We love sharing the voices of our community with you. Today’s guest post is brought to you by Delhi2014 Alum, Pia.

About this time last year I had a phone call with an old friend. I had been preparing for my upcoming trip to India with A Fresh Chapter and was in a panic. I had just sent my passport off to an agency to expedite my Indian visa and learned that the agency had lost my passport. I had a non-refundable ticket to India in my name and suddenly no passport. I had no idea what to do and was recounting this to my friend when she replied, “Well, I’ve never been to India myself but I know several people who have and my sense is that going to India is all about letting go of control and trusting that everything will turn out just fine.” I took a deep breath and realized that she was right. That’s what this is all about—letting go and learning to trust again.

For the vast majority of my 40+ years, I had always trusted that things would fall into place. I believed that if I lived a honest, intentional life, cared about others and our planet, pursued meaningful work, and so on, that life would treat me kindly in exchange. For the most part that held true. I had lived and traveled in various countries, gone to excellent schools, pursued my passions, fell in love, started a family. All of those little leaps of faith and each time I landed on my feet. And then 2011 came and I found myself falling off a cliff I had never seen coming.

In the spring of 2011, I had to say goodbye to a daughter before she had chance to enter the world. A few months later I was diagnosed with a non-Hodgkins lymphoma and was suddenly facing the possibility that my two other daughters might have to say goodbye to me far sooner than any of us ever expected. Two totally random medical events, neither of which could be explained any more than “bad luck” and suddenly I had lost my ability to trust in life, in the universe, in myself.

The months that followed found me struggling to find an explanation for it all. I wanted to regain control so as to avoid further trauma. I did yoga, meditated, juiced, walked, wrote in my journal, took all sorts of supplements, and considered just about every other remedy for preventing cancer.   I felt overwhelmed by the long list of things I needed to do to “care for myself” and all of it just reinforced the fact that I didn’t trust myself or the universe. I didn’t believe that I was going to be OK, no matter what I did.

Then I randomly heard about A Fresh Chapter and the trip to India. I dismissed it at first—too risky, too far away, what if something happened?, I can’t go there,… But it wouldn’t leave my mind and so I put the wheels into motion to see what would happen.

In the end my passport was recovered and I made the trip to India. I drank chai with other people who had experienced cancer and brought comfort to destitute women at Mother Theresa’s. I learned to run across the chaotic streets of Delhi and had my eyes opened by the pervasive poverty. I soaked up the sounds of the morning calls to prayer, the colorful saris, the smell of incense. I went to India, far away from everything I knew, and nothing bad happened.  Nothing bad happened. My friend was right. India taught me to trust again. I went all the way to the other side of the world and I landed on my own two feet.

Pia lives in Oregon with her incredibly supportive family and a collection of colorful umbrellas.

If you have experienced cancer and want to discover your fresh chapter, learn more here: Become A Participant. Then, join us on Facebook & Twitter to watch the adventures unfold. If you are on Instagram, check out founder Terri Wingham’s Instagram feed. We’re embarking on our third program in India and then Terri continues on to Cape Town to prepare for the launch of our first African program in November of 2015.  

If you are looking for a meaningful way to get involved, please consider making a donation. We are a grassroots organization and we need the support of people like you to help more people like Pia land on their feet and believe in new possibilities again.