KMM #3: My Awakening

Hi everyone! I'm Kacie May.

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It was 2011. I was living in L.A. pursuing fashion styling and a business venture.

I felt lost and helpless as I was struggling to find my niche, support myself, as well as make genuine friends. I also missed my family who lives all over California. I wasn't taking very good care of myself.

I started getting symptoms like the flu and asthma, and I didn’t know what was going on.  I took herbs from my Dad who's an Herbalist, and they helped at first but then stopped working and my symptoms got worse. Then I lost my appetite and started losing weight, and lost energy and strength.

I drove out to my Dad's house in Rancho Cucamonga to work on my car, and I was so physically weak I couldn't turn the crank to lift the tire. He put me to bed and wouldn't let me go back to my apartment in LA. Then he called my Mom, an RN a few days later and requested her help.

One of my brothers picked me up and drove me to my Mom's house in the Sacramento area, and it was Thanksgiving. And by the way I had nothing but the clothes on my back and my purse with me. I slept during a lot of the drive, as well as through Thanksgiving. Then I got an x-ray and found out my left lung was collapsed and that I had millimeters of trachea space left to breathe. I was near dying. I was scared, but I knew I wasn't going to die then. I knew because I believed I was in the right hands, some of those being my Mom’s.

I chose to put my life in other people's hands as I got on breathing treatments and an IV, and was transported in an ambulance to a different hospital where I stayed for 8 days and had chemotherapy and many other drugs. My whole life was turned upside down. I couldn't go back to my apartment, and thanks to my family they packed my things and put it all in storage.

For about 2 years I lived with my Mom. She was my caretaker and I took both drugs and natural treatments, and as of the day I write this I am still receiving treatments. My Mom fed me, helped me sit up in bed, bathe and walk at my worst times. My Mom is my angel.

The great news is that I consider my diagnosis and conquering Hodgkin's Lymphoma to be a blessing and my awakening. I dove into personal development more so than before, asking questions like: What kind of a person was I being for this to happen, and what is a healthier way to be? I found out that when we love ourselves, our insides reflect that.

My motto is Love Yourself & Feel Beautiful, LYFB, and it's part of the title of my upcoming eBook. It’s also hash tagged on social media. Join us and comment, follow, as well as hash tag your own media that’s LYFB!

I found out that we're all connected and here to lift each other up, to give each other a hand up, and help each other. This ongoing, morphing life experience is teaching me that I am a force to be reckoned with who's got to lead by example and pay it forward. It's my mission. Helping others to love themselves too and become amazing leaders- I feel this is my purpose. Also to live lives fully expressed. I can identify with this too, because for years I had severely repressed myself. And I am still uncovering who I truly am!

What causes repression? Fear. What I found out is that fear is false. False Evidence Appearing Real. It's a mask. An illusion. I found out that we can be whoever we want to be and do whatever we want to do. And the sooner we figure out what this means to us, the sooner we can journey this path.

So I serve as a role model for strength, leadership, empathy, courage, self love, body love, valuing your voice and vision, and probably a few other categories as well. The experience forced me to open up and connect with people more, because almost everyone I converse asks me about it as if I've come back from a war. And I have.  I'm winning because I turned it into a peace treaty.

They're curious about the experience, inspired and enlightened, so I took that as my queue to grow quicker into the leader I already know I am deep at my soul's core. The experience liberates and humbles me, and of course as Marianne Williamson says: "As we are liberated from our own fears, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same."