Author, Speaker, Workshop Leader, Reverend

DENISE DeSIMONE Month 8, Week 5 Author, Speaker, Workshop Leader, Reverend

FROM STAGE IV TO CENTER STAGE

[These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. The information on this audiocast is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.]

[Theme song playing]

Robyn: Hello everyone and welcome to month eight of the Self-Care Revolution, where this month’s theme is empowerment. It’s hard to believe but we are at our final week.

Kevin: We are so much more empowered.

Robyn: Yes and also, I just want to mention that last night we had our live stream with the self-care coaches and it was fantastic. There must have been 16 of us and we got to share what we do in terms of our work, but also what empowerment means to us. A lot of amazing things came up. That will be available for everyone to listen to.

My name is Robyn Benson and I’m a doctor of Oriental medicine and the Founder of Santa Fe Soul Health and Healing Center, where we have 30 practitioners, we offer over 50 services, we’ve built this building eight years ago and we continue to be a merging community, which is where we’re going next month with The Power of Community. We’re getting very psyched about that and we’ve let all our listening family about our next month and the incredible speakers that we’ll have with us.

Kevin: Including me. I’m Kevin Snow, the intuitive counselor here at Santa Fe Soul and my business is the Desert Shaman and my purpose is to help people create clarity in their lives and certainly I gain clarity everyday through these interviews. We are glad to have Denise on the line with us today.

Robyn: Welcome Denise.

Denise: Hello.

Robyn: If this is your first time as part of Denise’s community or Dr. Birch-Storey who is joining us, I just want you to know that this is a mission-based revolution. I think they all are, but this one in particular is about saving millions of lives. There is so much unnecessary suffering going on in the world and knowing that we can not only prevent dis-Ease from happening but we can reverse it. Through this self- care message we want everyone to realize that we’re here to have a fun, fulfilled, engaged and purposeful life. 1 www.jointheselfcarerevolution.com [email protected] Read Our Disclaimer Here Kevin: Right.

Robyn: Especially when we feel good. When we’ve reached and we’re achieving and sustaining optimal health. That’s the big why behind the Self-Care Revolution, and just so you all know we are going strong into next year. We’re just into month eight as we mentioned, but we’ve got so much planned for next year so stay tuned because we’ll have some major Self-Care Revolution trips planned. We’re going to do a safari next year. We’ll be taking some people to explore dolphin healing and many more ideas that we have and that we’ll be unveiling as time goes on.

Without further ado, I want to tell you a little more about Denise. Rev. Denise DeSimone. Reverend Denise DeSimone is an author, motivational and inspirational public speaker, and workshop leader, with an extensive background in Interfaith Ministry, and a wide range of holistic healing practices. These healing practices include: Sound Healing, Reiki, Polarity Therapy, Reflexology, Shamanism and Process Therapy.

Today, we’re discussing Stave IV to Center Stage. I love that and every time I say and read that I think about the cover of your book, seeing your beautiful face and here you were diagnosed with stave IV cancer and now you’re traveling all over the country to share your powerful message. We’re so delighted to have you here, because it certainly is an empowerment message.

Kevin: Absolutely.

Denise: Thank you to both of you and I’m looking forward to this time.

Kevin: Excellent. Maybe we could start with your healing journey. It sounds like that has led you to these modalities. What were you doing before the diagnosis?

Denise: Before the diagnosis I was a very busy person in high tech sales full-time. I also had a busy social life and private practice in the healing modalities that you mentioned prior to my challenge with cancer. I was training for a bicycle ride called ‘The Pan Mass Challenge’ which spans the state of Massachusetts and is 200 miles. I did the one day at 90 miles and was training for that ride again. I started in 2003, and this was in 2005, and my training was going on, you know, when you’re doing something like that that’s a challenging physical activity you have to do a lot of training.

I had been riding several hundred miles a week and not feeling well. I got into a routine of working with the energy I had, all the while knowing that something wasn’t quite right.

Kevin: Your family life was also showing that diminished energy?

Denise: On every level. When you feel diminished energy, even though you’re still going and doing and being who you need to be in the world, it was definitely affecting my every facet and area of life. Let me continue to give you the full story, if that’s okay.

Robyn: Yes, that’d be great.

Denise: So again in 2005, I’m riding, training, dragging and going to the doctor, yet never seeing the doctor and going to the nurse practitioner and being told I was fine. The day comes and I do the ride, 90 miles, and at the lunch stop at 45 miles in I am dragging, doubled in pain and my best friend in the world of 35 years is with me and she says we can stop we don’t have to do this. I said no, I’ve raised thousands of dollars and need to finish this ride. 2 www.jointheselfcarerevolution.com [email protected] Read Our Disclaimer Here I don’t really remember the last 45 miles of that ride. Two days later I went to the doctor, and a point I want to make here because I feel when we’re sharing our story it’s good to teach along the way. The doctor kept saying to me it’s nothing and finally the day I called him two days after the ride. He said there’s really nothing going on. I had a lump on the left side of my neck that had now grown to 2 x 1 inch and he said it’s just a node it will go down, you probably had a virus. I pushed and pushed and he said if it makes you feel better than come see me.

I think doctors are supposed to help us feel better and we shouldn’t have to push that hard, but we have to be our own best advocate. I demanded to see him. I walked in the office and sat down and the minute he touched my neck the man turned white and backed up. He’d been my doctor for 15 years at that time and he said you need to biopsy that and we need to do it now, I think you have cancer. I said I don’t think so, you would have known before now.

Fast forward, a week later I have the biopsy and that doctor told me I see it all the time you’ll be fine and they woke me up in the room where they did the biopsy. There and then by myself he told me that I had cancer. I said is it lymphoma? He said no, I wish you did. You have Squamous cell carcinoma and it’s spreading like wildfire. I had a primary tumor on the back of my tongue, stage IV cancer on both sides of my neck into all my lymph nodes and that’s where the journey began.

Robyn: So this was 2005, right?

Denise: Yes.

Robyn: What did you do with that diagnosis? Did you have to have further surgery after the biopsy?

Denise: I had surgery to determine where the primary tumor was, because when you have cancer that’s a very important aspect of treatment. I live in Massachusetts, so I went into Boston to Mass Eye and Ear and they diagnosed me with what they classified as stage IV and told me I had about three months to live and a two week window of opportunity to get into some rigorous treatment. They took me into the hospital and inserted a feeding tube into my stomach called a G-tube and that’s how I was fed for nine months.

I did some chemo and decided… another teaching point here… the answers that we need to self-care and have it be the best care is always looking inside, that’s where the answers were. I knew that chemo was not for me and through the collective fear we all have and relatives who love us dearly and who loved me madly, were nervous that I was refusing after one round of chemo to not allow that in my body again. I said I’m just going to be quiet and I went into meditation and connecting with what I know to be true for me. I don’t really know if I would be talking to you today if I’d continued with the chemo. I felt like I wasn’t even strong enough to sustain it.

I did do a lot of radiation. I did the maximum amount you can administer to a human being’s head and neck. After that, months later I had what’s called a radical neck dissection where they removed the entire left side of my neck, nodes, muscles and everything.

Robyn: From that point then, from what I read in your book which is a great book… when does the book come out?

Denise: It came out in July 2011.

Robyn: On the replay page everyone will have a link to buy the book through Self-Care Revolution is that right?

3 www.jointheselfcarerevolution.com [email protected] Read Our Disclaimer Here Denise: I believe so, yes. I tested that right before the call because I wasn’t sure how it looked and worked. My website DeniseDeSimone.com is another way to do that and we can keep track of that from today’s call. Just go to the books and products page.

Robyn: That sounds great. After the neck dissection, what happened next?

Denise: The neck dissection was long after the treatment. I’ll back up just a bit, to when the radiation started and I had many hours strung together, days and a few months where I really couldn’t do anything. I had no energy. By noon I had no voice. I couldn’t eat. Nothing passed my lips, not even water for months. In fact, I had to go to Mass General Hospital to learn how to drink water again. If I drank an ounce of water in a day that was considered a huge success for me.

I want to talk about that slice of time in my treatment, because that was where and when, early on, that I decided I wasn’t going to buy into societies consciousness about everything has to be a battle. I had to call forth and summon my inner warrior woman, but it didn’t mean I had to fight with the cancer and I just couldn’t get in my head that I was going to wrap myself up in a battle more than I was already in. I always liken it to the schoolyard bully. If you’re in school as a child and the schoolyard bully is beating everyone up, you don’t want to be an enemy of the bully you want to be on the same side of the fence or you just want to stay clear, make friends and keep the peace.

I thought, you know what, I wonder if I looked at this the same way that my cancer, something is dis-Eased. Meaning, disturbed, distorted or disrupted and whatever it was it wasn’t going to behoove me to start fighting with it. It was going to behoove me to befriend it, to ask it questions and to almost separate myself, knowing that much more of me was in good health than disease. How do I take all the good in me, and love the parts of me which is the cancer that’s already raged about something and diseased. Meaning, disconnected from who the truth of me really was.

I set about naming my cancer. Chapter six in the book is called ‘PIN’, which stands for pain in the neck and I don’t mean that derogatorily I meant literally it was a pain in my neck. So I would ask questions, go into meditation and people can do this with anything, we can use this as a tool for diabetes, Parkinson’s, a bad day, migraine headache or whatever it is. I started to converse and I will tell you that chapter six is almost verbatim, one of the first conversations I had with PIN and it’s very raw and authentic.

I wrote this because I feel it’s important to give people permission to be that vulnerable and authentic in our own lives and journey of seeking to find out what’s underneath. To understand and take a stand for what’s running under all of what’s appearing to be what’s happening, which is cancer. What’s really going on? That time during the treatment, after treatment and then six months later when I had my neck dissection, was a time where all of life’s essentials were taken from me.

My eating, speaking and singing, which I’m a singer and that is probably what bothered me the most, I’m Italian and we eat. What do you mean, I couldn’t get my head around I’m not going to eat, but then singing I couldn’t eek a note. It took me over a year plus to be able to do that but the lack of life’s essentials allowed for the presence of the one spirit, whatever anyone wants to name it, there’s something out there that can become tangible when there’s nothing else in our way to connect with our divine source.

As tough as it was that was a huge gift and I like to say the present of cancer was the best present I ever received.

4 www.jointheselfcarerevolution.com [email protected] Read Our Disclaimer Here Kevin: Could you elaborate just a little more on that? You have been sharing with us how you looked at this cancer differently, that it was literally a gift and present in your life.

Denise: I was on a spiritual path prior to my diagnosis, and I had been going to unity and developing my spirit and other things like Buddhism, studying various religions and even went on after my cancer to become an interfaith minister. The gift was in that I realized that this presence of cancer was a gift in exercising the spiritual muscle that I had been what I call, ‘in the spiritual gymnasium of life’. You know, we go to the gym and exercise our muscles and even you are all about self-care and you run the gamut from head to toe, inside and outside.

Just like we go to a gym, I probably go three or four days a week or I’m out walking so I take care of myself physically, so I know when I need my muscles that they’re there and I can count on them. I had been in a spiritual gymnasium and this presence of cancer became a present when I got to understand and see now it’s time to exercise and see how strong my spiritual muscles are. What I realized is that being in what I call ‘the spiritual gymnasium of life’ in doing the work, doing the self-care and what it takes for us to grow spiritually, reading books, meditating and getting out into nature, whatever it is for us. It’s important to know when the time comes, because everyone is challenged with something at some point throughout our lives.

If you’re lucky to never have challenges, well, I don’t know if you’re so lucky because that’s when we get to stretch. It was a true gift to me to be able to call upon my muscles and know that I was strong spiritually, and got even deeper into the question of who am I, what am I doing here, why am I here and what’s next for me? Initially, I was signed off. When they told me what the treatment was going to be like I said I think I’m done. I was just about to turn 50 years old in like 10 days and I thought I don’t have any children. I’m good. I’ve lived a great life. I think I’m ready to go see what’s on the other side.

Then I realized how selfish that was, when my oldest sister was very intent on how much it would impact our family if I didn’t live, so I made a deal with God, my higher power, my spirit and said I’ll do this. I’ll sign up, and when I come out on the other side you better use me for a good cause. You and I are going to co-create something that’s going to rock and help a lot of people. Over the past five years or so I’ve been blessed to do exactly that. I wrote the book. I go out and speak and teach sound healing, as well as different healing modalities and I am truly blessed.

The other part of from Stage IV to Center Stage, I want to let people know that although I couldn’t sing for a year plus 22 months after being diagnosed, I sang the National Anthem at Fenway Park in front of 37k Red Sox fans and I was born into Red Sox Nation so that was a delightful event and one of the highlights of my life.

Kevin: That’s very inspiring.

Robyn: Wow, that was a defining moment. Your first time singing in 22 months.

Denise: Yes, singing publicly, absolutely. It was definitely my first time singing publicly in 22 months and they told me I would potentially never be able to sing again and if I did I probably wouldn’t like the way it sounded. To be honest with you I think I sound better because it comes from such a deep place that I almost don’t care what I sound like, and when you let go of something to that degree you just have it flow through you and it sounds great because you aren’t nervous.

Robyn: I have this wonderful poem on my wall that talks about when we sing and when we’re being sung. I’ll have to make sure I get you a copy. When we’re being sung, when that spirit is coming through us it’s almost like you’re being channeled through and it’s beautiful, your essence and soul connection, thank you so much for sharing that. How cool. Did the audience, in that huge stadium, did people know your story when you sang? 5 www.jointheselfcarerevolution.com [email protected] Read Our Disclaimer Here Denise: Actually, the Pan Mass Challenge, which is the bike ride I talked about earlier, their presenting sponsor is the Boston Red Sox Organization, so when they heard my story which, fast forward to 2007 and I was registering to do the ride again, and they want to know if you’re a survivor or first time rider and if you’re a survivor they want to know your story. They contacted me and asked if they could use my story in a local newspaper to do some fundraising. I said yes.

During the interview, they asked me to tell them more about my singing so I did. Then the next thing I knew one thing led to another, it’s an interesting story how I let it unfold in the book, but they asked me to sing the National Anthem at Pan Mass Challenge Celebration Day where there would be 5000 riders and 50 survivors that do the ride and line up on the first and third- baseline and I then I’d come out and stand at home plate. When the announcer announced that I was singing he said, cancer survivor Denise DeSimone stage IV throat cancer and the place went crazy, and then you could hear a pin drop.

It’s actually fun to listen to. I created an audiobook as well. I went to a studio and professionally recorded my book with my own voice. People who are not feeling well, sometimes reading a book isn’t okay and it’s not comfortable so I created this audiobook for people in that position. Even if people aren’t well and just want to listen to audiobooks in their car, the last CD actually has the announcer and my singing the National Anthem on the audiobook. So all those people in the stands new and I’ll tell you honestly, now eight years later and I still get people asking me, are you that woman who sang? I also get people saying, I remember you and I have cancer, can you help me. I remember you… my friend, my this, my husband or my wife, my lover or partner, are dealing with… do you think you could work with or talk with them? That was a great forum to be invited to sing at.

Robyn: That’s an incredible story. One question we ask nearly all our speakers is about their self-care lifestyle. Especially since this goes back nine years, how are you practicing self-care now? What is your daily discipline? What does your daily self-care routine look like?

Denise: Great question. Next month will be eight years from diagnosis, which is exciting to me. Every day I wake up I do some form of exercise. I may miss a day, but I pretty much, and like this morning I went out and walked about 3 ½ miles. I’ve walked probably 15 miles in the last four days, because it’s so beautiful. I lift weights. I go to the gym. I cycle. I meditate nearly every day. I do prayer and meditation. I start my day, because I had so much radiation to my head and neck, I have what’s technically called ‘Xerostomia’, which means dry mouth. I don’t have saliva, so I have to moisten my mouth.

Eating has been altered. I can’t eat normally the way I used to. I can’t eat the things I used to eat. I eat slowly and really don’t talk when I eat. I need, for every bite of food unless it’s soup, to negotiate the right amount of water or else I’ll choke. So I make my life easy in the morning and start my day with my high powered Vitamix and I put all my vitamins in there because I can’t swallow any vitamins. I put arugula, kale and other greens and veggies, a frozen banana and some hemp protein powder, coconut oil and I blend it up and drink about 16 oz. of that which gets my day started.

I think a bigger piece of self-care is managing stress and coming back to center. I just introduced a new product called ‘LIFE’ which stands for Live In Full Expression. I teach this class every Monday from 8:00 to 9:00 o’clock EST and I feel like when we can allow ourselves to manage our stress, to live in full expression, I not only teach that class on Monday nights which is a subscription based monthly fee that anyone can join at any time, I came out with an audio program that’s six CDs in a set.

I feel like oftentimes we’re on that treadmill and how much stress, I mean I don’t have to tell you, can deteriorate our health? So managing the stress and doing the meditation, understanding the power of our subconscious mind and how to feed the subconscious mind the proper information, that’s really the way I take 6 www.jointheselfcarerevolution.com [email protected] Read Our Disclaimer Here care of self. There are moments when you’re pulling your hair out and it’s not a matter of whether that’s going to happen in our lives it’s a matter of how quickly we can come back to center. So my focus and intention everyday is to know who the source is, to get back to that and come to center when and if things get a little askew.

Robyn: That’s another version of Center Stage isn’t it?

Denise: That’s great I hadn’t thought of that.

Robyn: I really like that. That’s such a powerful message, you coming back to center stage of your life at all times, that’s such a self-care message.

Denise: Perfect.

Kevin: It is.

Denise: Maybe that will be my next book.

Robyn: I love it.

Denise: Maybe it will be a series.

Robyn: That’s good, as you continue to work with cancer people and letting people know they have choices available to them, and to listen. That was your coming back to center stage, you really listened. Your inner voice was saying no chemo and that’s such a self-care message.

Denise: I always have to have a disclaimer, because I never want to say, people say you didn’t do chemo maybe I shouldn’t do chemo. I always say this is my story. This is my journey. This was my knowing. You have to find out for yourself because you can’t go along, just like I couldn’t buy into the fear of friends and family that love me, oh my gosh if you don’t have chemo you’re going to die. Well, that’s not true, but it has to be your own journey and that is tremendous self-care because my whole message, not only befriend don’t battle.

Anything, never mind just cancer, the second part of that and I almost titled my book this but my editor said no it will never sell, self-love is the all time greatest healer.

Robyn: Absolutely.

Denise: That’s my message. Three things PIN said to me.

1. Stop beating yourself up for nothing

When I said indignantly, I’m not. PIN said it doesn’t feel that way in here and that was an eye opening and pivotal moment in my healing. One thing someone said to me early on, it was the day after my diagnosis a church member called me and said do you want to pray? I said yes. Before we pray she said something that changed my life. She said D you didn’t do anything wrong. How often do we think oh my gosh I did it all wrong.

Here I was a health nut, a certified personal trainer, working in high tech and making the bucks living the high life, socially I was having a blast and doing the healing work, flattened by cancer. I’m eating right, exercising and all of a sudden here I am taken down and asked to sit down. That’s what my cancer wanted me to do was sit 7 www.jointheselfcarerevolution.com [email protected] Read Our Disclaimer Here down and be quiet, stop running, slow life down and listen to what we have to say. When I went on to listen to my cancer tell me, it didn’t feel like I wasn’t beating myself up, I really had to get down in there and say this looks good on the surface but what the heck are you doing in here?

2. The more you love yourself the less reason there will be for me to stick around

3. The more light you can hold the less room there will be for me

Those were three major healing points, teaching points, but I had to do the work, which we all have to do the work. So I looked into what I was beating myself up about and I didn’t do anything wrong so to cut myself a break.

Then number two, the more you love yourself the less reason there will be for me to be here. When you’re someone who thinks they love themselves and you’re asked to go to an even deeper level, the self-care it takes and the level of willingness I had to access to be vulnerable and look at the ways I might not be loving myself.

 What did I have to say?  Why do I have throat cancer?  What has gone unspoken in my life?  To whom?  How do I go about doing this work now?

Then number three, the more life you can hold, well, emotions and as you know everything gets stuck. We get clogged and we have these diseases because there are dense places within us that the light can’t penetrate because we’ve piled it in so deeply and so often. Therefore, one of the things I teach in my LIFE class is to really feel it. If you feel angry go for it. If you’re feeling sad don’t deny yourself the emotional release of getting into and underneath it.

I bought a wiffle ball bat and when I got angry I just wailed. I would beat the heck out of my recliner, my couch or my bed, but it was important because what happened is I started to feel like things were making more room within me so I could allow more light to come in to penetrate my being and be a being of light, which is what we’re doing here to help each other become light beings.

Kevin: Much of what you’re saying goes to this idea that we call this in or that we manifest this, that we manifest disease in ourselves. Can you speak a little to that and maybe even to not blaming self?

Denise: It falls in the category of responsibility, which means nothing more than the ability to respond. In Buddhism they say all suffering comes from resisting reality, so not only do we not want to resist reality which, you know what, the fact of the matter is I got cancer. I had 90 days to live and I had a choice to make. The responsibility needed to be on me. Oftentimes people say they live from the outside in, like something is doing something to us. It’s not happening in and through and coming through me, and again because of my spiritual gymnasium I understood the responsibility to live from the inside out.

Given that, I took 100% responsibility. No one did this to me and it didn’t mean I did anything wrong. I manifested cancer. I think we all manifest what it is that needs to be in the physical world so we can look at it, touch it, see it and deal with it. Cancer is at an all time high and I think the need for self love is right up there with it, that’s why I say my mission is to usher in a paradigm shift to begin to allow people to realize they can befriend this thing they determine a monster that something did something to them.

8 www.jointheselfcarerevolution.com [email protected] Read Our Disclaimer Here Go inside, take responsibility and start to befriend in a way to learn what the lessons are. No one gets out alive everybody has their day with God. Everybody has their day of death, we don’t know what it is so my message is not to only usher in a paradigm shift to befriend it and learn, but it’s also to get into the place where you love yourself enough to enjoy every moment, be in the moments because moments are precious. Understand that nothing is worth getting yourself so twisted up about, even cancer, if you take the responsibility for it and embrace it as opposed to trying to keep it somewhere outside of us and fight with it. Doing that, I believe it invites us and encourages us to live in the moment because that’s really all we have.

I don’t know if I’ll live until I go to sleep tonight, I have no idea.

Kevin: Right.

Robyn: I love how you talk about how you live in the moment and that you’re continually open to what God has in store for you next. In your own words you say that every day is a gift and each day you open this gift with a heart full of gratitude. Speak to that a little more if you will and how it’s so hard for many people today it’s hard for them to live in the moment. People are living 90% in their brain space and they can’t feel what it feels like to be in the present and to feel joy.

Denise: It’s a choice. The three letters inside the word choice are ‘oic’… o-i-c; I can choose. I’ll be honest with you, I think part of being out in the world and being someone who can share and inspire, you also have to be vulnerable and authentic. I’ve had a little bit of a challenge over the past few days with something in my life and I woke up today, sat down and meditated and halfway through the meditation I found myself smiling and I said I choose today to be happy. I choose to be in the moment. I choose in the moment to create joy, because my personal mission statement is to compassionately spread joy and encourage laughter, and I’m pretty good at it.

So it’s my responsibility, if that’s my personal mission statement to maintain that within. I’m not saying we can’t be real and life doesn’t get in the way, of course it does. Come back to center stage of your life, I love that Robyn, and come back to center. When I’m thinking about and lamenting what happened in the past, you know, I had a therapist say to me one time, Denise when you get in your car and put the key in the ignition to start your car do you put it in drive and look in the backseat? I said no. She said, why not? I said because I’d smash the car. She says exactly, then why are you looking back there so much? That really made an impact on me.

So most of us are lamenting and having some kind of challenge about what happened, when it happened and you know what, like Maya Angelou said, you do better when you know better. Let that go, you know better now so let’s do better. Most often we’re worrying about the future which is insulting to God, to the power that created us because we know the power that created us is the power that can heal any situation in our lives, so when we know that and have faith and trust in what we know to be true, it’s not always easy to do that but when you do it, it allows us to come into the moment and choose joy and make a choice to be in the moment.

Robyn: That is so inspiring. I love hearing everything you’re saying today and to everyone listening, a copy of Denise’s book From Stage IV to Center Stage will be here, all you have to do is pay for shipping and handling, which is such a generous gift. Who, whether it’s your own journey with cancer or somebody that you know, everybody is touched by somebody with cancer right now and we’re seeing it in younger and younger generations, so that’s a great gift. Just pay shipping and handling and also, a sign-up bonus discount on Transform Your LIFE (Life In Full Express) audio series with a workbook. Can you talk a bit more about that?

Denise: Yes. I’ve been teaching this class for the past few years on Monday evenings and spirit was nudging me to put it down, get it into a CD format to get it out to people and there’s a workbook attached to it. Sometimes people don’t want to work with a workbook, it’s just as a bonus ad that some people do, but the product, the 9 www.jointheselfcarerevolution.com [email protected] Read Our Disclaimer Here CDs really stand on their own. I do talk to and specifically speak to the fact that people are dealing with cancer, so there’s a lot of information there for that. It also is for everybody, not just for cancer patients, anybody that wants to go deeper into their own life and looking at what it means to live fully expressed. We talk about what it means mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. I even talk about the physical aspects of taking care of ourselves and how to do that, whether it’s walking or going to the gym, so we get down into all aspects and it’s a fun series.

It’s a powerful and potent series to help people see what kinds of patterns we’ve created in our lives where we can start shifting the patterns to see how to gain results we look for and close the gap between where we are and the dream that we’re dreaming. This program helps people close that gap between the dream and where they are now.

Kevin: That’s very generous, and we’re quite grateful for that generosity which you are sharing with us in this talk today.

Denise: You’re welcome. It’s great to be here.

Kevin: The idea of self love, I think we hear this a lot and all of us know the words, love yourself or self love, could you dive a little deeper into that concept of self love and a how-to way or how you conceptualize that?

Denise: Another great question. I think in all the things we talked about today are ways in order to bolster the love we have for self, again this isn’t easy. A how-to is to begin the work called forgiveness. That’s a subject all on its own. I think we need to forgive first of all, ourselves, like all the things we live in the past about and beating ourselves up for nothing. I really feel the foundation of building a strong love of self and I’m not talking about narcissism, that’s not self love. I’m not talking about being conceited. I’m not talking about being boastful.

I’m talking about loving ourselves in a way that creates a gentleness within our own being. We all want peace on the planet and I believe when we love ourselves enough individually that we will have an inner peace that permeates the entire planet and one person at a time we can do this. So, forgiveness, to give for something else. If there are areas in our lives and it may entail journaling or looking in the mirror, it does entail looking in the mirror which is chapter 7 in my book called ‘Take a Good Look in the Mirror’.

We start working with forgiveness and start to forgive other people. Maybe you write about all the things that you are not able to forgive and ask why. Why am I not? Get deeper into it. Louise Hay has been a phenomenal teacher in our lifetime and she always said go look in the mirror and say I love you. Well, I decided to start that work but I took it a little deeper, because I felt like if you just walk by a mirror and say oh yes I love you, you can actually avoid your eyes. So I stood in front of the mirror and I wrote this entire process in chapter 7.

It’s a personal process I went through, but I feel like if we can share that with people, I have encouraged people, men and women alike, to do the mirror work that it takes and not just say I love you but to actually look at yourself, even if it’s 15-20 seconds up to a minute, that you can look in the mirror and say I love you. So I started this work which wasn’t easy and then I decided I was going to put on lipstick and kiss myself in the mirror. Then, when I entered that room again I would be reminded. We need reminders in our lives, because life gets us going and we’re all busy. I call it ‘take a pause’.

We need something to invite us to pause. Everyday I send what’s called the daily dose out to 1400-1500 people all over the world. It’s an invitation. It’s a sentence, maybe a little story, a quote from anyone from Rumi to anybody that inspires me. It’s just an invitation to pause, so those lips on the mirror were and are a reminder to pause and think, oh yeah, I love myself. Be gentle with yourself. When things start going crazy and we start 10 www.jointheselfcarerevolution.com [email protected] Read Our Disclaimer Here beating ourselves up or we aren’t doing things… I was raised by an all Italian family. We love to eat, to bake and my mother was a sugar addict and actually died from diabetes. I too can get going on the sugar thing and then I’ll all of a sudden look at myself and say, I don’t do it now and if I do, do it then I say is that really loving myself?

Sometimes I may say you know what yes I am, and I’m going to eat an ice cream because I want to. I don’t think we ever reach the acme of self love, in fact, I know we don’t. There is no such thing. I think it’s every day, every moment we’re being invited by life to practice loving ourselves.

Kevin: Life is a practice of loving the self and self-care, which is such a critical component of this, a way to show yourself that you’re loving yourself, all the self – mental, spiritual, emotional and physical – as you shared earlier.

Robyn: We’re coming down to the final few minutes and we’ve had a question come in, which reads. If cancer really takes 10 or so years before it’s typically diagnosed, what are your words of wisdom for those many of us, as we all have cancer cells in our bodies, just so this does not have to manifest? What are your ideas around that question?

Denise: My ideas are that you apply what we’ve talked about here today, and there’s a lot going on in our environment. There’s a lot about GMOs, Trans fats, about the foods we put in our bodies and how it’s important to create an alkaline system. Cancer hates two things…

1. Oxygen 2. Heat

If you really want to self-care and there’s no guarantee you won’t manifest cancer. Most of the time if we have a lot of fear around something we’re calling exactly what we’re afraid of to us, so let’s not be afraid of, oh my God what if I ever do? You know what, you’ll deal with it trust me. It may be the way you die but don’t let it ruin your life. If I die from cancer it wasn’t going to steal all the moments I had between that breath and the last breath I took, which is another topic we can discuss, but I believe the best way to do that is by taking care of yourself on all those cylinders – mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.

 Pay attention  Oxygenate yourself  Keep yourself in shape  Get out and exercise

Do everything you can including having fun, because food can be fun. Find the high vibration foods and live your life in a high vibration. I teach sound healing. I’ve been studying it for 15-16 years and have an entire workshop called The Sound of Your Dreams that I teach where I talk about vibration. Einstein said match the frequency of that which you desire and it can’t help but be yours. It is not philosophy it’s physics. So if you really want to be healthy then match that vibration and hold it. Maintain a higher vibration with the foods you eat, with the way you think, with how you speak even down to how you sleep and we can make changes here on earth.

Robyn: I think it’s great that you’re talking about this. In fact, we started this whole month of empowerment with a sound healer, Dr. Sharry Edwards, who talked about having dominion over your health through your voice. Now you’re speaking about it and our final speaker is Dr. Katherine Birch-Storey, who is going to talk about frequency medicine and acutonic, so it’s neat that people wouldn’t think of empowerment and sound frequencies with frequencies being a form of empowerment. Thank you for touching upon that.

11 www.jointheselfcarerevolution.com [email protected] Read Our Disclaimer Here I have to say this has been an amazing hour with you, Denise. I’ve been so excited after having met you a couple times live this year and last. I was so touched and inspired by your story that I wanted to bring you online to our Self-Care Revolutionaries and growing community, knowing that this recording will be available for our listeners now as well as future audiences as well.

Denise: That’s great.

Robyn: We love what you’re doing. Your book is fantastic and I’m glad everyone can get that book for just shipping and handling, that’s so generous.

Kevin: We want to reiterate the point that you truly are an embodiment of the statement love conquers all.

Robyn: Yes. For everyone, Denise’s website is DeniseDeSimone.com. If you have any questions for the Self-Care Revolution team you can reach us at [email protected]. If you want to bring friends to the revolution you can do that at JoinTheSelfCareRevolution.com, we are becoming stronger in members and more empowered with each passing month. Please spread the good news of all we’re doing.

We thank you so much Denise, you are amazing. Thanks for being with us.

Denise: Thank you it was great.

12 www.jointheselfcarerevolution.com [email protected] Read Our Disclaimer Here