Cancer was a wake-up call for me. Not so much for changing my eating or exercise habits; All in all, I hadn’t treated my body too disrespectfully over the years. Instead, cancer woke me to life again.

What do I consider important? Where do I really want to be in life? I’m happy? Soul searching and questions flooded my mind during my diagnosis, surgery, and chemotherapy.

Questioning what I was getting out of life, reassessing my wants and needs, was a powerful gift and for which I am deeply grateful. Now that I have awakened to my life again, I am faced with a challenge that I believe many survivors face. How do I avoid falling asleep again?

During my chemotherapy, I wrote a blog to capture and share my experiences with friends and family. From time to time I reread my blog. It is becoming increasingly difficult to fully identify with the person who went through that experience. However, the blog helped me stay awake long enough to set new directions in my life. In the end, avoiding falling asleep required being honest with myself. He could have died of cancer. I fought cancer with surgery and chemotherapy, and I kept my body alive. Was I willing to allow my newly rediscovered spirit to die as I fell back into a semi-dreamlike existence as I walked through the day living in “default”? I chose to fight to keep my spirit alive as tenaciously as I fought for my body.

If you are a cancer survivor, whether you are currently receiving chemotherapy and / or radiation, or have been declared “cancer free” for years, don’t let the gift you were given rot on the vine. He was blessed with a wake-up call that gave him the opportunity to reflect and assess who he has been, who he is, who he wants to be, where he has been, and most importantly, where he wants to go.

Take time each day to sit and breathe. One piece of advice I was given while in treatment was to learn to distinguish between the important and the urgent, and to do what was important. What is more important than living a life aligned with who you are, with the “shape of your soul”? That, I think, is the important thing.

Every moment life offers you options. In the book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament we are told: “Behold, I have set before you today life and good, and death and evil.” Choose life: the life of your real self, not the self conditioned by what the world has told you to be. Cancer gave you the gift of awakening who you really are. Take up the challenge and meet it by living the most amazing life you want.