This is not a book about illness, but about great love, gratitude, and miracles. It is about saying yes and not no, light and not darkness, and great opportunities and not great insults. It is a journey of the heartand not of the body. It is one of opening in trust instead of contracting in fear. It is one of learning and growing, not resisting and resenting. It is my journey, and it is the journey of Team Suzette. Perhaps the triumph over cancer, or anything, is not measured in the number of our days but the openness of our heart during this mysterious, majestic, magnificent and often messy journey we call life. No matter what our life challenges to truly dance to the rhythm and pulse of God. To somehow, with all our humanness, keep opening time and time again to allow our light to shine. For if our heart closes during any journey then we have traveled nowhere and learned nothing. In the wink of an eye our diagnosis can detour our once seeming predictable and planned footsteps in the direction of unforeseen vistas and treacherous paths. With a magician's sleight of hand the cards of our life are now shuffled differently and we ask in surprise and shock ..."What happened?" Our breath, another sunrise and the number of hellos and good-byes before our final farewell are no longer taken for granted as our gears now jam in the stark light of diagnosis. We all walk through our lives in a hypnotic trance until something comes along that grabs us by the shoulders and shakes and wakes us to stare face to face with reality. Then the delicate thread of our life is felt deeply as if for the first time. Not unlike a seamstress carefully reeling the silk, we are reminded of how easily this precious gift can be snapped away from us. We sense the ominous breath of the diagnosis on the nape of our neck, reminding us of our fragility and impermanence, sending chills down our spine. We enter diagnosis, staging and then treatment, or any challenging life circumstance, and tend to put our sights on the future. Our life will begin again once chemotherapy ends, we feel better and are back to work. We live in waiting for some desired outcome. However, the journey is everything. If we are looking at some optical illusion of a needed end, we don't feel and experience the blessings and lessons that are right before us. We miss the present moment that is our life. The moment that is both the neck of the hourglass and that also widens into eternity. To experience our physical and emotional pain takes great strength. However that is often our path to discover from our experience the truth of who we truly are. We then bring meaning to what is given and allow it take us deeper and deeper into awakening. Cancer, or any seeming trial or misforunate, can become our teacher. Stripped to nothing, tossing asside what is frivilous and keeping what is essential, the light then shines brighter on what is real and true for us. The stillness and silence within our own wilderness of healing brings gifts of clarity and knowing. Out of the mud grows the lotus blossom. What follows are fallen petals along my path The treasures I found in the deep waters of my experience. This is not a "how to" book. There are many of those written to guide one in their chosen discipline. It is instead a compass pointed in the direction of all things healing. Reflections, inspirations and lessons from my journey as I step by step, moment to moment, breath to breath traveled along my healing path. They are the words of one soul moving through this crazy, unpredictable yet glorious ride of life. If it helps one soul navigate thir own treacherous waters to a calmer show, then I am honored and grateful.