Hi Susun,

A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Do you have any advice for her?

Susun’s response:

Here are my 8 steps for a woman dancing with cancer:

1. Submit. Give up. Make room for the miracle.
2. Inform yourself. Listen to your intuition. Examine all the options, but only use what feels right to you.
3. Accept support. Surround yourself with loving friends, healing music, special colors, prayer and affirmation. Create a ceremony of healing / wholing and invite your supporters.
4. Annoint your breast(s) with healing herbal oils such as calendula, dandelion, or poke. Visualize healing energies suffusing your tissues.
5. Maximize the healthy qualities of your diet:
   • Use organic olive oil and butter to the exclusion of other fats.
   • Increase your use of beans, especially lentils, and fermented foods such as yogurt, sauerkraut, miso, tamari, homemade wines and beers.
   • Include immune building and anticancer herbs in your diet:

     (1) Drink a nourishing infusion daily, especially red clover flower or burdock root or violet leaf infusions.

     (2) Use fresh herb vinegars daily, especially yellow dock, burdock, and dandelion root vinegars.

     (3) Frequent use of a long-cooked soup containing seaweed (such as kombu or wakame), astragalus root, and medicinal mushrooms (reishi, shiitake, puffballs, etc.).

6. Increase your exercise level. Take a yoga or tai chi class weekly. Walk daily. Get a weekly massage. Pamper yourself with activity.
7. Use drugs (chemotherapy, tamoxifen, anesthesia, pain killers) as required but (1) consider a short trial of a powerful herb such as poke root before resorting to drugs and (2) always combine drug use with complimentary herbs. For instance, protect the liver with milk thistle seed tincture.
8. Use radiation and surgery as needed but (1) always combine radiation and surgery with complimentary herbs and (2) be willing to set limits that you feel comfortable with, they can’t take your lymph glands if you say “No.”

For more information, see Breast Cancer? Breast Health! The Wise Woman Way.

Green blessings, Susun Weed

photos: Wise Woman Spiral © iStockphoto.com / Chuck Spidell