Dear Friend
Self care in cancer refers to self-directed habits or practices you can undertake alone or with people in your community. Self care is usually inexpensive and often doesn’t require a health professional.
We’ve grouped much of self care into our 7 Lifestyle Practices. We can’t overemphasize how powerful these seven practices can be. They can enhance your quality of life and strengthen resilience to achieve better outcomes with conventional therapies. They often also have anticancer and pro-healing effects of their own.
You don’t need to do all the 7 Lifestyle Practices. How much you want to do depends on your goals for this part of your life.
I’ve known many people who weren’t interested in these healing practices. Many did fine living doing whatever conventional and complementary therapies made sense to them.
The secret to self care is simply caring about yourself. Let it be real. Do what makes you feel better. Do what you believe is worth doing. If you slack off, just pick yourself up and start again. But only if you’re drawn to continuing.
Sometimes it’s helpful to find community for self care. You can join one of our cancer groups at our sister program Healing Circles Global. Or you can find healing community wherever you feel most comfortable—with neighbors, your faith community, or any other trusted place.
Love is the greatest healing power. Self care is love. It’s not always easy to let ourselves love ourselves. But it is at the heart of healing.
Wishing you well,
Michael
Learn more
Michael Lerner is co-founder of Commonweal and co-founder of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, Healing Circles, The New School at Commonweal, and CancerChoices. He has led more than 200 Commonweal Cancer Help Program retreats to date. His book Choices In Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Approaches to Cancer was the first book on integrative cancer care to be well received by prominent medical journals as well as by the patient and integrative cancer care community.
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