When your resting face is sad… 
Turn that frown upside down!
If You’re Struggling To Force A Smile- Turn
Your Frown Upside Down!
So yes, fun play on words, but for real there are DARK days with cancer and there are DARK days when you’re grieving. Whether you lost a loved one to cancer, or anything for that matter, or you just received a dreaded diagnosis, dark days will follow.
So whatever brought you to my site, I want to help you see things from a different point of view. Just as my buddy Stitch demonstrates above, sometimes it’s just about perspective. Yes, this sucks! No, this is not fair! But! Things could be so much worse!
If you’ve had to force a smile, you’re not alone. So let’s twist things a bit, so we can see it from a different vantage point (we’ll turn our frowns upside down by the end of this exercise).
Did you just get horrific news? Stay with me here because this is going to hurt…initially. Imagine you just woke up and you realize that the house is eerily quiet. Imagine you typically wake to the sound of your cooing baby, but the sound is not there. Imagine that child was kidnapped as you slept and you have NO idea who took them, or what could be happening to them!
Now take a step back to reality and feel the relief. Did you just find out you have cancer? Are your children tucked safely in their beds? Are they already grown with families of their own?
One more time, bear with me.
Did your best friend and spouse of 50 years just die to a brutal cancer? But… Did you have 50 amazing years together first? Try imagining the last 50 years had you been alone.
I’m sure you can see where I’m going here. Sometimes you do have to force a smile. Fake it till you make it and it feels real. Sometimes you have to turn your frown upside down and look at things differently in order to get that smile resting on your face. Sometimes you have to look at things through a worst case scenario lens to see that you aren’t truly experiencing the worst possible thing.
I know people who have lost babies, who have climbed out of the darkest of holes, only to have an aggressive cancer thrown at them, just when they thought things were finally looking up. But then hey! I know people who could never even conceive a baby and feel that life growing inside them.
It doesn’t make it better to know that others have it worse, but it does help your soul to realize that God’s been watching over you and helping you to have a lot of good in your life. Or at the very least, you’ve been spared of a fate much worse. Gratitude is life.
Check out my blog on Causes of Cancer and Ways to Change Course where I get into my belief in the mind, body and spirit connection behind a disease like cancer and offer interventions to address each of these contributing factors.
We all have things to be grateful for. Perhaps it’s time to make a list of what you’ve been blessed with to see that what’s been taken is not the worst, or the end. Turning your frown upside down is just the beginning of no longer having to force a smile.
Brighter days are coming and sometimes our furry friends help us to hang on till that day comes.
