A Moment of Joy

I attended the Minnesota Lynx Women’s basketball game last night at Target Center. It was the last game in the playoff finals. Each team won two games and this fifth game would decide who was the best Women’s basketball team in the U.S.

I experienced a moment of joy!

With one minute left in the game, I stood in the bleachers waving my towel along with 18,000 other spectators. It was a sea of white. I realized the Lynx were about to claim their third national title in five years. I was so proud of our players. The work they did over the summer was long and punctuated with injuries and new personnel. I thought of my own hard work in overcoming my games of cancer and an unresolved past. I stood there in Target Center smiling for my team’s victory and my own.

A moment of joy is like no other feeling. It’s knowing past difficulties are over and the struggles to make a lasting impression in this world is now achieved.

In life I faced many fears about failing and losing. This life-limiting belief is one I’m happy to lay to rest. I am a survivor of illness and trauma. I am a winner of medical technologies that improved my body and enhanced my heart.  I’m alive because I believe that I am not the summation of my past, and that my life today reflects the real woman I’ve become. I love the woman I am.

It took a basketball game for me to realize that my soul is filled with joy, and the knowledge that, despite all my challenges, I continue to survive because I have the tools and beliefs that my life has purpose. If you want to feel this joy — you can. Start your warm-ups with the decision to let your past be in the past, and know that today and every day in your future you can win. By reading my book, Never Give Up: Break the Connection Between Stress and Illness, you’ll see my game plan and how I achieved genuine healing and unconditional joy.

Let me hear your stories of joyful moments. These are stories we all want to hear.

Never give up — ever!