Barbara Walsh - Overcoming Breast Cancer Naturally: The Power of Food and Faith.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Natural Healing, Holistic Healing, Breast cancer, Breast Cancer Survival, Symptoms, Health Options, Power of Prayer, Empowerment, Health Decisions, Stress reduction, Immune Systems

SPEAKERS

Diane Belz, Barbara Walsh

Diane Belz

Hello, and welcome to The Hope Station podcast. I am your host, Diane Belz. And today we are bringing hope to you in the form of how to take control of your health now, and that is with my guest, Barbara Walsh, who is a board-certified master health coach who overcame breast cancer naturally with the healing power of food and prayer. She had no surgery, radiation or chemo. And now seven years later, she's still cancer free. Barbara, this is a miracle story. And sometimes miracles happen because we decide to do something differently. So just tell our audience a little bit about why you chose to go the natural path when that seems like for so many the scarier path.

Barbara Walsh

So, you know, if the doctor told me to do something, I would do it. And I didn't really question it until the day that they told me that I had breast cancer. And the reason why that is, is because my dad actually had died from colon cancer, I was 13 years old when that happened. And it was, it was a bad experience, obviously, right. And I saw him suffer, you know, through all those treatments. And ironically, so many years later, they were offering me the same treatments. And I thought to myself, there's got to be something else.

Barbara Walsh

Yeah, it's a scary path. But for me, personally, I think I was more terrified of the treatment protocols that were being offered to me than the natural path. You know, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And for me, it was a, I was blindsided, because I didn't have any family history of breast cancer. So it never really occurred to me that I would be at risk, you know. And so I was always very diligent and faithful with my mammograms, myself, checks and all that stuff. And I was always typically a very compliant patient.

Barbara Walsh

Is there nothing else that I could do besides this same route that I saw my dad, and many other people go down in my life. I've seen a lot of people who have, you know, had cancers and, sadly, many of them who have gone the conventional route. Didn't make it, you know, so. So anyway, the other side, the flip side of this here was this weird parallel universe going on at the time, because I have a son. And at the time, my son was 14. And so, I kept thinking about what I saw. And I kept thinking about my son, and I thought, I don't want him to experience what I experienced. Because it, it was a terrible experience. And now on top of that, when I went to the doctor, I asked the questions, how did this happen? I thought I was responsible. And you know what, sadly, my doctor could not tell me why it happened. And I hated that. Call me a control freak, but

Diane Belz

I'm the big why person to I want to know why. Like, and they don't seem to have a lot of answers. As you said they have the same protocols. This is like a 40 year difference in time.

Barbara Walsh

Yeah, absolutely.

Diane Belz

And the same exact things are being done. And I walked with my sister and, I watched my brother-in-law walk through this journey, and I and I said, I will never do this. So, I'm, I understand where you can say, I saved myself by almost killing myself, even though I will eventually die anyway.

Barbara Walsh

That's, that's exactly it, you know. And then my husband asked the doctor at the time, he said, you know, well, if my wife does these things, will she be cured? And the doctor said, Well, you know, there are no guarantees, we'll consider it to be a success if there's no recurrence of cancer within five years. And if you are

Diane Belz

a success story,

Barbara Walsh

yeah. And I thought, I thought five years, are you crazy? You know, and I thought to myself, if I am gonna live only five years, I don't want to live it that way. I don't want to live sick for five years. I mean, if if all I had left if that was all the time I had left. I thought I would just rather live and then die and not be alive and feel like I'm dead.

Diane Belz

Right are so sick. You wished you were dead.

Diane Belz

Exactly. Exactly. That's exactly right. And so, you know, as I, you know, set him up mentioned in my intro that, you know, part of my journey had to do with prayer. I couldn't really make the decision to go right into treatment, although there was a lot of pressure to do that. And I really needed time to process it. Because anyone who has been diagnosed, it's like, they tell you, you have a diagnosis. They want you in surgery the next day, the day after surgery, they want you to start chemo and then right after that, they want you in radiation. And then for me, I had a estrogen positive breast cancer. So for that, they wanted me to be on Tamoxifen, which is an estrogen blocker for like the rest of my life. And I kept thinking to myself, five years no recurrence in five years, if I do these treatments, everybody knows that radiation could cause cancer. I mean, think about it when you go. When you go to the dentist, right? They want to take a little tiny X ray, they load you up with a metal vest, all the techs go running out of the room to take this picture for two seconds. Okay. So we know that that's a dangerous thing. We know it's it's well documented that chemotherapy causes cancers, all kinds of other cancers. We know that. I don't know if people know this. I didn't know it, but I found out that tamoxifen causes uterine cancer. And so I thought to myself, if I bombard myself with all of this stuff, it's a good bet, that I would probably have a reoccurrence within five years, if not five years. You know, soon afterward, I think,

Diane Belz

after going through all the pain and the sickness, and that, you know, post op surgery. Yes. So talk about how prayer helped you make that decision?

Barbara Walsh

Yeah, so I went home. And I was trying to get a second opinion at a very, very well known, like, the biggest Cancer Center here on the East Coast in New York City. And I couldn't get in there right away, I had to wait, which turned out to be a blessing, actually. Because it gave me the time to like, I prayed a lot. And I was really seeking God for an answer, like, what should I do here? And you know, through that time of prayer, I just felt really led to just research just figure out learn what's happening to me learn learn what I'm up against. Because at that, at that point in time, I was sort of facing something, I had no idea what all the implications of it were,

Barbara Walsh

And then the other side of it was I I wanted to know why. Back to that whole. Why? Because the doctor couldn't tell me why. And that's when I learned some pretty fascinating stuff. I learned that, number one, it takes cancer 10 years to grow in a person's body before it could even be detected. Because before it could be felt or picked up on a mammogram or any other type of screening. And I thought to myself, holy smokes, this has been going on in my body for 10 years now. And I didn't realize that that was what was happening. And, and there are lots of reasons why that happens, which we can come back around to later, if you want. And so I thought to myself, Wow, that was in 10 years. And then I learned about, you know, the power that is really built into our bodies naturally that we have to heal. There's a healing mechanism our bodies are made with it designed with it. I mean, part of the master design of us, you know, because if we didn't have that in us, I mean, we just, we'd die, by coming into contact with anything really we wouldn't be able to survive.

Diane Belz

So we have an immune system, we have a healing system inside of us. How have you been that feel when you realized that?

Barbara Walsh

I thought to myself, I thought I knew this but apparently I knew nothing. And so I thought I thought that was fascinating. And then the next thing I learned was how the heck do you support that healing process in your body? You know, and that is where I found out about the power of nutrition. Seriously, I prior to this, and obviously 10 years way before this diagnosis came along. I never really thought much about what I ate and how it impacted my body. It never really I just never really thought of it in those terms. It was just like I was hungry, I ate something, it tasted good, I ate it. You know, that mean, the extent of my concern about the things that I ate really had to do with whether or not it was going to put weight on me, was it going to make me fat? Or is it going to make me skinny. That was the only that was like, Really, my only understanding of it is as far as it applied to my body, but it's so much greater than that. It's so much bigger than that. And so I found out about that I found out about herbal things that exist from nature. Again, something else that's like, inherently built in to nature, like even the things about the nutrition, it's all of these nutrients, and vitamins and, you know, stuff that does amazing things for your body, nach all built into that. So I thought it was fascinating that, you know, God designed our bodies in a certain way. And then He also designed all of these other things that we could take advantage of to support our bodies and our health. And, and feel amazing, you know, when we eat them, and whatever, so that when we use them as you know, those tools. And so, as I thought about this, I thought, let me think about this now. So if I go the conventional route, um, it could be five years before I have a recurrence, okay? If I decided not to do anything at all, which of course was not an option. I thought it could probably be 10 years before the cancer that's in my body moves, you know, progresses to the next stage. So it was like kind of like a crapshoot. It was like, you know, it was like a 50/50 shot either way, that's what

Diane Belz

a coin toss will call it.

Barbara Walsh

Exactly. That's, that's a better, you can edit me. It's a better way.

Diane Belz

I was just thinking, yeah, one gives you lots of options. And then the other gives you two, two paths that you could have taken the conventional path, which when you look down further down the line, you're saying, that doesn't look like a pleasant, healthy path to go on. Because I could do this, which causes you're looking, there's like a domino effect a possibility. And then you're saying then there's this other path there, you know that you're taking control of your own health, that you realize you do have the power to heal yourself that the Lord has given us, both a body and herbs and nutrients and other things to solve it. Which path are you going to choose? What was the deciding factor that if you didn't even have to flip the coin anymore?

Barbara Walsh

It's true.

Diane Belz

This is a better path?

Barbara Walsh

Yeah, the deciding factor was I met a woman who she had been diagnosed with breast cancer stage four breast cancer 20 years before my diagnosis. And at the time, when she was diagnosed, it was way before there was the internet, there was nothing to really, there was nothing to research, you know what I mean? But she had met somebody else, who, again, in her area at the time, they everybody thought she was crazy. But she met this other woman who had done some natural things. And she decided to try it. And it blew me away. Number one, because I have never met a person, maybe you have who has lived 20 years after a cancer diagnosis of any kind, let alone be living a thriving life after that.

Barbara Walsh

And so she said this to me, and it was like, so insightful. She said, You know, if you're even thinking about trying this, you know, you have more time number one than then probably the doctors are telling you because like I mentioned before, there's this huge rush to get you into into this conventional treatment. And not only that, but there's a lot of scare tactics and tactics. It's scary and it's fearful. And they they really impress upon you the fact that you need to make a decision or you're going to die tomorrow. And she said to me, you're not going to die tomorrow. You do have a little bit of time, she said and you know what, if you want to try it, you might want to see if it works for you. Because if it doesn't, you can always go back for surgery and radiation and chemo and they'll never turn you away. And I thought, Wow, that's awesome. That's it myself because, you know, it's such a big decision. You know, it wasn't like it was an all or nothing decision because for me it was like, am I going to live or am I going to die? But it wasn't like I you know I love the idea that I had that as an option, something to keep in my back pocket. You know what I mean?

Diane Belz

Well, I think and all of us, no matter what our decisions are options always feel better. It feels like then we, we have some power in and where we're going in our life. You know, if you're saying this is the only way we feel like we've been stripped of our own power to decide, because we, we have only one option. And it also when you're talking about it is just having someone say, step back, because how many of us make a really good decision when we're under some kind of emotional strain and fear? That's a big one. That's a big one to say, when we're in a fear mind, then that survival mechanism in our brain takes over. And it's just like, I want to stop being afraid. So do whatever you need to do. So I can stop feeling afraid, even if it makes me feel horrible. Because I don't want to feel afraid.

Barbara Walsh

Yeah, it's a it's a total desperation, mindset. It's a knee jerk reaction, really. And you know what, you're right. I don't think I have ever made one good decision that's been rooted in fear. Not one. In my whole life. I'm sure I have made many, but they were never really the best decisions. Because you're not thinking clearly you're just you're just getting like this crazy survival mode. You're terrified, like, Oh, my God, I gotta do something right now, you know, but I think that was was huge. With that woman said to me, you know, you have a little more time. And you know,

Diane Belz

She gave you back your power.

Barbara Walsh

Absolutely. And not only that, but I really believe that God gave me that power, because he opened up like this whole world to me that I just was clueless about, I did not know it existed. I did not know about the the power that we inherently have, by the choices that we make, you know, and so

Diane Belz

a little bit about that power that you've learned about, and then talking about the healing, the treatment program that you decided to take.

Barbara Walsh

Okay, um, well, I think that all of that was instrumental in giving, giving me the power back having that control. I guess I'm a control freak. But for me, it was like, it was so important. I hated the idea that I was being forced into a corner. You know what I mean? I didn't like that idea. I mean, who would really and so I just, as I looked it over, and I thought it, it made so much more sense to, to nourish my body so it could heal, then to bombard it with poisons, hoping that maybe, if I survived that I would get well, you know, and so I just was like, okay, okay, God, I'm all in this is the path. Because the other side of it too, is, once I made that decision, and I had all those options laid out for me, I had so much peace, like you were just talking about how you don't want to be afraid. I was not afraid. Because it was like, it made sense. And I felt like I knew what to do. Weirdly, even though I did, I had never known what to do in this arena before.

Barbara Walsh

So I just went all in, I was like, Okay, I'm doing it. And I literally changed everything, I changed the way I ate. And that included. And I included doing a lot of things like prior to this whole wake up call that I had with breast cancer. As I mentioned before, I was just like didn't really take good care of myself. I didn't know I wasn't taking care of myself, though, that I think is a key it was just like the way I was raised the types of foods that we ate, you know, and, you know, and this is something that I had to just come to terms with like, alright, I can't feel bad about that. Now, I just didn't know better you like you don't know what you don't know. And so, but that doesn't mean that you can't make the change, right? So I decided okay, I'm gonna do this. So I decided doing eating a lot of vegetables, organic vegetables. I did a lot of juicing. And the reason why was because I learned about through that other all that learning stuff I learned about the power of detoxification, like it's super, super important to to lower the the burden of toxicity that we have on our bodies because we want to have a really strong immune system. If you have that strong, strong immune system number one, you you, your body would eradicate any type of cancerous activity that might be going on within that 10 year timeframe where you're oblivious, your body will take care of it and you just won't have to worry about that it just does it on its own. Or if you're someone like myself, and you find yourself faced with a diagnosis. The strong immune system is the key that you In a need to heal. So, so I focused on detoxification, I did a lot of juicing, I changed the diet, I moved away from processed foods, fast foods, and sorry, sugar. I moved away from those things reluctantly, it wasn't like I jumped out of bed every day isn't Yeah, I want to do this. It wasn't that it was like I want to live. And if this is what it takes, and I would tell myself that every day, there were days, like, you know, because it was such a radical change that I was making. There were days when I thought to myself, I don't know if I can do this. And then I would remind myself, like, no matter what, this is going to be infinitely easier than going through chemotherapy or radiation. And the other thing I would remind myself was, it's not like you're doing some weird experimental drug that nobody has heard of before. Nobody knows what the outcome is. And nobody knows what the long term side effects are. It's never going to hurt you eat more broccoli.

Diane Belz

It hurts me. I can't eat broccoli, I love. So many clues are in there. Because when you're saying, I don't know that the Bible verse Be not afraid, I go before you always come follow me, and I will give you rest. So this is when you're looking at it that how people get us to do things. And if you look at how many scare tactics are applied to our health, our wealth or well being all the time, because it wants to lead us in a direction that we do feel backed in that corner. And Barbara said, This doesn't feel right. I don't want to feel this way. And when you made a different decision. Peace is a clue.

Barbara Walsh

Totally, totally.

Diane Belz

Am I feeling peace, in this moment. And I remember the different, you know, decisions I had to make. And one of them was with my husband. He had a cardiac, he went into cardiac arrest. My son was our sons were working with him, they resuscitated him but he was in a coma. He was you know, he never regained consciousness. And I said, this is not what he wants. He did not ask me to give him you know, extreme treatment or trying to revive him or bringing back he was probably mad that they did already but we had that discussion with my sons. And I was at peace to say it's time to let him go. There was no, there was nothing that saying you need you need to fight you need to bring it back. Because number one, that's not we agreed as a couple we would not do that. We would not go to extreme measures. For if we're, we're gonna die, we're gonna die now. I know that. But that was the choice we made. And I just felt at peace. So you know that you're, I feel that there is a right answer. And when you're looking and saying what gives you peace, and I was talking to someone today, and I said, Are you feeling at peace? She said no. Well, when were you feeling peaceful? Go back to that place at the time.

Barbara Walsh

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's so true. Because the Bible says that, you know, God's wisdom travels on a pathway of peace. And so when I, you know, I would cling to that, and I would say this is this is the peaceful path that He has for me. I mean, it's a weird path. It's an unknown path. It's an out of the box path.

Diane Belz

But it's not a weird path. It's not an unknown path. They just sort of, you know, the medical, pharmaceutical, you know, has sort of erased that history. That for generations before I know that we're living longer, but are we living more healthy? Are we living longer and healthier lives? Are we just living longer lives?

Barbara Walsh

Yeah, you're right.

Diane Belz

ries, centuries, they are not: 1000

Barbara Walsh

Um, to be honest with you big, a big factor involves how I manage stress. That was huge, a huge, huge factor. I think that's something that we all kind of overlook. Because we are in a stress induced society, our lives are filled with stress, I think the fact that I think it's so cool, we have this amazing technology, like we could be in different places, we can be in different parts of the world and still interact with one another. But the flip side of all of that cool technology is, we have this constant pull on us 24/7, which I think adds to the stress level that we have, we're just constantly and never shutting off. Yeah, we very, very rarely choose to have downtime, we're just, we're just always on, you know what I mean?

Barbara Walsh

So stress management was huge, for me a big, big factor. And another big factor for me was, I'm going to be using the E word had to start exercising. Now I myself am a gal who the exercise was never my first love, I was never one of those people that love to do exercise. But I had to change my mind about a lot of things. I mean, I had to change my mind changed my mind about what I was eating, change my mind about how have, you know, even acknowledging the fact that I was living in chronic stress it wasn't like every day, my house wasn't crashing in , but the way the body works is that, it doesn't differentiate between whether or not you're going to be hit by a car in two seconds, or whether or not you're just carrying the stress all the time. If you have finances or marital issues or issues with your kids or whatever, your body just treats it all the same. And when we're in that state, and I had been in that state for years, without knowing it, you're basically your immune system turns OFF period, because you're stressed. And the reason why it turns off is because your body's reserving all that energy to help you to fight that bear or, you know, tame that tiger.

Diane Belz

So instead of doing that, you're you're so it's reserving is it cortisol, what is it the thing that is holding on to when you're in chronic stress.

Barbara Walsh

Well, cortisol gets released, that's number one. And then what that when that happens, it does a couple things. It, this is going to be off on a bunny trail, sorry, but it does a couple things, it it causes your body to hold on to fat, because the your fat is like an energy reserve. That's number one. Number two, your body starts saying oh my gosh, we need to reserve all the energy that we have to divert it to our muscles, so we can run away or fight or whatever. And when that happens, it pulls it from body systems that the body deems are not important at that moment. And so things will happen, like your digestion will shut down. Because your body will say, well, we don't need to digest the food right now we need to fight. So it'll pull the energy from that. So you'll become constipated or bloated or you'll have digestive issues, then the other thing that will happen is it'll say, well, we don't need to worry about germs and immunity right now because we need that energy to fight. So it'll shut that off. And so basically, you'll have like, a whole domino effect, a chain reaction that happens when we're stressed. And it has to do with shutting down really important systems in the body that helped to maintain our immunity, and, and support and actually enable our body's ability to heal.

Diane Belz

So that was a great depiction of what's going on. Thank you that that total and absolute sense. Because our body have that primitive brain that our bodies made for that fight or flight type situation, and that the stressors in life, there's just so much and I think as you said, we're constantly feeling like there's so many things coming at us all the time. And we don't know we're in a constant reactive mode, I guess it's the best way is we're reacting, we're reacting, we're reacting, we're reacting. And then that our immune system is I've better I got more important things to do

Barbara Walsh

exactly.

Diane Belz

Our body's prioritzing for us and it might not be making the right decision.

Barbara Walsh

Well, it's making the decision based on what it's informed with at the moment, you know, because if if we were actually going to get run over by a car, we wouldn't need to have that kind of response. But, you know, most of the time we're not we're not really facing that kind of stress. But so that's why stepping back, like you mentioned before is so important because you really need to regain perspective on you know, What is the most important thing here? You know, is it? Do I need to be constantly ready to respond? Or do I need to carry every, every weight, or all the weight of every situation that I come in contact with? Or is it better to, you know, think about how that's affecting my body, and my ability to stay healthy or heal from a disease or chronic illness of any kind. And maybe it's better to, you know, cast those cares on the Lord and really believe that he's going to take care of it, you know, as opposed to me trying to figure everything out in my own limited ability to do so.

Diane Belz

It sounds like there were so many shifts that you had to make in there where and, and that's where, you know, people that I know, in the old saying the medical profession is saying, people just don't want to do that hard work. So we have to make it easy, which is the other part that our brain like it like, easy, like, easy peasy. Just give me the pill and like, get let me get on with my life. Yeah, and you made a conscious decision. So Barbara, what was going in the back of your mind think this is going to be in some ways, a hard decision, because I have to make all these changes within myself, rather than going this conventional route, or let's cut and paste and be done with it? How? How were you able to make that many changes? What were What did you do to just say, I'm doing it again, so that you could wake up every day and say, I want to live? Was that part of it? Just having that decision?

Barbara Walsh

My decision? Yeah, it was I wanted to number one, I want to see if this was going to work. Number two, I thought to myself, actually, a good starting point for that was that I thought to myself, if this doesn't work, right, I want to get my body in as good of a position as I can be in if I end up having to go into treatment. That was probably that was like a big focus for me. Because, you know, I wasn't young, you know, when I got the diagnosis, I had started menopause and everything. And so I was in my 50s, you know, so I thought to myself, I probably need to like, shape up here anyway. You know, so I could so like I so if I do end up going into that type of treatment, I might have a shot of, you know, doing fairly okay with it, you know, that I think was one of the one of the first things. And then the second thing was, you know, my husband would tell me, because some days I would wake up and I'm like, I don't know if I could do this. And he would say, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this tomorrow. And he would say don't worry about tomorrow. I'm just that sound familiar for the Bible, you know, tomorrow's has enough worries of its own. And he would, you know, he would just say to me, you know, don't worry about tomorrow, just do what you're doing right now. What are you doing right now? Don't worry about that. And that was huge. That was it was really freeing in a weird way. Because instead of me trying to think, oh my God, how's this gonna work tomorrow? How am I going to do this tomorrow? How am I do this tomorrow? It was more like, you know, okay, what am I doing right now?

Diane Belz

Awesome.

Barbara Walsh

And what's cool about that, if we can get to that space is that we become really presence in our lives. And then we can actually enjoy what we're doing at any given moment, even aside from all those changes, like when you think about like, like you were saying, it was a lot of layers because and the reason why there are so many layers to this is because we're like that our bodies are so like, I think that's an issue with conventional medicine. I'm not trying to bash conventional medicine, but the conventional medical model that we have is so is so symptom focused. I have a symptom, here's the prescription, I have another symptom, here's, you know, and those become like, we walk around, like, like mummies with all these band aids all over us, but we never really get to why the heck we have the symptom in the first place. Once you address that, the everything changes because everything in your body is connected.

Barbara Walsh

One thing that you do in your body affects something else in your body, even if they seem totally unrelated. They are all working together to maintain your health to give your body the energy that it needs. And to fulfill whatever it is that you're calling is - your body is designed to do that if we could support the process. The key though is to not look at it as so much as I have a symptom. You thinking to yourself, Okay, well, what's causing it. if I could figure out what's causing it, I have a better shot at getting rid of it. Right? Like if you have, if you have in your house, for an example, let's say you have a little, a little leak in your roof of your house. Okay? Well, you could say, yeah, look at that I got a leak over there. So you can do a couple of things, you can get a bucket, you could put it under the leak to catch the water, you could spackle over the top of it. And eventually, the water is going to soak through its backhoe, it's going to continue to drip in the bucket. And if you never really address why the heck you have the leak in the first place, eventually what's going to happen is your roof is going to cave in. Right. And it's the same thing with our bodies. It's exactly the same thing.

Diane Belz

Well, I think that that's another great analogy. And I love it analogy so that that's the truth that we're we're we don't have health care. We have symptom care. Yeah, that's taking care of symptoms, not our health. And I think the other challenge is they treat the body. But as you said, we're connected, we're body, mind and spirit. And if we're not working on all three of those, then we're just, we're never getting to the bottom of why. What is going on? And why is that going on? We want these quick fixes. That is, like you said, we're just going to put the bucket there. And then people go, Yeah, I don't want the bucket. I don't like the dripping. Let's just see if we can spackle it or plastic or something else. And it's still it's still, like you said it's a BandAid if we don't get the symptom base. So I love that I love the analogy that you're having me like, really think a long thing here. This is real. I needed to hear you speak to me today, Barbara. I love this story. So how, as a health coach, what are you doing? If you focus on on women who are having similar type issues and challenges? What are you doing to help them heal, to take control of their health?

Barbara Walsh

Well, the first thing that I do when I work with women is I helped them to sort of take stock of where they are, you know, and like in terms of I mean, I work with people, you know, in terms of breast cancer prevention, I've worked with some people who have been diagnosed with state with different types of cancers, and I work with people before they get a diagnosis. So, you know, basically, I try to meet whoever I'm working with where they're at number one, but the thing that I really tried to do is to, to empower them to let them now that, you know, if they want to see an improved improvement, they can see it, and they can affect that change. And I really try to impress that on people. I mean, I tried to tell them, hey, look, I'm living proof. I mean, here I am a lady going to be 60 Pretty soon, you know, and I have energy that I had when I was 20. And so I mean,

Barbara Walsh

God gave me the path so I could heal from a very serious disease. And that process improved everything about my body and my life, and that they can have that too. You know, and I also tell them, you know, that, like you said, I hate to do this, but I tell people, you know, there's no silver bullet. There's no quick fix. It's it's a process that we go through. It's a process that we walk through. And I that's what I do I work with people through that process. I help them to see how they can start to make some of these shifts in their life because an in their health, because it's not practical to think that you're going to change everything overnight. It might sound good, but it's not really practical. So so the point is, how do we do this? And how do we make it work with your life, so that you can adopt some things that you can sustain? And once you sustain them, sky's the limit because then everything starts to change in your body and you feel good. I think that was a major thing. Like you were saying, How did I How did I have those days where I kept, you know, I kept going to be honest with you, the more that I learned and the more that I implemented as I went, I could feel my body responding, which was pretty amazing in itself. And I had been like I said I had started in menopause when I got my diagnosis. And I had actually been one of those lucky gals that puts a couple pounds when they hit menopause and those pounds are really hard to get off you know.

Barbara Walsh

And as I went through this whole process, which basically created like a metabolic reset in my body 30 pounds just melted right off my body where I didn't even have to dye it and I was no stranger to dieting and That's a whole other podcast episode. But but you know, it just melted off and it's it stays off. I mean, I'm here I am seven years later, and I haven't gained that weight back. And so that's just that was just like a bonus, you know. So I tell people that you're going to feel changes when you have when you start to implement some of these things that might be different than you've ever done before, your body's going to respond, and you're going to feel it. And I would be surprised if you tell me if you tell me after you go through the process, and you start to feel these changes, if you don't, if you tell me you don't feel better, I will eat my hat!

Diane Belz

That's not going to be on your plan? Do they have organic hats? You need a hat if you live in Florida. You know what I love. Barbara is everything that the people who were addressing your cancer didn't do for you, you are now doing what you needed in that time for your, for your clients and your people. So really looking at like, where you are now, but empowering them to have change, because change has a chain reaction. Like once you start changing little things, you can feel that you can change other things. You're saying I have the power, but you gave them options? Yeah, you're not saying I don't have a silver bullet. This isn't the answer. There's not only one, one option. There's many options here. What has worked for me. And it's healed me. And it's like, we want that. Yeah. And if we know that it's all worth it. Oh, yeah. Because you could have gone the conventional route. I heard that Tamoxifen has awful you feel being on that. So there's all these things, but you're, it's like you're giving the power to the pill. And you're not giving the power to the people like yeah, you have power to heal and to change. Yeah, I just love everything. Everything that you said, and I think there's so much more. So one question, I want to say how did that prayer intersect with all of that

Barbara Walsh

The prayer intersected with it, because number one, I needed help. I needed help. I needed God's peace, I needed wisdom, I needed to know what the heck I was going to do. And it was like, I didn't have the full plan. But it was like it unfolded for me as I went it was like kind of like a, it was like a it was like faith really because you know, I had to just keep going on, on the things that I was learning as I would move along. And I would implement something and I would experience a change, I would implement the next thing and I would experience the change. It was like a walk really. And, and through that whole thing.

Barbara Walsh

The other side of the prayer aspect was helping me to, to stay out of fear every day. Because I could lie to you and say that I was on this path and I was I was confident every single day. I wasn't sure. Because there was I was like I don't know, on my own, really, you know, there was nobody really every day to tell me, you're doing the right thing. This is gonna, you know, have that kind of encouragement to keep the motivation. I didn't have anybody do that. But I had prayer, and I had God. And that gave me the peace to continue on that path.

Barbara Walsh

And I believe that that's part of what I do, as a health coach is I try to impart that to people to to be to be there because I know what it's like to do these things and to be on your own and wonder is this, am I going the right way? You know, and to have somebody who's walked it before you, I think is kind of a valuable thing if you find yourself in those situations. But even more than that, I always tell people, you know, if I had known I mean, the whole time I went through this process, everything I learned I thought to myself every time I thought I wish I had known this, why didn't anybody tell me this? If I had known this? If I had known I could have avoided breast cancer completely. And that's really what I try to empower people with that. You know, they don't have to wait. Don't wait until you get sick. Honestly, don't wait. You don't have to wait. You could do it right now. And you could experience an effect an amazing change in your body and your health. Right now. You don't have to be sick to do it.

Diane Belz

I love this. Like it's a remarkable story and a remarkable change. I'm hearing that if we have to go through sometimes We're being called to be the Guide to Being the shepherd. You know, we're gonna lead people in a different way than conventional wisdom has us living. Because we're sold one message all the time there's, we have the way. But then as Jesus said, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Diane Belz

Yes, absolutely

Diane Belz

The way, the truth and the life. And your your story is a testament to that. And it's a beautiful story. I'm so glad that we connected I'm so glad that you you've poured out your, your treatment plan, and your heart and your healing to us. It's been a blessed time. So I want to just thank you for that.

Barbara Walsh

Well, thank you, thank

Barbara Walsh

You so much for the opportunity to be able to just, you know, share that experience with other people I really my heart is really to help other people so that they don't have to, they don't have to deteriorate and expect to get sick and assume that that's has to be normal. And that's just the way it is. My heart is to help people really enjoy the life that God gave them in the body that God gave them have energy, be able to move, be able to just be you know, and, and not and not be sick.

Diane Belz

I love it because there is a different way that we're living when we feel we're called from the heart, you know, to do something and you were called to heal and I'm so glad that you answered that call.

Barbara Walsh

Well, thank you. Thank you so much.