We're all LABORERS. Morphing into what you'd PREFER. Or simply BEing.

Answers from "within".

Labor Day is about American achievements, and honoring American workers.

But what about inner work?

My dearest friend Janet always says, and she’s a long-time “art” therapist, and we have talked millions of paragraphs over the decades;

“Inner work is always the hardest and most important work any of us will ever do.”

Life is not easy for any of us.

Self-maintenance and self-management are such a huge part of getting all we can out of all of our nooks and crannies. Without going nuts. Or needing anti-depressants (or lithium orotate, ha).

But when lonely and wondering why no one invites you to play, for your birthday, for Saturday nights… how about calling and asking others out to play, or for their birthdays, or for this upcoming Saturday night? Or this Labor Day?

How about starting that which you would prefer to show up?

Or… how about being OKAY with what “is” rather than being VELCROED to that which you’d prefer to be “now”, but is not “now”… YET!

How about expecting life to disappoint and natural to be dark more times than not, as life is “marbled”. Dark and light. For us all.

It is not the perpetual smiling existence promised on media that makes many feel they are continually missing out.

I remember Swami Satchitananda would consistently remind:

“Make no appointments.

“You’ll have no disappointments.”

I have run those words and meaning through my being over and over again. Years of reminding self.

Note to self.

Reminding self that life is indeed dark and light. Lots of dark. Lots of light.

But we often have to make our own light.

No life is monochrome.

Tsanumis of continual stuff, coming from BOTH sides.

Your mind management and keeping expectations real and soft upon your emotions, is a huge way to surf the biggest scariest waves.

I like to help patient’s mental management about their conditions by suggesting that as they put their head on their pillows at night, take a breath and remind themselves a set of words, which I “grok” from their intake. Depending on their situation.

Some of these suggestions might go as follows, depending on the patient and their unfolding scenario.

• “Remind yourself that you’re basically a healthy person at your core, with some issues you can embrace and heal from.”

• “Remind yourself that your body is powerful and you can forge a healthy successful answer to all that is happening.”

• “Repeat a question you have, over and over again.

  “Ask your highest self, if it is for your highest good, to reveal to you as you sleep, your best path forward.

  “Keep doing this nightly till answers come to you.

I did this when I had breast cancer 33 years and so little was known about it back then.

I had a histologic type (cellular description) that had, at that time, not yet been seen in the US.

Being that all doctors seemed to want to treat me like every other breast cancer patient and I was thinking “in my gut”, that made no sense as they were not sure of any of this as they have not seen this type before, I decided to forge my own path.

Within a year I became an expert on that histologic type.

The Palo Alto Clinic started sending me breast cancer patients to talk to if diagnosed with this.

This was where I had lymph nodes removed.

The “Sentinel Node Removal” was not standard-of-care at that time, but in the literature.

So I requested for the surgeon to take the first few lymph nodes to check.

When I woke up she was at my bedside tearful. Apologizing that somehow, some bad way, she “accidentally” removed 18 healthy nodes.

That began my journey of learning how to get rid of lymphedema.

Also, I was starting to realize that I was in this pickle due to the in-utero (womb) exposure of DES (diethylstilbestrol - first endocrine disrupting compound (EDC), a synthetic estrogen 50 times more powerful than our natural estradiol).

Began to write for DES Action.

Began to get OBGYN’s around the world reaching out to ask what to do if their pregnant patients had traveled to Mexico, spotted, and then got a shot of that worse EDC ever invented, DES.

This was 33 years ago. Hardly anybody knew anything about breast cancer.

Let alone a brand new histologic type.

So I began to use this tool of asking my highest self, during sleep, to show up in my dreams, to provide answers on how all this would turn out.

I was terrified.

The first few nights, no answers.

But further into the week, I had a most powerful dream.

Still remember all the details like the dream was just last night.

I was climbing an enormous scary cliff.

A huge storm was brewing.

I remember clawing the side of that mountain. Rocks falling. Dirt hailing.

Trudging upward.

Scared.

Not sure if I could make it to the top.

Arduously, each step a full universe unto itself, finally, got up and over that ledge.

I remember how hard those last few moments of effort were. To make that happen.

Throwing my arms to the sky, literally yelling in my sleep, loud enough to wake me up,

“I’m safe!”

On waking I took this to be gospel.

Informed all my cells,

“We’re safe.”

Life unfolds.

It shows up and we dance or we sit on the side lines.

Or our feet hurt and we try dance gym shoes with dance orthotics.

It’s a huge, scary climb.

But we have co-creative skills.

We can cook up life-sculpting strategies to manage the continual tsunamis.

But there must be time to be absolutely silly.

Take that risk, jump off that ledge into those blue, blue or black, black waters.

Sometimes we have to sit back and let it all rain on top of us. And let life BE.

We are all constantly laboring.

Each of us inside ourselves.

Sometimes we need to move, groove or watch others doing so. And simply smile at the marvelous silliness. Or the scary unknown.

Carl, my dear dear friend in Santa Fe (I am so missing my friends there), sent me this, early in the AM.

If this doesn’t make you laugh on this Labor Day, then go make coffee and watch your own favorite comedies.

Realize how enormous the tools you already have, to help you help your own life unfold closer to what you had hoped.

Or to claim peace with what simply “is”.

Chat, pray, talk to yourself before bed.

Over time this helps hone your world-life perceptions. Often revealing true answers.

If things are not what you would prefer, then you make it happen. Don’t wait.

We’re all sculptors.

No matter what color our clay is.

Or how full of pebbles it is.

We are all laborers within this gift of BEING.

Dr. B .