The Medicine is in The Poison.

Unique Perspectives: The Medicine is in The Poison.

By Kim Stevens

In most worlds, getting diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer is not a good thing. 

But for me, in retrospect, I can tell you getting that diagnosis, with all the surgeries and treatments that came with it, was one of the greatest miracles of my life.

I found so much beauty in the experience. I learned how loved I was. I met the most incredible people. I discovered aspects of myself – my strength, resilience, courage against unknowable fear – that I never knew existed. 

And when my dad died, an endless wellspring of miracles came from that experience, too.

It’s the famous Albert Einstein quote all over again: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

To those empowering words I’d add: If you decide on the latter, if you decide that everything in your life is a miracle, then the miracle is baked into each situation you encounter – even a stage 3 cancer diagnosis or the death of your beloved father. 

That’s how I choose to live my life.

I’ve learned the medicine is in the poison. Any incident can not only be made good but also be made miraculous. Inside the poison, I always find whatever it is I need to heal and then skyrocket to another level of existence after having gone through the experience and realizing all the gifts it brought my way. I call this discovering the collateral beauty of life.

Some people use the phrase “collateral damage” to refer to the fallout of a bad circumstance, but I don’t subscribe to that idea. Because I’ve decided to follow Einstein's “everything is a miracle” route, there is no such thing as collateral damage for me. There is only collateral beauty.

I really believe this is the way of the universe. Once we decide the world is a benevolent place – life is good, there’s a higher power that’s got my back – then when we’re in the thick of the poison and it’s seeping noxious gasses everywhere, we can clear the air. Through the mist, we’ll find the medicine inside. 

It’s not easy to do. I know it’s not. And this practice takes a tremendous amount of discipline because you have to train your mind to remember that it must seek out miracles in every circumstance. But trust me, the moment you decide the world all around you is filled with miracles, each time you go looking for those miracles, you’ll always find them.