In her early 30s, and living in New York, Kris Carr was living the ‘burning the candle at both ends’ lifestyle that so often comes with living and working in a big city.
A film and theatre actress, she was working on and off Broadway, and had just been chosen to appear in a Bud Light advert that would air in one of the coveted half time slots of the Super Bowl.
She confesses she didn’t exactly put her health first, fuelled mainly by coffee and energy bars in between auditions.
But one morning in 2003, Kris woke up feeling particularly terrible. ‘I felt like I’d been hit by a truck,’ she says. ‘I went to the doctor with stiff muscles, shortness of breath and severe abdominal cramping.’
Her doctor thought it was an issue with her gallbladder and sent her for an ultrasound to confirm his diagnosis. Only, he was wrong. Medics spotted ‘lesions’ on Kris’ liver.
‘I didn’t know that lesions mean cancer,’ says Kris. On 14 February 2003, she was diagnosed with a rare kind of vascular cancer in the lining of her blood arteries, liver and lungs called epithelioid hemangioendothelioma (EHE). It affects just 0.01% of cancer patients – it’s slow growing but there’s no cure.
Kris says she felt like she ‘had been punched in the stomach by God’.
‘Cancer is such a frightening word. How could this be happening to me? Cancer happened to other people. I was young and vibrant. I felt like I was staring down the barrel of a gun, waiting to find out how many bullets were inside.’
One doctor suggested that they ‘watch and wait’, which isn’t unusual for EHE patients. With this specific type of cancer, chemotherapy and radiotherapy aren’t offered from the off, as EHE tumours can remain dormant for long periods and even shrink without intervention. Instead, the doctor suggested Kris focussed on boosting her immune system – advice she grabbed with both hands.
‘Someone gave me a book on improving your diet and I started to research the link between nutrition and healing,’ she says. ‘I went 100% vegan, drank a lot of smoothies and juices, researched macrobiotics and a raw diet – and I felt fantastic.’
Although it’s important to note that lifestyle and mindset changes can’t cure cancer (and this idea would be very dangerous for some forms of the disease), for Kris’ EHE, it seemed the changes helped.
‘I would be scanned every month and the tumours remained stable,’ she says.
Kris also worked on her mindset. She checked into a New Mexico Zen monastery for a summer, learning meditation techniques and how to feel more ‘in touch’ with herself.
In the years that followed, she began to dedicate her life to wellness, encouraging others to lean into a positive thinking – no matter what life throws at you.
She became a New York Times best-selling author, with Oprah featuring her on her Supersoul 100, as one of her most influential wellness thought leaders in the world.
After making a documentary about her cancer, Crazy Sexy Cancer, she met and fell in love with the editor, and they married in 2006. Two decades on from the diagnosis, Kris still lives with cancer.
‘My disease remained stable. It served as a constant reminder to me to take better care of myself,’ she says. ‘Cancer is my teacher. I don’t always like what it has to say, but I listen anyway.’
But in 2008, Kris, now 52, was dealt yet another blow, when her father became unwell with pancreatic cancer.
Kris’ biological dad had left her mum when she was conceived. When her dad, who adopted her when she was a child, lay dying, Kris’s grief felt overwhelming.
‘When my father was dying, my world was falling apart, and I was on the verge of reaching my 20-year milestone of living with cancer – I suddenly lost the energy to run,’ she says.
‘My go-to tools to keep my shit together were failing. At some point, even my wellness practices started to feel like I was just leaning on hollow platitudes to cover up the depths of pain and fear felt.
‘After Dad died my bandwidth for ‘normal’ was next to nothing. I literally thought there was something wrong with me as I struggled to get out of bed,’ she says.
For the first time in years, Kris’ perspective changed. ‘I tried something different,’ she says. ‘I stopped and faced my feelings’.
Though she still values positivity, Kris turned to therapy to navigate deeper feelings and began researching how grief and other difficult emotions affect our brains, bodies and lives.
‘I slowly and gently started applying the practices, insights and therapies I was discovering to ease my own pain, and over time, I eventually began to feel better – not cured but better,’ she says.
Some of these practices she mentions included talk therapy – ‘both grief and trauma need to be witnessed’; somatic experiencing (a body-based approach to healing trauma and stressed related disorders); EMDR, which stands for eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, orginally developed to treat symptoms associated with trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder; and EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) also known as ‘tapping’.
Her latest book, I’m Not A Mourning Person: Braving Loss, Grief, And The Big Messy Emotions that Happen When Life Falls Apart, gives ideas and questions to explore for anyone who may be struggling. It’s not just for those dealing with grief, but with those other overwhelming emotions such as fear, doubt, anxiety, hopelessness.
Rather than running from the pain, Kris invites us to stop and feel it, asking questions like: What is going on in my body when I feel anxious or hopeless? What can I do to support myself right now? What needs to change in my relationship to work?
‘The old adage is that you can’t go over, you have to go through it,’ says Kris. ‘Your emotions are messengers, and they are telling you something. It may feel easier to deny or bury whatever big, messy feelings threaten to overwhelm you but when we’re brave enough to translate the messengers, we can stop running and be free.’
Kris has adopted her grandmother’s motto: Don’t curse the darkness, light a candle. ‘While there may be not getting over grief, there is moving forward and moving through,’ she says. ‘My invitation is, whatever crossroads you find yourself at, connect more deeply with yourself and do what matters in your life.’
What to do when life falls apart, according to Kris Carr
Get support before you think you need it. When you find yourself facing a life crisis it’s Ok to ask for help and start lining up support. To tell people what’s happening and let them know that you may need a hand along the way.
Ask ‘what’ instead of ‘why’
Life is full of uncertainties. And we may never know the uncertainties for some of the challenging situations we face. Rather than assigning blame and dwelling on the past, remember that it’s more productive to focus on taking care of our mental and physical health in the present moment. Instead of asking ‘why’, focus on what we can do now.
Try talk therapy: Both grief and trauma need to be witnessed, and one of the most healing things we can do for ourselves and others is to tell our stories. Tell your story.
Kris Carr’s I’m Not A Mourning Person: Braving Loss, Grief, And The Big Messy Emotions that Happen When Life Falls Apart is out now.
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