Dear Moving Community ~

As most of you know, just over a year ago I completed a successful treatment journey through late stage ovarian cancer into health. When science, consciousness, and prayer get together in harmony, alchemy can happen. During the process, I learned so much about that healing alliance. Today, I reach out to creatively share some of my discoveries.

Returning from a threshold experience is as critical as navigating our way through the narrow passageways of a descent. Arnold van Gannep, a wisdom writer on rites of passage, coined the word incorporation to describe this integrative part of the process. We know that conscious completion is key. The final cycle of every positive initiatory process needs both time and tending. It also needs witness. Once initiates are born again through the transformational process, they are guided to return to their people bearing medicine. Their story is to be offered as a teaching. Gifts are to be given back to the community from the new place of consciousness accessed through the initiatory process.

So in that spirit, I now return offering some treasures that I have excavated through the rigorous journey of transforming my life during that near-death encounter with cancer.

Art is my favorite language for exchange. Of late, film has become one of my most kindred mediums for communication. So, I made this film short, Twisted Gift, to help myself return, to share about my journey, and hopefully to offer some pearls excavated from my process of eradicating cancer from my body. I hope that you will find it moving. It is a raw and real creative expression of my soul, filmed in two hours and edited in just a few weeks with a gifted young filmmaker, Henna Taylor. It was ripe to be created and longs to be seen. Here is the link.

We would love to hear your reflections of this film. Thank you for leaving your comments if you are touched. And also thank you for sharing as you are moved. I would be honored and delighted if Twisted Gift reached those struggling with cancer near and far.

Additionally, I will begin my overt creative offerings to the cancer community in 2019. RESILIENCE. I have a vision to bring movement, writing, and diverse arts to those wrestling with cancer and their caregivers. I first worked in the cancer community about 10 years ago, never did I imagine that I would be a part of it. Now that I thrive with no evidence of disease, it is time for me to give back in a fuller way.

Please let your people know about our RESILIENCE. events, the first being for women on January 12th in Boulder. This part of my work will slowly unfold over the years to come. I hope you never need to join us, but if you or a loved one do, you are welcome.

I close in gratitude for being gifted with more life.

In honor of that, please join me in caring well for our bodies, our hearts, our families, our communities, and our Earth. Health is not a privilege. It is our birthright. Let’s respect life and continue to share good medicine.

In love …
And Life!

Melissa