I had never heard of Kris Carr, until today. Kris Carr is a wellness warrior, a woman who got a devastating diagnosis at the age of 31, and turned it into an empowering way to take control of her life. She “gets” the idea. Read more about how she did it here. A diagnosis of “cancer” is really no different than “schizophrenia”. Both can be an opportunity and a pathway to growth. Why not also have some fun along the way?
“And at the bookstore, all I could find was all this old, sad, pass-the-tissues Hallmark stuff.” So she developed a style that’s a mash-up of “Eat, Pray, Love” and the expletive-laced pro-vegan “Skinny Bitch” books, her voice frilled with easy intimacy and bedecked with hot-pink chick-to-chick flourishes. Carr’s cancer world is a place where prostheses are for “boobies,” medical binders are “bitchin’ ” and patients are encouraged to become “ ‘Prevention Is Hot’ cheerleaders.” In one of her books, she suggested you deck out your bathroom like “a detox ashram” before giving yourself an enema. Through her looking glass, there is the time, money and energy for vigorous dry brushing and eco-friendly “shopping therapy” and long, meaningful moments spent signaling the wellness muse in a self-built “sacred space” garlanded with flowers. She has created an aspirational fantasia, and she has implemented it in a place nobody dared try it before: the realm of illness. Just because you are giving yourself an enema with a hose, she wrote in one passage, “doesn’t mean you have to be in an antiseptic environment. Surround yourself with style and beauty.” This is, in a way, her call to arms.