering precise adjustments with reduced force, making the treatment more comfortable for patients. How it Works:
The Thompson Technique uses a specialized table with segments that can be dropped to create a gentle, controlled force during the adjustment.
High-Velocity, Low Amplitude:
The adjustments are performed with a quick, controlled thrust (high-velocity) and a small amount of movement (low amplitude).
Leg Check Analysis:
Before the adjustment, a leg check analysis is performed to assess spinal alignment and identify areas requiring adjustment.
Call me senile but I just confused my Trazadone with your Tramadol. I have severe lumbar spinal stenosis that brings undogly pain that I calm with pain meds and sleep issues that I douse with Trazadone. Fuck…take this age shit and send it to hell where it belongs. I’m thinking of how much I love you and am thrilled that you’re feeling some relief. xoxoxo
So, so relieved to hear of your relief from pain... Thanks for the book recommendations. love ever soaring for you.
elga