What Would You Gift This World if You Were Dying?

I wrote my first book in under 6 months. That’s because the way that it came about was what I call a “fortunate crisis.”

At the time I was living in a very beautiful home in Maui. I was working at an organization called Self-Help Housing. I'd actually spearheaded a project to build an entire Land Trust community of 26 homes for poor native Hawaiians as the Maui project manager.

It was very fulfilling in a sense, but what I really wanted to be doing was counseling. Specifically the intuitive work that I do, helping people reconnect with their inner guidance system and enjoy the clarity and sense of well-being that brings.
For the third time, I had given my 2 weeks notice that I was quitting, so that I could do the counseling work full-time. I quit 3 times because they had a hard time finding my replacement, so I kept agreeing to “another 2 weeks.”

I decided that before leaving the job I should have a health check up. I knew it was probably going to be a long time before I had health insurance again, given how things were back then. (This was about 12 years ago.) So I went in for a check-up the Tuesday before my third “last day” that was going to be that Friday. My doctor discovered some things during the check-up that led her to believe that I had a very advanced case of a rare cancer. She was very upset and said, "Oh my gosh, we've got to get you in for further tests immediately."

I said, "Well, you know my insurance ends in just a few days. Is there time for me to get the test before my insurance ends?"

She said, "No, and not only that, but even if there was, if the test comes back positive and then your insurance ends, you won't be insurable."

Remember, this is all before the Affordable Care Act, so health insurance was not guaranteed to be accessible to all people. Specifically, it wasn’t accessible to sick people, unless they were full-time employees somewhere that offered insurance and could continue being so through their illness. So I start thinking that maybe I should stay in my job a little bit longer to work all the health issues out.

I got in touch with the Executive Director, and said, “Hey, I can extend by another couple of weeks if you need me to.” And she replied, "No, we found someone, and she'll be starting on Monday. It's okay for you to go ahead and end this Friday as planned." Internally I went, Oh great!

I called my doctor and told her this and she said, "Oh no. Well then we absolutely cannot schedule this test. We have to get you emergency health insurance, and then we'll do the test."

She connected me with a social worker and then there was this whole rigmarole that went on for several months. For the first couple of weeks I just sort of went alternately between crying because I thought that I was dying, being at peace with the idea that I was dying, and believing, “No, I'm not dying.”

So I was bouncing around all these different ideas in my head, and my emotions were all over the place right along with the ideas. Then after about two weeks I essentially accepted it and I said, You know, maybe I am dying. If I am, what do I want to do with these last months that I may have?

And then it was just absolutely clear to me. If I'm dying, I want to leave a trail behind.

I started life with a really hard, hard childhood. I attempted suicide the first time when I was nine years old. I kept trying until I was 21, when my little sister found out and was so upset that I realized I couldn't intentionally leave the world while she was still in it. So then I stopped.

Thankfully, I was eventually able to make a very happy life for myself and I was living a fantastic life by the time this all came about, but it took a lot to transition from that first part of life to that second part of life. And I wanted to leave a trail for others to follow so that they too could know, no matter how unhappy they were, that there was a way out of it, and that it was worth it.

So I said, Let me write that book. And so I began writing, and the book just started pouring out of me. I barely slept. I would go to sleep and I would be dreaming about it and I'd hop up out of bed at two in the morning and start writing again. I worked at it seven days a week. All I did was sleep a minimal amount, eat things that I could prepare very quickly, and type away at that book, seeing counseling clients a few times a week.

I wasn't quite making the rent. I had two months rent as security deposit, so I had to let one of the pre-paid months go toward paying the current rent, which thankfully my landlord agreed to.

Eventually they did get me this emergency insurance called Quest that is available in Hawaii. Then they scheduled the test and I was able to find out very quickly that I actually did not have any sort of cancer. It was probably abnormal stats due to stress, and really I was fine.

By the time I found out that I wasn't actually dying, I had gotten the book to the point where I was almost done. I knew that if I didn't go ahead and keep pushing through to finish it, I never would. In fact, a decade before when I lived in San Francisco, I had had an editor at Harper Collins Publishing San Francisco interested in a book that I had talked to him about. He had asked me to submit a proposal and a few chapters. I just couldn't get my act together to do it. Now that's a hard opportunity just to have an editor at a big publishing house like that willing to read your stuff. There are usually so many gatekeepers to even possibly have that chance, and I just couldn't follow through.

I knew that I had to run with the momentum I had due to the health mix up. So I powered through and got the book written in another 2 months. Two weeks after I finished it, another pivotal event in my life happened, which I'll tell you about in another story. But the bottom line is, that book really gave birth to itself in a very short period of time when I realized that it was now or never.

I share this story with you to inspire a bit of reflection in you.

What’s your dream delayed?

What contribution would you want to leave to this world if you knew your time was limited?

Whatever your answers to these questions are, I ask you to please get on with it. Don’t wait for the time to be perfect. Don’t wait to feel perfectly ready.

Don’t ask of the world that it threaten to kill you before you’re willing to get on with living.

Photo Source: Jerry Downs

Resteems always appreciated