Be Your Own Hero with Grace De Angeli

Today I welcome back Grace De Angeli, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018. In this episode, we'll visit about how she handled her cancer journey without letting the disease define her.

Grace learned during her journey with cancer that it was most important that she heal herself from all sides.  Whatever medical treatment she decided on, she decided to detox her body and mind first. In order to detox herself, she had to deal with and release the traumas and emotions she was keeping stuck inside. She had to cleanse her life and home in all ways.

Transcript

Magic Barclay: 1:00

Welcome back to a Magical Life. I'm your host, magic Barclay. Today I'm again joined by Grace Angel, welcome back, grace. Thank

Grace De Angeli: 1:08

you. It's great to be back.

Magic Barclay: 1:11

Now, in our last episode, we spoke about a hero's journey of breast cancer, and we kind of touched on it, and today I wanna talk about living authentically despite trauma. So how do the two things link up for.

Grace De Angeli: 1:27

Okay, so basically what it was is, when life gives you a feather, listen, obviously we, I didn't listen for the feather and things like that. And what it was is I wasn't living my authentic self. I wasn't, I was living in the shadow of someone else. I was living in the shadow of. Thought who I was meant to be, you know, I was meant to be this wife of a successful businessman in construction. And you know, you just, you're just the office girl, grace, and you just stay in the background and things like that. So, That's how I was living my life, and it wasn't who I am. I'm, I'm a very open, bubbly person. Um, I'm full of life and things like that. I like to joke, I like to be honest and I wasn't able to be honest all the time. So, you know, with that, Being diagnosed with the cancer actually was my gate to heaven. Even though a lot of people think it's a gate to hell in my way, it was a gate to heaven because I started saying, NA na na na. Now I get to say what I wanna say. Now I get to be who I wanna be. I'm going to start living the way I wanna live. And it's what I said was, All about my needs. And a lot of people think it's selfish. It's not. It's selfless because I started to look at what I wanted, prior to me being diagnosed, me and my husband, we've been married 12 years this year. And, We were going through a rocky, a really bad rocky patch in 2017, like to the point where we were both walking outdoors and even though we sort of came together in 2018, we still weren't all there. And what I noticed was I was living in his shadow, although he always used to say to me, stop living there. Step forward and walk beside me. Do you? And I do me. But what it was is I was always thinking, no, no, no, no. You know, cuz I grew up in a, in a, an Italian environment where the man stands forward, the woman just stands back and just be quiet. So, and he kept saying that and I didn't realize until when I was going through self healing. And part of the process was, like I said, I actually went to Peru myself. So To go back a little. When I got diagnosed, they told me, yes, you've got breast cancer. the moment she told me, you know, we gonna have to operate on you. We're gonna get this thing out. We're gonna get this thing out. I was about to sign, like you said, you're in a bubble. You don't know where you are, you just. Do whatever they tell you. And I was about to sign off this form for her to do an auxiliary clearance on my arm to take out my lymph nodes and to remove the tumor that they had seen. And I said, no. I said, okay, yeah, yeah. Where do I sign? And I remember my husband saying to me, grace, you need to think about this. So he, we said to her, can we go home and think about this? She said, sure, sure. Go home and think about it. That moment, I put a dream team together. My husband said, you need to put five of your closest friends and relatives and you need to create a dream team. Now, through my dream team, we sat around and we worked out what was best to do, how do we tackle this, and one of them was grace. you're gonna go back, you've gotta go back to Peru and start healing yourself from the inside out. Now, a lot of people think, okay, you drink medicine there, you drink, you know, a brew of some sort of plant medicine and you know, you just vomit. Purge, whatever, things like that. But it's not about that. It was about bringing up things, not judging them, watching them and letting them go. So what I was doing is I was healing a lot of my past. I was healing a lot of that trauma. Um, and that's where it began, but it didn't end there. See, because what happened was I got back, um, from doing two weeks of a strict detta, they call it detta over there, because I was. Plant medicine twice a day and eating a very bland meal. And, um, I get back and they're like, no, no, no, grace. Oh my goodness. It's grown, it's grown, And so I thought, okay, I gotta do something now. So back to my dream team, and I decided to go to Bali Allwood and do Aveta. And again, that's a detox of your body, but it's not just detoxing the body, it was detoxing the mind because. I'm 57 years old and I never dealt with my trauma. I never dealt with the age of 21. I'm at my birthday party, my 21st birthday party, and I am actually in a bathroom on my own, contemplating suicide when there's a room of like, I think it was about a hundred or 150 guests or having fun, having a great time. Um, and, you know, celebrating life. And there I am thinking, how do I do this? How do I kill myself? So, and what it was, it was. I was suppressed. I was in an environment that I was suppressed. I was in an environment where I wasn't able to speak up. Obviously, I've got an Italian father who was very strict, couldn't do anything. so I, I had that trauma, you know, and things like that. And then, you know, I never thought I'd be married, you know? Cuz I was always told, you'll never get married, you'll never find someone, you'll never, you know, you'll always be the, oh grace, you're such a great girl. You're such a good girl. That's why I kept getting told you're such a good girl. But I, it was never, you know, marriage material. So you are carrying all of that, you know? Then I met my husband, we met. 21 years ago now, but we met when the internet first started. It wasn't a dating site, it was way before Facebook and all of that. And because I grew up in an environment where a man needs to be loyal, if not, he's cheating on you. I grew up thinking, well, I'm not gonna go anywhere near you cuz you are cheating on me. Every time you speak to the girl, you are dating her, you are sleeping with her. See, could you understand where I'm coming from? So I had all that jealousy behind now. Fast forward to 47 years, I've got all this stuff that I need to deal with. So there I am 14 days doing a detox of Aveta, and I'm purging, I'm crying. That's the purging I did. It wasn't the body purging. The body was healing itself because I was getting rid of all of that. Rubbish that was inside of me. So I'm thinking, oh my goodness, you know, this is actually really good. And one of the greatest, greatest things I did, which helped me just recently, was I forgave my father. I forgave my father. For what he had done. But I thanked him. I thanked him and my mother for allowing me to be the person I am today. Because without that trauma, I wouldn't be that strong woman I am today. So here I am, I get back from my aveta and I get told, no grace, it's still there. Oh my God. You know? And I thought, you know what? I'm getting a second opinion. And I went and got a second opinion. So the second opinion said, you know what, grace, let's just get it out. So we got it out when they went to get it. And this is, this is my journey, like a disclaimer. I always say that to people when they went to cut it out, our Maro in Peru called up my husband literally 10 minutes before my surgeon called my husband and said, oh, I just want you to know that your wife's gonna be fine. They're not gonna find anything. and then my surgeon called my husband and said The surgery went well, just to let you know, we couldn't find anything. We still did a 10 centimeter or auxiliary clearance, but we couldn't find anything. What I'm saying is, again, this is a disclaimer. This is my journey. So I'm not here to promote what I did is the best way to go. But what I did was I started to look within and know that my problems didn't stem from the cancer. It stemmed from every other thing that I wasn't dealing with. Did it stop there? No, of course the journey with the cancer, when I say the breast cancer journey, because it was still a journey of me transforming. So we got rid of the, whatever was left of the cancer in my breast. We got two lymph node taken out that were both negative, but I still had to fix me. I still had to deal with me. So I went and did, Thena So a 14 day silent meditation. Now, this was the best because here I am doing a 14 day meditation, never meditated one minute of my life. Prior to that, I did a bit, but not, you know, we are talking almost, I think it's 16 hours a day for 14 days straight or 10 days straight, and I they were showing you how to deal with stuff, so, so you bring it up, you look at it, you let it go instead, because I. Doing it correctly. And I wasn't, taught correctly. What I was doing is I was bringing it up and it was like I was popping it in my handbag. I was popping it in a sack. So when I got home from vapa, I had a sack full of bs. And I remember going to my husband, I've, I don't know what to do. And he said, what are you talking about? And I said, I don't know what to do with all of this. And believe it or not, that was another cleanse. I started to pull things out one by one, and it was everything to do with my. Past feelings of my husband, the resentment, thinking he was sleeping with every girl he ever spoke to, being so jealous when he had female friends and things like that. And I was bringing that up. And my God, I am truly blessed to have someone. Sit in front of me and allow me to express all of that. And it wasn't through judgment. I wasn't judging him. He wasn't judging me. He was saying, I understand where you're coming from, but this is exactly what I meant by that. Things like that. It was all about us. So that's part of the healing. This is part of the journey. And have I finished? Because life always teaches you. Life has always got lessons. But what it's making me do is it lets me prepare for something else. So when I look at things now, I don't go, I, I'm not the sort of person that goes, well, I've been through cancer, so anything else is, I walk in the park cuz. Two years ago, I went through something worse than cancer. And when I say that, that was fear. And a lot of people think fear is worse than cancer. Fear would've killed me two years ago before the cancer would've because it had me by the throat in a corner, and I was dying on the inside. I was dying as a person because I. Fearful of everything. Oops. I had a headache. It must be cancer. My thumb hurt. Oops. Must be cancer. Uh, you know, I wasn't making plans. I wasn't living life. I wouldn't book the next day because I was so afraid I was, something was gonna happen, something's gonna happen, something's gonna happen. So it's learning. I had to learn to get rid of it. And the way I did that, one of the process I went through was basically look at fear like it was a person. And I basically said, you know what? I've had enough. You need to pack your. Your shit, excuse my language, and you need to get out. I have no time for you in here anymore. You need to get right out now. Don't you ever, ever come back and that was a way I processed that part of me. Do I get fearful today? Yes. I just don't let it package bags and live with me, if that makes sense. So, you know, I obviously have to go through my scans and do all of that every year, make sure everything's going well. Do I get a little bit scared? Yes, but I don't get fearful because I'm at the point where I go, you know what, grace, if nothing's there, why are you worried? If something there, why are you worried? You gotta do something about it. So it's, I, I, I don't, I can't predict the future. So what I've gotta do is I've gotta look at it in a different way. I've gotta look at it and say, you know, I'll deal with it when I get to that point. I can't deal with it before that. I just can't. It's impossible. I don't know what's gonna happen. and my husband always says to me, you know, like at one pa time, I, oh, you know, my shoulder must be cancer. Oh, my hip must. And then my husband was like, wow, you're very, um, greedy. You know? And that's what I realized. I'm like, what am I saying to myself? So now all I say is, I'm good, everything's good, I'm good. And I don't. Verbally. I say it from the core of my being. I'm good. You're gonna be okay. And the reason I wanted to also say that the reason why it helped me forgive my father is because my, I, I recently lost my father just February this year. And when he left, I was at peace because I had gotten the chance to heal that part of me where I love my father. I adore my father so much today, you know, and, and, and years ago when I healed that part, and that's what it is. It's healing all the traumas. You know, and it, it's understanding that it's not who, it's not the trauma that makes you, it's the story. We tend to stick to the story. Oh, poor me. You know, I was beaten up as a kid. Oh, poor me. You know, I was never pretty enough to have boyfriends. Oh, poor me. You know, I was never good enough to have my own house. So whatever it is, you know, it's the stories we associate with it. That story's. I don't have those stories anymore, you know, because it, it never did. For years I lived in those stories and wanted to do absolutely nothing, you know? So now I just learned that in life, I'm gonna come across this, I'm gonna come across something else. I don't know what it is. I'm, uh, I don't have a ball. but I just know. Going forward, I need to just change that mindset and just start seeing things for what they are and not the story I create with it. So, sorry I took so long, but um, that was That's my version anyway.

Magic Barclay: 15:27

I love it. And listeners, there's so many of wisdom in. Like I just, I really hope that as you listen to this episode that you stop, you pause, you go back, you listen again, because there's just so much in there for you that's so valuable, whether you're on a cancer journey or not. Whether you recognize that you've got trauma or not, most of us do, and we shove it down so deep. So fast so that it doesn't hurt us. But guess what, when we do that, that's when it hurts us the most. So please, please get these pearls of wisdom that Grace has shared

Grace De Angeli: 16:05

with you. Thank you. Yeah, I, like I said, it's just, you know, I mean with with the way the world was in the last two years, I actually would say to people, you know what? Use this moment like you've just been diagnosed with something. Start detoxing your life and people would say, start detoxing my life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I mean by detoxing your life, get rid of things that don't serve you. Get rid of people who don't serve you. Get rid of mindsets that you don't serve. You get rid of all of that before you get to that point where you get the, the baseball bat, you know? And, and, and life says, well, you're not listening, grace. You're not listening. I'm trying to tell you, you gotta change something. So I always make sure I say to people, get rid of things that no. Serve you. And when I say the people in your life, you know, I'm not going, you don't just wake up one morning and say, Hey, you, I used to talk to you. By the way, you're off my list. It's, it's not about that. What I would do is, um, if it was someone in my life that wasn't serving me in my purpose in life anymore, I would send them so much love, so much light and I would say to myself, you know, our, our lives part this way. And I wouldn't contact them because they were no longer serving me at my best interest. You know, these are the people that wanna keep you in that story. And I thought, I don't wanna live that story. So unless you're gonna grow with me, that's okay. You wanna, you wanna live that story. That's, that's okay. You know, I, I send you so much love, send you so much. But I'm going the opposite way. It's the same with your environment at your home. You know, I'm, one of my things also, Is I also have an online store because I sell holistic things like crystals and candles. I make my own candles. I make my own candles with crystals, because why I, for me, I very much use that in my journey as well because it really helped me connect within myself. So what do I do? I. Smudge my home. I cleanse it. I cleanse it. Of even my energy, of my mindset when I'm, eh, you know, look at this grace, you're really bad today. Da da da. Cause we also, we all have that gremlin that talks in the back. But you know, it's about cleansing that the moment you cleanse your home, a clear home, is a clear mind, and I believe that, and it's a clear soul. So that's what I say to people. If you are home because you couldn't go to work for some reason or another, you got time in your hands. Clean out something, even if it's a drawer at the front room, because you probably think, well, what's that got to do with your story growth? It has everything to do with it because the moment I clean something, it cleans a part of my brain. It cleans a part of my soul, so that's me detoxing. As well. So, you know, people think detox, of course. People think detox. Oh yeah, I gotta do a lemon diet. Lemon juice diet, or you know, a green drink diet. It's not the physical part of it, only, it's the psychological, it's the spirit, it's the soul. And I say to people, if you don't fix the mind, the soul, the spirit, don't worry what you do. The body will not. I believe that a hundred percent had I not healed my mind, my spirit and my soul, doesn't matter what I did to my body when no matter what I was taking, whether I did decide to do chemo or not, in my case, the cons were higher than the pros. That's why I never did it, but, I would say to people, well, if that, you could do whatever you want. If you don't fix what's going on inside of you, doesn't matter what you do, it'll come back because you haven't dealt with it. You know, things like that. So I encourage people to do that, you know, as much as it might hurt, obviously do it with a practitioner, do it with someone like, you know yourself, you know, where they can discuss it. They, people contact me all the time. the funny story that I have is, I used to sell crystals at markets and people would just open up about their lives and they would say, How did that happen? And I say it's okay, this is just the shop front. So it was like the Crystals was an invitation for people to detox something that they were going through. So I would go home with a smile on my face and my husband would say, wow, how did you go Nada? And I'd say, oh my God, I sold nothing. But I helped a woman realize something that was, she was stuck in, or I helped a gentleman open his mind and realize that there was something not working and I'd have the biggest smile on my face, like I had just sold out my whole store. Because why? Because people are able to express what they were really, truly feeling. And a lot of us, society tells us just to keep it, keep it wrapped up, like you said before, keep it in the background. Don't worry about it. That happened years ago. Don't relive the story, but look at the story, and I'm gonna use my husband's metaphor here. Look at the story from all sides, like a sphere. It's not two sided, it's all sides. And when you see that story, that trauma from all sides, you understand it and you can learn and grow from it. So I, think that's really, really important for people to do is just to learn how to look at things and grow from that. You know, learn to grow, and never stop giving up on yourself.

Magic Barclay: 21:26

I love it. Oh my goodness. I could talk with you forever, grace. This is fantastic. And listeners, this is just raw and fun and real. We don't often get exposed to this kind of level up of personal journey personal learning, so please soak it in Grace. We're going to have to cut off this conversation now, and I really have loved our time with you. What's a parting couple of words for the listeners.

Grace De Angeli: 21:59

The one thing I say to everyone is stand in front of the mirror and tell yourself you love you so much, and no matter what happens, you've always got your back. That's my number one thing I would tell people. Definitely. And I thank you for having me on your

Magic Barclay: 22:19

podcast. My absolute pleasure. Now, grace, what's that fabulous website people can find you

Grace De Angeli: 22:25

on? Sure. It's ww dot the angels of grace.me.

Magic Barclay: 22:32

Love it. Listeners, this was your episode 1 55. Thank you again for your time. In 1 56, we have Gordon Stein talking about building wealth with minimal effort. Listeners, thank you and go forth and create your magical life.