From No Excuse Mom to Sacred Becoming – Maria Kang’s Journey

Opening Reflection on Fear and Vulnerability 0:00

So for me today, honestly, I'm pretty fearless. You know, everyone saw that. Here's the thing is a lot of people saw me as a very strong person already and actually kind of really annoyed me, especially during the cancer journey because I felt so weak. During my journey and I felt like all I wanted to be was help. All I wanted to do is cry and have someone take over kind of deal or just know that I'll be okay. And there were moments of vulnerability. I think I was able to with those moments of vulnerability.

Yeah, and it was necessary to have people around me to hold space for me to know that I can be everything and still stay strong. That's the one thing about holding space for somebody. Welcome to the Two Curies MD podcast. I'm Dr. Ali Ahmed. And I'm Dr. Surya Ravan. With the wisdom from holistic, alternative, and these conventional medicines, we are here to challenge the status quo. We're curious about the connectivity and complexity between diverse fields of knowledge as it relates to consciousness, chronic illness, mental health, resilience, and beyond.

Learning more about the art and science of healing, or listening to stories of extraordinary healing. You're in the right place. Let's dive in. Welcome to our podcast again. We're excited to have you and this time I wanted to focus on what storytelling does and what is the art of storytelling and what heals in storytelling.

Podcast Introduction and Episode Setup 1:24

You are an author already of The No Excuse Mom and you recently finished your book, Sacred Becoming. And I feel kind of part of that story because you had talked about it and then you went and even told me about how you're going to do it and then how you did it and then what came through that process. All while undergoing procedures. for your diagnosis stage for colorectal cancer, which is not a diagnosis anyone wants to have. So my first question to you is, who was Maria Kang before her diagnosis?

Because your book of sacred becoming is about you becoming. Your work, I know it's you, mom, is your exemplification of what mothers should be doing, the resilience, the hard work. the persistence as we just experienced. So who were you before sacred becoming? Thank you for that question. And for the listeners right now watching or listening, it's just so everyone knows we spend an hour troubleshooting Zoom. you know how to podcast this and it just really shows our not number one persistence but our positivity and our calmness I mean it's rare when you can find that in any human but two humans together I was literally as you were troubleshooting I'm thinking no wonder she's special look at her she's just not losing hope We've done multiple things.

But anyways, you know, who I was prior to Sacred Becoming, the book, is the same person I am today. My essence has always been very much there. It's just more targeted.

Who Maria Was Before Cancer 3:06

Because right now there's a lot of women who have so much energy within them. I mean, we are literally the superheroes right now in our children's lives and the companies that we work for. And when you are not focused and you are, I don't want to use the word matrix, but you're in this cultural programming. where they're telling you this is where you need to divulge all of your energy. This is where, you know, you need to make sure you're perfect or, you know, follow through or produce enough because I was always a big producer.

I was big on efficiency, waking up at 5 a.m., getting my workouts done, getting my kids to school, like making sure everything's done perfectly. And then, you know, financially supporting, you know, emotionally supporting everything in regards to not just my family, but my community and my extended family. So that part of me is still very much there because, again, that is my essence and so my energy has always been very high, but now it's targeted to what I want to do. Because there's a point in every person's life, but especially a woman's, where you feel extremely exhausted with life.

And you're realizing it's because you're doing things not because you want to, but because society, religion, culture, family has conditioned you to believe that this is what this looks like and you have to complete this and that. The Maria today is not pretending, not that I ever really was to a certain degree, but I'm definitely not performing for anyone else but for myself. And when you act from this position of self-love, it shifts your whole world. Because now you truly have energy, now you know what is your energy and what is not, because it gets very convoluted, it gets very entangled when it comes to the people around you.

But when you really understand who you are and you love yourself, there's more boundaries, there's more focus, and there's more peace. So that's the short, long answer to your question. So I can see. You are more of yourself. You are for yourself. You really focus on what is most important to you without having to think about what others will think or feel or understand. It's really about what message you want to make. from yourself. And what I'm hearing from you is that especially as women what we've been taught is good little girls because we all want to be a good little girl.

I mean they literally program that within us especially with fairy tales but we are always seeing external validation because that's the only way that we can know that we're a good little girl when we receive the feedback when we get the award when we make things beautiful and it's only when you stop pleasing others, when you start to check with yourself first before you act, that's when you truly become. Because what women are doing is we are constantly of service to other people. And to act any way other than that seems very selfish.

At least that's what they've conditioned us to believe, as that is not the truth. So it really requires women in our lives, women in media, women who influence, to really take a step back and show others that you choosing yourself, you choosing divorce, you choosing not to have big Pinterest parties for your children, or choosing to stay home versus working, or choosing to work versus staying home. Whatever you want to do, let that be your calling, but don't let other people's judgments determine what you're going to do.

Yeah. So you wrote your book in record time. Yes, two weeks. Yeah, most of it. I mean, I did add on a lot in the next, you know, as I edit it. So I added like 10,000 more words, but now in two weeks, it just flowed out of me. I just knew that it would flow out of me when it did. And this is what I've done all my life. And I said this recently on my Instagram, is you have to ride the wave. That's the energetic wave.

Writing Sacred Becoming in Two Weeks 7:18

It's not always going to be there. It's like when you move into a house and you want to decorate and you want to buy things for it. I mean, I remember moving into this house 10 years ago, and ever since then, I've never bought anything else after the wave completed itself, like the motivation. And so I just knew that it was time, but also, you know, that I'm very meditative. And I really encourage everyone out there listening to meditate more, because you're going to receive guidance. And I knew that I was going to create something in this world.

And it was either going to be a book, a movement, something. And of course, I have history in that. And so when it happened, I wasn't surprised. In fact, as you move through life, miracles, which is what I experienced, because that's pretty miraculous to write with such speed and focus, I'm so used to miracles. Well, it's the book, it's like, honey pages is your book and shh. Yeah, 272 pages. I read parts of it, to be honest, and I was reading through it. I was going, wow, written well. There's so much context to what you're saying.

There's so much more to what you're saying, even as you speak about it, because it comes from stories, it comes from your identity, your diagnosis, that whole experience. Would you like to tell the audience a little bit about that moment when you were first given that diagnosis of H4 colorectal cancer? What was that moment and how did that shape your narrative of who you are now? First thing I want to say is that because it was storytelling, because it was authentically me, that's what made it much more easier.

In fact, energetically, I want everybody to know that if you're doing something that is not aligned with you, it's going to be very tough, whether it's to be friends with someone who's not aligned with you, working with something that's not aligned to you. So when you are very aligned, It's a whole other playing field. And I usually played in that field most of my life. The more that I reflect on my life and just the brilliance of it, because there are so many extraordinary things that has happened to me, you know, in just like 45 years that I've existed.

In fact, when I was diagnosed and I was going through the process, I thought, talking to God, like, what could I possibly ask for? I had had such a good life more than most people. I've had like 20 lifetimes in this one lifetime. So anyways, when I was diagnosed, and this is what I will say to everybody, it was shocking, obviously, because I'm a very healthy person. But I also understood that there was something that I wasn't happy about in my life. And I knew that this was going to be a journey.

And I really encourage everyone to look at anything in life with neutrality as much as possible. Because with cancer, you're going to feel all the feelings. You're going to feel fear is the number one. You're going to feel shame, you know, from people who tell you to go a certain route because it's very immediate. Once you get on the cancer train, especially in the medical industry, it's a health care industry, like they want you to start things immediately without

Diagnosis, Surgery, and the Call to Write 10:18

even reflecting or conserving because it's like one of it metastasizes what, you know, like time is of essence, you know, all of the things. And so they don't really give you an opportunity to really absorb what's going on in your life. So I really encourage people to get still. Always get still before making a decision, especially as something as big as what to do with your own body. In narrative medicine, we talk a lot about us telling heals. and whether it be the listening of a story or writing to a story or really just expressing it in other art forms as well.

What's the message that you would like to have of your story? What was the reason that you wrote this book? What drove you to this experience? You were very much present when it happened because I had a very major surgery in December where literally it feels like half my insides were taken out, including the tumor, negative margins, right? And then just a few months after that, I got another surgery from my ostomy reversal and they found a new cancerous polyp that they biopsied. And it was exactly in this space that it was when the old tumor was.

And I knew it too, like I know my body because that's another thing is you have to connect to your body. Most women and men, but especially women, are not connected. We're not hearing it. We're not talking to it. We're not listening to it. I knew something was amiss for a while before the cancer diagnosis and after the surgery of the tumor removal. And so when this whole situation went down, it was very, very disturbing. It was, I just felt like I wanted to give up to a certain degree because when I'm going to do fight cancer for the rest of my life, I mean, this is really exhausting.

But then I was in a very energetically lifted space. Like I was literally like, my head was like here. And I felt very called to start just writing, to just release, to express, because I knew that one of the reasons why I had colorectal cancer, because our body is talking to us, is because I suppressed a lot of anger that I had growing up. And I also wasn't expressing enough, like I held back a lot, because I knew that I was often too much for people. that like I didn't want people to feel uncomfortable around me because I always had very big ideas, very alternative ways of looking at things.

And so I just held a lot of things in and what that does is it creates again that blockage and evidently I had colorectal cancer. So in the two weeks that I wrote this book, I just felt like I needed to literally not so much purge but release. And as I released, it all came together because I knew that I didn't know when I was going to die. Who knew? You know, of course, the timeline looked a little bit shorter than others, but I was going to leave this earth this book. I was going to leave the earth this book because for some reason it was calling to me because I understood that everything begins from an energetic space, from a spiritual space, and it manifests into a physical atom.

And I understood this completely. And again, I've never been a science or math person, but I understand the science and spirituality of cancer and disease and all the things in life. Like I felt like the whole world was opening up to me and I just really needed to put it on paper and give people a blueprint on how to heal themselves. So what healed for you? How did you heal your cancer? I have to tell everybody out there that, you know, I remember you calling me on my way home from, like, Nevada City because I locked myself in a small cabin to write this book for the first three days.

Like, I was in labor, like, literally getting broke to the, like, the head of this book. And I remember just being a state of bliss, like you were concerned, a lot of my family was concerned, I and friends and followers, because I wasn't answering calls, I wasn't on social media, I just felt called to be in silence and stillness. But I remember talking to you and I was just so excited. And I'm sure you were taken aback by this, like this isn't the conversation I thought I was going to have with Maria.

But I felt such a strong calling, such a strong knowing, and I pray that everybody experiences this in their life, you know? So here's the thing, is that healing is all about remembering who you are, becoming more aligned, more coherent. And like for me, if I were to die at any moment, I'm so grateful that I am where I am right now because this life is so temporary. The reason why people don't heal is because they're stuck in their trauma, right? Like they're in this constant loop. They're cycling the same emotional, you know, cycle that they've dealt with and they can't get out of it.

It's a horrible place. But when you stop trying to fixate on one frame of your life and you allow it to flow, you start to let go. You start to trust not just in God, but in yourself, you know? And that's the biggest thing is trusting yourself.

Healing Through Stillness and Self-Trust 15:18

I don't know if I said this in the last podcast, but when I was meditating, I asked, you know, how do you cure cancer? And I heard the phrase, you don't, cancer cures you. And it's because cancer is just like, whether it's cancer, disease, addiction, being broke, losing your job, whatever it is, it's all symptomatic. It's all showing you something and it's communicating something. And so when you can start doing the work, because now you're seeing, OK, red alarm, something like if I don't handle this, now I'm going to game over, right?

My body is going to shift or something is. Then I need to do the dirty work. I need to figure out why this is happening. I need to get to the root cause, which is what all Western medicine doesn't do, is go to the root cause. And what I found was is that in the silence, I heard the programming. I heard, you don't want to be here anymore. Like, I didn't want, and I wrote that in my book somewhere, you'll see that there's a part of me that literally, like, especially as women, we don't want to say it out loud, because it's selfish of us.

But some of us just really don't want to be here anymore. Like, it's exhausting. It's so sacrificial. And you feel like that's the best way to die anyways, you know, like you don't want to like hurt yourself, but you'll die from something that everyone will support you in dying with. And so what I will say is that I felt really called to write this because it's so important for people to understand that you got to get still. You have to listen to yourself. You have to get connected to your body again.

And only in that connection will you start to receive more alignment through trusting what you're feeling. Because in this culture, we prioritize thinking and mind more than we do feelings and emotions. But truly, feelings and emotions is what creates what we think about. You know, if you're having a bad day, you're going to think bad things. You're going to see bad things just based on the emotion that you feel. If we can take any emotion and have it serve us, I mean, we're really limitless in so many ways.

All my life I've taken my emotions and I've been able to target it. Like I've taken people who hate me or the slander that I experienced and I just like take that energy that I feel and instead of attacking back, which is what they want, because we're all mirrors. They want to see the mirror that they have control because that's what they need is energy. I take that energy and I put it into a book. I take that energy and I put it into a workout. I take that energy and I create something with it.

So it's really important when people start looking at life more from an energetic standpoint, that's the place what we're supposed to be playing at, especially women, because we're more intuitive, we're more spiritual. But once we start playing in the spirit world more, we will start determining things in this physical world. Well, I can see how your work and what you believe to be in your experience shows up in your body, right? What you hate about yourself, what you resent about yourself can show up in your body.

And if you really think about colorectal cancer, it is the body's inability. Something's dysfunctional in your sacral space in your body, which is your gut, your instinct, intuition. Something's holding you back. Imagine illnesses showing up in certain areas, our heart, our brain. Why does it choose that area? What about that emotion? What about that experience you had in your life that showed up in your bed? What's all about function? Everything has a function, right? And so in our body, which is why we really need to own this beautiful kingdom, this body that we have.

You know, for the colon, it's where you process the outside into the inside, and then it expels, right? So I wasn't digesting a lot of things in my life well. I had a hard time understanding things, right? I had a hard time expressing things. Now, a lot of people who have sexual trauma, You know, this is, again, this is what I've seen with my own friends who've had, you know, breast cancer or cancer in the uterus or, yeah, ovaries. There is some sexual trauma there. And again, it doesn't even have to happen to you.

It's just could happen around you. And, you know, I know that we're both fans of Gabor and Matei, but people don't understand trauma does not have to happen to you. It could have happened to your great-grandmother. It could have happened to your brother, which my brother passed away last February. And I always thought, well, he's separate from me. He dealt with certain things in his childhood, but it didn't happen to me. And so he's the one with the drug issues. But I had issues, too. I had issues with bulimia in my 20s when, at the same time, he started doing drugs, and obviously, cancer, eventually.

And so what I'm saying is that energy is energy. If you're next to it, and if you are going to receive it, and this is where we are all one. If the community is dealing with it, you're dealing with it.

Trauma, Energy, and the Body 20:30

It's all energetic. Again, look at life energetically. So was it the energy that you weren't able to process? Or was it the anger? What was that motion that you felt was happening in you, within you? So initially with my diagnosis, what I understood and as you go through the block is I really go into my mother's trauma and how I became very much like her even though I tried everything not to be like her. In fact, that's how generational trauma continues. People think that, okay, since my mother's overweight, I'm just going to eat really healthy and I break the pattern.

That's not the problem. The problem isn't the food. The problem is the energy within the fishbowl that we're all existing in. It's in the frequency of this community that you're existing in. And for me, it was very much a performative family to do things right, to sacrifice, to betray yourself for the whole, even though it doesn't feel good, to perform rituals, religion, things that not necessarily makes any sense to you, but you do it anyways just to not be a problem. And so I saw a lot of the women in my family kind of didn't themselves or be too hard or too whatever.

And I was too, I was very masculine in my marriage, you know, because I took over in a lot of ways. And I see that in a lot of marriages within my family. So what I'm saying is that, that trauma is not necessarily yours, it's the group. It extends larger than that. But it was really me recognizing that I was not in ownership of my thoughts and especially my actions. as I did the work. I understood that that's not my thought. Like what did I just share that I'm lazy? Like I'm not doing this right.

Like as I'm meditating and I'm like, I know that I'm trying. I know who I am. That's why you have to know who you are. And everyone listening right now, you may not know who you are, but I'll tell you. I know the basics of who you are, which is you're somebody who doesn't give up. You're still alive. You've gone through some stuff. You survived them all. You're a fighter. You're a survivor. But at the same time, I'll also say this, is that your ego, your personality, which is what Joe Dispenza, who I love too, talks about, is your personal reality creates your personal personality.

meaning that you've developed an ego, especially as a child, to protect yourself in an environment that is telling you that in order to get food or acceptance or love, whatever love means, because that's usually distorted, you have to act and behave a certain way. And then you think that love means abuse or love means like abandonment or love is control. And so it's really important that people know that Who they are is not necessarily their ego. They have to actually release so much of that. That's actually the biggest part of becoming is unbecoming, is releasing what is not yours to carry, release what is not you, release personalities that are no longer, like not personalities, but so much things about your personality that is no longer serving you.

Yes, maybe it was really important that you're so strong in the past, but you can lay some of those swords down now. You're not at war anymore. It's just not being at war. I'm a pediatrician, and I've seen and worked with families for decades now. And when you see the child develop, the child starts with basically looking, feeling, then seeing, hearing, and then starting to walk, and then starts to think, and then starts to think about, reflect, and has magical thinking. And these are all the developmental milestones that the child is making as they're growing and becoming.

They become their experiences, as you said, and they become identified in that circumstance of those experiences, whether that be a very traumatic home with high stress or toxic level stress or a home that's well balanced and this trust and this connection. And there's that whole spectrum of story that shows up. And what you've described for yourself, you know, how you had to be performative and how you had to be better than others, better than everything else. And it was all about the external.

It wasn't necessarily better. It was just I had to be good. And what I'm hearing as you're speaking, especially for a lot of Asian families, is that your identity is not yours. It's very intimately tied to your appearance. So whatever you do, you represent them, or you represent the whole, or you represent the culture. And so you're no longer allowed to be you, like whenever your success is their success. Your failure is their failure. There's no individuation here. So that's something that when you are raised like that, and a lot of us are, you know, where we realize we are not ourselves, we represent a whole other people, but especially our parents, because again, our parents, they not only symbolize love, but they're also our providers.

They're our protectors. And if they aren't happy, then we're not safe. And that's the biggest thing is what do we have to be in order to be safe? Okay, so I'm just going to smile and brush my hair and be pretty because you love it when I twirl around. I look pretty all the time, like be a good girl and clean the house. That's what I'll do to be safe or maybe I'm safe by being a tough guy, like not showing feelings because if I show weakness, then I'm going to look like I'm weak. And my dad is, you know, this is again, generational trauma where it's like toxic masculinity.

Like if you show tears, that means that you're not ready for the world and the world's a mean, ugly places, which is what we're taught that, you know, the world is challenging and difficult. So they're toughening us up for the world that they exist in. They're toughening us up for the trauma they experienced, for the world that they grew up in, when that's not necessarily the case.

Unbecoming Old Identities and Roles 26:30

But they're giving you their eyes. That's what parents do. They give you their eyes. And it's not bad. I love my grandparents. I always say to my parents, my grandparents, my family, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. Like, I'm so grateful that you were able to do as much as you can. That's what we have to forgive. Like, even though they weren't the best, they did their best. Why wouldn't they do their best? Yeah. So things that you get taught as a child are those factors that make you who you are.

Your resilience, your dedication, your passion. And now it seems like voice for that, you have a voice for what you really understand about the world. And you've had perspective more than I would say then, you know, if you hadn't had those experiences or had that trauma, or hadn't had pain or loss. So I see her story really resonates with this ideology of how you can be who you are by being less of something else. As you said, I mean, I'm becoming something purely you, towards you. Because you say sacred thing.

I was very curious about that title. Like, how did you come to that title? But what was the unbecoming? What was the unbecoming that you had to shed or let go of or release? I mean, here's the thing is that everyone, and they'll reach this precipice in their life, whether they know it or not, you know, whether it's your kids are leaving off to college or your parent dies. But the unbecoming is the detachment. It's releasing something. First starts off with something you can't control, like divorce.

I mean, you can control divorce, but sometimes you really can't. Like, were my mother dying or my brother dying or losing my health? I mean, again, I was the epitome of health and fitness. I mean, I wrote a book, I led a movement. And to get cancer just didn't make sense. There was so much dissonance there. How is this even happening? And so I had to release this idea that I was healthy or unhealthy, you know? because it wasn't serving me. I had to release these titles. That's what the unbecoming is, is knowing that even though you don't have money, you know you're abundant.

Even though you don't have a mother, you know you're loved. Even though you don't have a husband, you know you're supported. And you're going to find all of this within yourself. That's the becoming. Because as you release the need for this security blanket, you know, this doll that you've held onto, like, this is what it means to me. And then the doll either gets taken away from you or you lose it or you intentionally release it. and then you release it and in that moment you're scared but then there's a moment when you start to hold yourself and you realize that that blanket this object that you've held most of your life no longer has power over you because you gave it power.

That's why in like especially I left Catholicism last year but it was like when you don't have any idols and that's what they talk about in the religion and I never understood that it is an idol when you think that it's more powerful than you. You are the most powerful person. You're the one that holds the divine within you. You have abundance, love, safety. control. But until you know this, you're going to attain objects that represent it, even though it doesn't at all. I'm sure so curious about who are you now?

Tell us the audience about. what something looks like for you now? What's that lifestyle? What's that way of being? So for me today, honestly, I'm pretty fearless. You know, everyone saw that. Here's the thing is a lot of people saw me as a very strong person already and actually kind of really annoyed me, especially during the cancer journey because I felt so weak. during my journey and I felt like all I wanted to be was help. All I wanted to do is cry and have someone take over kind of deal or just know that I'll be okay.

And there were moments of vulnerability. I think I was able to with those moments of vulnerability. Yeah, and it was necessary to have people around me to hold space for me to know that I can be everything and still stay strong.

Fearlessness, Boundaries, and Motherhood 31:00

That's the one thing about holding space for somebody is when they're able to process without judgment. Not a lot of people have that opportunity. I mean, I couldn't process without judgment within my own family. So today, I'm more fearless in the sense that I can say, no, I'm not going to go. My sister asked me recently, she said, are you going to go to church on Christmas? And I said, no, I don't want to. I already told you guys, I don't believe in organized religion. I love Jesus and I love Mary.

I understand the principles, in fact, and absolutely the most spiritual in my family. Very kind, very loving. But I will not engage in rituals that I don't agree with. I'm not going to send in a church that doesn't have equal representation of women in it. I mean, that's just my hard no. And I've been doing a lot of hard nos, a lot of boundaries that I never had before. I have friends that I just understand energetically. There's an attachment and I just refuse to be responsible for, you know, their feelings.

I refuse to be responsible for anyone's feelings because that is not my job. But yet that's what most people want is they want control. They want leverage and influence. I don't prefer that. I prefer that everyone find their own divinity and be empowered. So the Maria today is somebody that, I'll tell you who she is. She's someone who's paying off her house, you know, as a single mother. And I talk about that in the book. She's somebody who raised sons who are very conscious and aware, where they are literally my son Christian.

I said to him, I said, you know, I haven't really been marketing this book a lot. You know, I know I'm going to eventually go on more podcasts and do other things. And he said, Mom, Your book is not something that needs to be seen. It's something that people find. And I found that so powerful that my son and all of them say such profound things like that. But it's absolutely true. And this is not just a book. And this is not just about me. It's everybody listening. You do not have to go on every dating.

You do not have to like work harder for anything. Things that are meant to find you will find you. Things that are yours are already yours. They're not going to leave you. And so you have to have intense and intentional trust. And that's who I am, is someone who has so much faith and trust, knowing that this, again, this existence is very temporary and that my spirit is doing every day what it was supposed to do here as it has incarnated in this body. But I'd really like to close here and just really want to But what is the message that you want women to have through writing the story and for you as well as for others?

Why was this writing a book was so important? This book is so important. And when the audio book comes out, it'll be easier for you to read and listen to it because it's much easier that way, right? But it was so important for me to write this because the way that historically how things get passed down, and this is going back to the very beginning, to your very first question regarding storytelling. People don't necessarily like to read studies. They like to read experiences. And in those experiences, they resonate.

You know, because as you read the book, it's not something that you're like, oh, Maria is separate from me and I've had this separate experience. They're actually going to connect in a way energetically. Even though we have very separate lives, we look different, we have different things, but it doesn't matter. We experience the same thing. It's like one person. So as one wakes, we all wake. And so I have woken up in such a big way. And the people that have read my book and given me feedback have told me that they feel like I wrote this book for them.

And you know what's interesting is that I absolutely did. I wrote it for them. And even though it's about a little bit about me, but a lot about what to do, you know, in certain situations. So I will say that every woman feel like I always have to be fair with men, but the fact is, is I'm not a man. They won't connect as well as women, but women need to understand that they are the creators. We create everything. And so do men. But men are going to be more reliant again with the woman, which is we're the balance.

I mean, there's both of us, right? But we have to tap into our intuition. We have to get connected to our bodies again. We have to know that we are the creators. And only until we have more aligned choices will we start truly love, not only the life that we live and love ourselves, but because women, and I did ayahuasca, you know, right after I was diagnosed, it was... unplanned in that way, obviously, because no one ever plans diagnoses. But I remember the second night that I was there and I saw an image of a beehive.

And I saw all the drones kind of not knowing what to do. And I saw the queen bees dying. And I could hear it in the room with all the men purging and all the women crying. And this is what I understand more completely and which is why it's very important for all women to wake up now because we can already see it in the world. All of the illusions are crumbling. It was built on a core foundation in the first place. It was built on greed, corruption, money, all of that. Women need to rise because we are the frequency of the high.

Why Storytelling Heals Women 36:30

We are the frequency of this earth. And so the time is now and you don't have to do anything. You can stop saving the world. I stopped saving everyone in my life. I don't care about your feelings anymore. You know, I don't care if you... I mean, not that I don't care, but I just don't take ownership of that because taking ownership of anyone's journey is really disempowering them. But I will say that stop focusing on others and start loving yourself. Once you start to love yourself just in that love for yourself, it'll emanate to your children and your children will emanate to other kids and the community shifts.

But it's really important that the woman understand that all of these children, these humans are coming into this world and they're coming from a woman. At least we hope they are, you know? And so we are Mother Earth, our DNA, which is the primary DNA in all of the children versus the father, and that's scientifically true. If we are the DNA, and we are the one raising them, and we are the one setting the frequency and the energy, especially at the home, why wouldn't the world look like a better place?

I'm asking all women to understand that we are so much more powerful than we realize. We are Mother Earth. We are raising the future. Everyone else will die eventually, at least we think they and hope they will. But the future, if you really think about it, if they're raised by conscious mothers, That's how we shift and that's how we change. And I absolutely believe that is going to happen. Not because of like me being fairy-tale-ish and just always so bright-eyed and positive. That's actually not the truth.

The truth is that I know it's going to happen because it needs to happen. And that's what always happens is whenever life is in balance, God and the universe will always make sure balance comes. And we are the balance. Well, definitely a powerful message to women, definitely a powerful message to even me as a physician, you know, what we don't see in patients, what we're able to witness, what I was able to witness in your story was so much more of your tenderness, your softness in the experience of kidding, as well as possibly that you've had in those deep where we let down our guard, we let down all of those things that we pretend to be and being able to just be with really your true self, really, just really engaging with.

And I think that's a powerful message for all women and possibly men too. I mean, when we talked about illnesses and how illnesses show up in people, Your experience has an impact on you, but you don't have to be that. That you can shed those stories and shed that narrative and really become your true asset. So I really think that message comes from you, from what you're able to really exemplify in your work, both as you speak to it and as you write to it. And I'm so proud of the fact that you wrote this book and speaking broadly about this very issue about what women are and how women are healers, as well as so much as the power of women, the power of voice, the power of really speaking your truth.

So thank you. Welcome. And I will add, you know, in those listening, I've been working with you for a year with ketamine. And, you know, of course, I've had psychedelic experiences always, you know, usually with the medical Supervision, I would recommend that with everybody. But it's energy. When you understand the illusions, when you understand energy and feelings, it's really important that it's not enough to run away from something or to address something or fight something, especially in terms of trauma.

Really, when you become, when you focus on the light within you, everything kind of falls away. So I feel like a shift that needs to happen, especially in therapy, where it's always like kind of going backwards, reliving it. It's only re-traumatizing you. But let's start in the becoming. Let's start on who you are. Let's start with the innocence and purity. And when you start to do that, you start to go towards the light more. You start to Like, how did I heal my cancer? I healed my cancer by finding a reason to live.

Not because I feared dying, but because I loved living. In fact, that's the answer to everybody's question life, is not to look back, but to look forward.

Looking Forward with Authenticity 41:00

And as you run forward towards something, you're also leading behind something. You don't have to constantly turn around and look back at what that is. Just keep focused on that forward movement and everything will start to fall into place. Just focus on your authenticity. Just focus on your truth. And it doesn't matter if they don't like you or if you lose your job here or things start to fall away. I mean, whatever happens in this authentic expression of yourself is supposed to happen and release it and focus on the love and the light and loving your life.

Thank you, Maria. Thank you for being here. And we'll continue onwards on to your next book. I'm sure what that would look like because you did mention that you're writing another book. Is that true? Oh, yeah. I mean, got two more books that I already know what they're going to be about. Yeah, I'm excited. You know, ever since I was little, I always wanted to write. And I always wrote. I've had a 20-year blog, if anyone wants to follow me there, MariaKing.com, which I stopped writing in April after I found out it was re-diagnosed.

I was like, I can't. But now I know I'm transferring over to actually books now. But this just goes back, you will find yourself again. That little girl, that little, you know, they said you couldn't do something, now you're doing it, you know. You'll find yourself. It's such a wonderful journey, life, you know. Like it's wonderful and explorative if you actually... feel like you own it, like you feel like you have free will. Most people are engaged, enslaved to some degree, because unless you're making choices out of your own sovereignty, most people are making choices for you.

You're just there trying to keep up. Right. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being on this podcast where we ask those unasked questions. Looking forward to our next show. And if you're curious about something, please message us or call us on a curious question that you have. Thanks for joining us on the Two Curious Andy podcast. We hope today's episode inspired you to ask new questions and explore fresh perspectives. We challenge you to ask us those unasked questions that you're curious about in your medical practice, condition, health and wellness.

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