I am River Ayla.

This is the name I was going to put as a singer-songwriter on Spotify, if I ever put out a song.

I wanted to wait until I had something I was really proud of. I’ve written over 200 songs and played them at open mics, but to pick just one, or 5, or 10, felt incomplete. I didn’t have one that I was like: Yes, this is what I want to say. This is me.

I have a song in mind. Maybe if I put out one song, that’ll mean something to me.

Words are just words.

I love them. I dissect them. I started out as a linguistics major. I learned how to use language for “good,” and how too many use it for their own agenda.

But without action, words don’t mean much to me.

“I love you.” If it doesn’t feel like love, that’s incongruence.

“I care about you.” So show me. Show up for me. Action means more.

People are telling me to fight.

“This is the fight of your life.”

“You’re in battle.”

“You have to fight!”

And I say, in my head, or later to an unmoved mirror: “I don’t have to do jack shit. I’m not fighting anything. I’m going to exist.”

People are telling me not to share this diagnosis. That it makes others uncomfortable. That it’ll hurt my business. That people won’t want to bring me their problems if they think being yelled at by their boss pales in comparison to one day of chemo.

I always say about trauma: you can drown as easily in a 2 ft pool as you can in the ocean. It’s not about what happened. It’s about the impact.

People used to say to me that they didn’t feel they could dare bring up their traumas because my traumas were so much worse that theirs seemed small in comparison. I wish people would stop comparing me. Because what happened was I just stopped sharing about mine — there wasn’t space for it. If me sharing about things that had happened to me took up all the space in the room, that the room was too small for both of us, then I’d be quiet and listen. They didn’t have to know.

I’m thinking about this now because it has a similar flavor. It’s wild that things I experience, live through, somehow survive… are too intense for someone else to hear about secondhand. My capacity is huge. My resilience is Olympic-level. But I wish I didn’t have to bubble wrap those around me from the sharp edges of my own life.

Over the last 6 months, I saw the best energy workers, psychics, and physical healers I know. They all said that I was stressed but that nothing was wrong. I told 5 of them that I had a lump, and they said it’s no big deal, maybe a cyst, definitely not cancer. Even after I got the initial diagnosis, one of them said, “I don’t see any cancer on you. Maybe when you get back to the US, they’ll tell you it’s a misdiagnosis.” I told another who got deeply defensive, as if I was blaming him. I was shocked that he didn’t even sa,y “I’m sorry to hear that. I’m with you, I have ideas.” It was a complete distancing.

I don’t know how we all missed it, unless this wasn’t an ordinary cancer. This sounds ridiculous, but I had the thought that this was an immaculate conception cancer. If none of us thought there was a problem, and here was this big problem, then there is something different about it. To me, it feels spiritually correct. It doesn’t feel like something is horribly wrong. It feels like there’s something here. I don’t know what it is yet. I don’t know if it’s Nightbirde-level extraordinary before departure, or a giant pivot after a cure, or maybe I meet someone I never would’ve met otherwise. I’m willing to let this be the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Why not? It’s possible.

I found out alone in Mexico.

I was in my amazing apartment that I worked so hard to get. I feel like this was what Gabby Bernstein calls “Manic manifesting” – I got it, but then it slipped through my fingers. Maybe it was never meant for me.

I was waiting for results, and I got a WhatsApp text from the lab. No message, just a PDF. I opened the PDF and wanted to be sure I understood. I uploaded it to ChatGPT and asked it to translate.

It told me it was stage 2 cancer.

I sat still for a moment and then texted the lab back. “What are the next steps?” I wrote in Spanish.

“I don’t know, we’re just a lab.” They said.

I texted the radiologist. “What do I do now?”

“See an oncologist,” she replied, simply.

I asked for a recommendation and she gave me a name.

I texted my mom: “Are you around?” No reply. She was in session with a patient.

I sat on the couch where I hadn’t moved since I read ChatGPT’s translation from the PDF, and I cried. What do you do when you get the worst news of your life, and there’s no one to tell, and you’re alone?

My mom had a plan. She wanted me back in the US for treatment. I flew back. 7 doctors’ appointments in one day. 21 in a week. Since the biopsy, it had progressed: it was now stage 3 and considered high risk. They wanted to do chemo right away. 9-12 months of treatment.

I cried. They asked me what the most upsetting part was. I said that I couldn’t go back to my amazing apartment in Mexico, and losing my hair.

I’d shaved my head before, but then it was my choice. This wasn’t my choice.

Every day is a moving meditation. I am focusing on being so, so present.

The soap on my hands.

The cool water from the faucet… how did I not notice it before?

The warmth from the shower. How many more showers do I have?

The soft feel of my pajama pant leg against the back of my foot.

My breath. Sometimes even sometimes shallow.

Some people are acting like I’m dying.

My neighbor has stage 4, and her cousin visited and looked at her with puppy dog eyes.

She’s had stage 4 for years. She’s not going anywhere.

I don’t know about me.

People hear “cancer” and think it’s the boogeyman. Ahh! Get away! Even for the early stages.

But those who’ve had a loved one go through cancer know. Their eyes widen differently. They’re remembering.

A friend of mine lost her nephew, younger than me, to cancer less than a year ago. She’s struggling. I hate to add to her heartbreak. She wants to visit me. I hope it’s because she wants to see me and not because she wonders if it will be the last time she does.

Words can be used for “good” or for… not.

There’s a difference between empowerment and control.

Those who try blaming me for this, who say that I wasn’t positive enough or “healed enough” that this was a consequence, to them I say, defiantly and incredulously…

You think you could handle my life better? I dare you to try!

I don’t know of anyone who could navigate what I’ve been through better. All of the tools I have, I’ve used naturally to keep my mind clear, to keep my work going. If the best energy workers and psychics I know missed it (because my frequency is so high that babies and animals flock to me, so nothing felt off to them), if some top leaders also secretly have cancer (you don’t know, but I do, because they hire me) — tell me again how someone could’ve done better.

It’s not about me- they’re using blame as a way to stay in control.

When I was held at gunpoint and walked to school the next day with a rainbow of colors on my face, the number one question I got was: “What time was it?” And I was confused at first, why, when I said “10 AM on a Monday,” they looked so disappointed. It dawned on me: “If I had said 2 AM on a Saturday, would I have deserved it?” Or, “Do you want to know what I was wearing? Trackpants.” They weren’t asking out of curiosity, or to understand more of the context — they wanted to know how it could never happen to them. Just like how people who ask dumb questions would say that women in short skirts “asked for” someone else’s violence. So, me saying 10 AM at my local park disrupted that narrative. It’s the same here.

I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I’m petite, I’ve done crazy amounts of healing and have in my network some of the best healers in the world, and I was preemptively looking to take care of my body preventatively. I recently did 2 different bioresonance scans and both triumphantly told me, “No cancer. Actually, your scan looks great — some of the least I’ve seen.”

But 6-year-olds get cancer. Marathon runners get cancer. 100-year-olds who live off of Diet Coke and McDonald’s and hold grudges and have deep resentments don’t get cancer. Not every resentful person gets cancer, not every person who gets cancer has things they could’ve done better. “That 4-year-old was tantruming too much, that’s why she got cancer.” —No, you’d say that’s ridiculous. Because it’s ridiculous. It’s a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Plus, in my opinion, a broader journey. It sounds nuts, but I do believe that my soul wanted this experience, for some reason that’s not yet clear to me.

My brain is the same brain. My energy work was always channeled through source- it was never my energy. Most of my work is channeled too, from source or the Akashic Records. Me being a human doesn’t impact the quality of my work. Just the time and energy I have to share it.

I’ve been living like I was dying for the last 10 years.

I’ve done what I called “apology rounds” three times — where I thought back to anyone that I resented, and I sent them a note saying I’m so sorry for anything that I did, and usually something about how I valued them. I did it once as part of a personal development group I was in in 2015, and two more times as part of Step 9 of AA. Probably to no one’s surprise, 90% of people didn’t answer, and the 10% who did told me they hadn’t even thought of me in decades and it didn’t affect their life at all. One person, though, said: “do you want to get coffee?” And I said yes, and we went to each other’s weddings and are still friends.

I’ve been known to send long, gushing “love notes” of appreciation. A friend said it was “on brand” of me. There’s no one in my life that I’ve left something unsaid that I would be sad if it was our last conversation and they didn’t know. They know.

I’ve done all the things on my bucket list I cared about. I have some more that are “nice to haves” but it’s okay if I don’t. I’ve never been to Vietnam or seen the northern lights. I’ve never been skydiving. It’s okay, though. I’ve done enough.

I’ve slept in a king sized bed at the Four Seasons and the Ritz Carlton, and on a hardwood floor in a treehouse next to a shaman I’d met that day. I’ve flown first class, eating salmon with silver utensils, and taken public buses with a stranger on my lap in Panama and Nicaragua where they ate fruit with hot sauce from a bag. I’ve traveled to 40 countries and lived in 10 of them, in hotels and 20-person dorm hostels and checked bags and solo backpacking. I’ve been in love, and had the kind of love I think many will never have in their life. I’ve written 8 books, over 200 songs, changed the lives of 5000+ people, racked up an absurd amount of degrees and certificates, some I use and some I don’t. I’ve been a woman, nonbinary, gay, bisexual, straight. I don’t do labels anymore because I just don’t care anymore. I’ve packed a lot into my years. My life has been full.

I told someone I was sad that I only helped thousands when I thought I could help millions, that people tell me they become “better people” after working with me — more accepting of themselves and others, less comparing and more excited about their own life. And he mocked me, trying to get me to see how ridiculous it was. Maybe it’s ridiculous. But I think it’s possible. Maybe not in this lifetime. Maybe something I leave behind. A book, a course, an audio, a song.

People’s responses have been more shitty than not. I understand it’s not personal, that when faced with their own fear, their own mortality, they panic and need to discharge that energy into projections — blaming, defensiveness, distance, othering, pity.

But it’s an instant test of character. And for the ones who have shown me their strong character, it’s been beautiful to watch.

I think the worst responses are platitudes “you’ll be better in no time! You have a great team!”, spiritual bypassing “well, what in you created this?”, and slow distancing.

The best ones, always, are: “I’m here. I want to support your work. I’m not going anywhere.”