Melissa Williams, Touching Tomorrow speech on 10-2-2014
(Note: Melissa spoke at LifeSpark’s Touching Tomorrow breakfast on October 2 and received a standing ovation for her story, which is listed here.)
About a year ago in October, I got a call from my doctor, that the lump I found on my neck wasn’t just a swollen lymph node from a recent cold I had that just kept lingering around. The doctor told me it was… cancer… Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.
My mind went racing…… What ????
Cancer AGAIN!!!
I just finished battling Breast cancer less than two years earlier….
Why….why me – haven’t I already gone through this ..hasn’t my family worried enough…
My world came to a screeching halt…. Another cancer battle…
My mind went on overdrive– worrying, gathering information, asking why…and just in a fog, I couldn’t shake.
I was having a really hard time dealing with this news and continuing my life as a musician, a mom, and a wife.
I had heard about Reiki and Healing Touch therapies but I wasn’t sure what it was all about or how it worked. After asking GOOGLE, I soon learned that Reiki is simply the power of human touch, and energy, to help one person heal themselves through the trained presence of another.
A friend suggested I reach out to LifeSpark –this amazing organization that offered Reiki and Healing Touch to people battling cancer.
I was unsure what to expect at my first session of Reiki. I was nervous and I have to admit a bit doubtful.
Sharon greeted me – I knew she immediately saw my anxiety and my suffering. We talked and she made me feel at ease … she saw me as a mother of two teenage daughters – DAUGHTERS who were scared to see their mom go through this journey again.
And she saw me as a wife, whose husband worried he couldn’t do anything “to fix “ the despair in his wife’s eyes…
Sharon didn’t see me as a person with cancer. She saw me as whole.
My first treatment felt like a soothing wave rushing over me –you know that feeling when someone lovingly puts their hands on your shoulders.
As human beings, touch is meaningful and powerful and this healing touch helped me…the fog in my mind began to clear and clarity started to make its way in and as the weeks progressed I looked forward to those quiet moments to rest my racing thoughts and reconnect and support my body in finding a healing path.
I have been receiving Reiki treatments with LifeSpark and Sharon throughout my chemo sessions this summer. I have my 5th chemo treatment this Tuesday. This powerful Reiki time has helped me to create a balance and carve out a healing space in my otherwise hectic life.
Sharon has also helped me build a bridge to self–healing. She has taught me to tap into an unlimited supply of “life force energy” to improve my health and enhance the quality of my life – especially when I am going through chemo treatments or feeling anxious about side effects.
She helped me create this space for me to heal.
What is amazing to me is Sharon volunteers her time to LifeSpark and to me. She meets me at my most vulnerable place in my life…..
A mother and wife who is fighting every moment to stay alive, going through procedures that would bring an average human to their knees, allowing chemicals to course through my very being to kill whatever is inside…
And all this just so I can hang on to more time…to have another day to hug my beautiful teenage daughters or tell my husband how much I love him.
And the only way Sharon and LifeSpark can continue to build bridges between mainstream medicine and complementary therapies like Reiki –is through donors like yourselves.
Your support allows a trained Reiki or Healing Touch healer to meet another human on this divine level and remind us that we are more than the cancer, disease, or illness we are experiencing.
In our rapid high-tech world, there are times I feel like just a number, sometimes just a cog in the medical machinery. I believe our medical colleagues know this and feel changes must be made to the ‘system’.
I sought out Reiki and Healing Touch through LifeSpark because I wanted to be listened to and I wanted to treat my whole being …not just the cancer…I wanted the healing to extend from my body to my mind.
LifeSpark is encouraging the building of healing bridges with mainstream medicine to meet the needs of patients like me, and this is happening because of your support.
You are on the cutting edge of what medicine will hopefully look like in the future. A blending of alternative therapies and traditional medical practices to meet the needs of the WHOLE person … not to just cure or treat a disease.
These healing therapies don’t fit into the existing medical model of – double-blind, placebo-controlled research. The current technology in modern science doesn’t have the sensitive diagnostic tools needed to measure the effects of these therapies.
Therein, lies the problem – without scientific proof many in the medical profession are skeptical.
But the more support, research, and data LifeSpark can produce, the more the bridge will be built between complementary therapies and mainstream medicine.
I know first-hand that Reiki and Healing Touch can support the delivery of the conventional medical care I am receiving. The chemo has already reduced my tumors by 50% and will hopefully move my cancer into remission.
However it is trained healing volunteers at LifeSpark who ease my stress, reduce my pain and anxiety, and improve my sleep and digestion. And most importantly their support has helped me gain control over my fears and face the next steps with a sense of peace and well-being.
Thank you LifeSpark, thank you Sharon and all the LifeSpark volunteers, and thank you, donors. You have made such a difference in my healing journey and life.
