When You’re Dealt a Bad Deck

My Lola (my mother’s mom) survived lymphatic cancer in 1998.

She now takes a LOT of maintenance meds for diabetes and hypertension. I lost my other grandma (father’s side) to neurological cancer. She passed away in her 70s — didn’t get to see me graduate from university. And sometimes I worry about inheriting their illnesses. Since cancer was in the history of both branches of my family tree, I used to believe sickness was inevitable for me.

Until watching this Netflix documentary titled What the Health.

Here’s one of my fave parts: 👇🏼

“Even if you have a genetic predisposition (for diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, etc.), doesn’t mean it’s going to necessarily manifest.

And what determines whether it manifests or not may be those epigenetic variables, the things that you can control: the environmental factors, the dietary factors, the lifestyle factors.

So, we can actually change the expression of genes by what we eat, what we put into our bodies. Even if you’ve been dealt a bad genetic deck, you can still reshuffle it with diet.”

That’s encouraging, right?

Knowing that we’re not hopeless, that we don’t have to go through what our forebears suffered. We have a choice. And I think this isn’t true for physical diseases alone.

Growing up in a broken home surrounded by the crumbling marriages of aunts and uncles, I’ve always wondered whether this is the fate of our whole family: a dysfunctional pattern of unfaithfulness and toxic relationships.

But now I realize when we’re dealt with a bad deck of circumstances, we can still reshuffle it with good choices.

Who knows?

Maybe we’ll even get lucky.

Originally sent out as a Love Note. If you wanna sign up for my free and spontaneous newsletter, click here. Thanks for reading! :)