This Was No Coincidence

By Mitra Mostofi and Payam Mehdizadeh

It is no coincidence that you have come to this pagecall it a page in your life, a chapter, an entire book. And that's what this is: an entire book narrating a journey through thought-provoking human emotions that make or break our lives. If you're ready for the truth then you're ready to practice living truthfully. If not, simply turn away and deny that this event ever happened. If you're still here, then perhaps you agree with me that events in our lives are "no coincidence," that they are lessons we can learn from...that our greatest sufferings can be our most profound courses in life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477280812

Mitra Mostofi

As if developing prenatally inside a Stage III breast cancer placenta during a war with Iraq werent enough, the author of this book narrates her journey on what it takes to also survive an identity crisis as a white immigrant raised in a non-affluent black neighborhood, not rich enough to be cool enough with her royal like ex-pat family. Shed had many life-altering events, but it wasn't until she reached a quagmire of life-and-death thoughts through her own journey with breast cancer at the age of 27 that she found the courage to set out on a self-awakening path.

Book preview

THIS WAS NO

COINCIDENCE

MITRA MOSTOFI

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2012 by Mitra Mostofi. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/06/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-8083-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-8082-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-8081-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012919190

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

INTRO

Preface To Write Is My Right

Chapter 1 I Had Cancer before I Was born

Chapter 2 Les Miserables Dating

Chapter 3 No More What Ifs

Chapter 4 The Calls for Help

Chapter 5 Drowning in DeNile

Chapter 6 Nerves Speed Up while the Mind Slows Down

Chapter 7 Get Your Tires Fixed

Chapter 8 The Rose as My GPS

Chapter 9 Breastfull Embrace

Chapter 10 Cancer Patience

Chapter 11 Tight Braids Can Give You a Stronger Head

Chapter 12 Place the Oxygen Mask on Yourself

Chapter 13 I Wanted to Be Loved, Not Pitied, So I Began to Love, Not Pity

Chapter 14 I Fear the Word FEAR

Chapter 15 Coming out of the Cancer Closet

Chapter 16 The Day I Got Sinaded

Chapter 17 True Forgiveness Reveals True Self-awareness

Chapter 18 Bald and Dating

Chapter 19 Answer If You Feel Like It

Chapter 20 More to Spare, Less Mindtalk to Share

Chapter 21 Weave for My Eyelids

Chapter 22 Give It a Chance, It Might Be All You Got Left

Chapter 23 Expectations and Disappointments

Chapter 24 Cope with Hope

Chapter 25 Delusions to Disillusions from Our Vulnerabilities

Chapter 26 Why I read Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy

Chapter 27 Judging a Henna Tattoo by Its Cover

Chapter 28 I’m a Walking Refrigerator

Chapter 29 No Tenacity, but No Coincidence

Chapter 30 Do Not Disturb

Chapter 31 I Fell in Love

Chapter 32 Leggo My Ego

Chapter 33 Endless Journey

Chapter 34 Concluding Thoughts

To my Baba who has taught me what it is to be a survivor and

My stepmom who has shown me what it takes to be a warrior

Cover photo also done by Payam Mehdizadeh and

henna tattoo done by Soniya Gheewala www.hennacompany.com

INTRO

Cancer was a life-altering event for me, but it wasn’t my only opportunity to wake up. You don’t have to have cancer to understand this book nor do I wish you to wait to get cancer to read this book. Simply substitute any event in your life that has affected you tremendously for the word cancer and you’ll see how unique yet parallel my journey is to the journey that takes place in our beautiful minds when we encounter challenges. If you’ve ever watched the movie A Beautiful Mind , you can see how John Nash’s life became more manageable when he accepted the truth of his situation.

I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

—Mark Twain

The repeatedly unsatisfactory outcomes of my own actions awakened me sooner than later. I chose to attend a self-awareness workshop, known as the More To Life Weekend, based on the wisdom of Dr. K. Bradford Brown and Roy Whitten. In this book, I use a few More To Life terms that I learned in the training. I will interpret three of these keywords applicable to my story. However, I have hopes that you will desire to take some self-awareness workshop in the course of your own development. Such courses provide practical techniques you can use similar to great self-help books. In addition, such courses offer a supportive environment of like-minded people searching for truth behind their problems. The More To Life Program provides coaches, mentors, and support partners that you can follow up with after a course is complete, for as long as you like. Applying the practical tools you learn to better your life in turn allows you to synergistically help the world.

The three terms I will use extensively in the book are lifeshock, mindtalk and cost. A lifeshock is any moment in your life that gives you an opportunity to pause and reflect. For me this term originally meant a moment that I would have preferred to not take place. I learned after my first positive lifeshock (i.e., one that I liked) that lifeshocks are what they are, and result in whatever we make of them. My first positive lifeshock happened when I received an email from Adriana Holt, a prolific volunteer in the More To Life organization. The email was half in Spanish but fully con amor, and she was asking my permission to post the content of one my emails on a web page promoting More To Life.

I had sent an email to many people, sharing my heartfelt thoughts. Because I did not get many responses, I started having mindtalk. Mindtalk is the chatter that we create in our heads, the (mostly) lies we tell ourselves that cause us so much heartache and misery. I had mindtalk that I had over-exposed myself, that people were going to think I’d lost it, that I had become a fanatic, or that people were going to be so overwhelmed by my philosophical communications that they would want nothing to do with me. These bits of mindtalk I later understood to be false. I gave my consent to have my e-mail published, and my content turned out to be profoundly motivational. If I had allowed my mindtalk to take over my higher self, then I wouldn’t have inspired so many people along my path, and worst of all I would have had to pay a price in my own cost process.

The cost is the amount of energy we spend causing ourselves pain, energy that we later might realize how little it was worth spending. This energy we expend wanting the people we resent to suffer or feel our sufferings is really energy we deplete in ourselves. We create toxic thoughts, planting seeds that grow our own garden of sufferings.

What I have written in this book expresses my successes in getting through emotional upheavals in my life. The More To Life teachings gave me a foundation to begin my self-awareness journey. I like to believe that More To Life would render the same effect for everyone, but my honest opinion is that it benefits only those who are ready for a deep awakening of their true self. Many get the impression that teachings of self-awareness are cult-like and intimidating. Not all the methods might work for you, but to be resistant to any form of self-awareness concerns me. I was that person for many years, frightened to discover myself. Trapped by my ego, I came up with excuses that self-awareness courses, books, and therapy cost too much, and that I didn’t have the time. All my resistance to change cost me more than my time; it ultimately cost me my health.

I’ve learned to be more open to different philosophies. The less resistant I am to learning, the more open I become to Life’s awakenings or lifeshocks. It is a lot like the fears I dealt with upon entering college. I feared not being accepted to a school and I feared the constant possibility of academic failure. I applied, I got accepted, and took school a semester at a time. I didn’t use all that was taught to me in my classes, but upon completion I felt more competent that I now had the knowledge that I might just use one day.

If you are in a long-term relationship and are ready to take courses on self-awareness, I encourage you to take them with your partner but focus on yourself. Such courses aren’t developed to feed your ego to believe you can change all the faults in others, so that’s why I advise that you focus on yourself. However, since such courses leave you with much new-found knowledge, you tend to feel a separation from your partner if he or she isn’t ready to travel a self-enlightening path when you embark on yours.

Back in the day there seemed to be more access to wisdom: wise poetry recited by people, gurus teaching life’s remedies, and more life lessons shown through sitcoms and classical movies. As technology advances, we are connected more and more via social networks and Internet communications. However, more and more is missing—wisdom from real human connection. My hope for the world is for people to live more consciously and closer to their higher self. I have faith in the institutions that teach self-awareness and techniques on how to process the challenges we are handed, to guide us in this quest. Each and every problem is so different, but the underlying causes of our reactions are similar.

This book will expose my nudest heartfelt thoughts, but I am willing to put myself out there, confident that it will inspire at least one person to begin living truthfully. My intention for sharing the occurrences from my journey is to give real-life examples. They might seem unique events that happened only to me, but I want you to focus on the lifeshock, the mindtalk, and the cost. Let this focus help you to understand how much of our dramas we can eliminate and how beautifully we can coexist in this world without them.

I will reference the sources that helped me get through it all. Feel free to learn how I take what I’m given, use my creativity and be proud of the results. Shit happens. Learn to take the shit and plant the flowers that can bloom from it!

They are not the enemy. The liar within us who created them is.

—K. Bradford Brown

Preface

To Write Is My Right

After experiencing a sixth intense lifeshock, I started journaling my thoughts and emotions throughout my own cancer journey. The amazing woman who diagnosed me inspired me to collect my thoughts into journal entries that might one day help other young women diagnosed with breast cancer. As cliché as that sounded, I accepted her heartfelt request with all admiration to her and faith that my experience would help her daughters one day.

This book wouldn’t have been completed without her motivation and would not be complete without a synopsis of her own inspiring story. Dr. H’s mother was diagnosed at 35 and died of metastatic breast cancer at 44. When Dr. H was in her third year of medical school she found a lump in her breast. Her doctor said it was nothing to worry about and that it was most likely fibroadenoma. This is a common diagnosis told to young women, the same one