In the fabulous documentary film about evolving consciousness I AM, they talk about how we are all connected, and if 51% of animals decide to switch to a new watering hole, everyone else joins in, as if some telepathic email alert has been delivered.

Owning Pink’s editor Melanie Bates and I were noodling this, wondering if that’s how change happens with humans too.

A few week's ago my husband, daughter, and I attended a dharma talk at the Green Gulch Zen Center about training to be a bodhisattva, which can be defined as one who is on the path of enlightenment and personal liberation, but who is also committed to easing the suffering of others.

When the monk was describing the bodhisattva path, a little voice inside me piped up with “That’s me!” The more I thought about it, the more I realized that, in fact, this describes almost everybody in the Owning Pink community.  We are a Universe of bodhisattvas, supporting and loving each other as we seek enlightenment while dedicating our lives to easing the suffering of others.

Like many health-conscious women, for twenty-some years, I’ve hauled my naked self into the gyno’s office to get my annual Pap. My cooch literally starts cringing the day I make the appointment and doesn’t relax until after the whole shebang is finito.

But good news, ladies! The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is releasing new guidelines on cervical cancer screenings that will likely change all that.

I was working at the Owning Pink Center, the integrative medicine practice I founded in Mill Valley, California, when I met Sandrine, who had been diagnosed with endometrial cancer, an often-curable type of cancer of the lining of the uterus. Her doctors moved quickly to get her scheduled for a hysterectomy, which is standard treatment for someone with endometrial cancer. But Sandrine didn’t want treatment. It’s not that she had a death wish. In fact, she had never been happier in her life, and she was doing everything within her power to cure her cancer, including radically changing her diet, meditating, and engaging in guided visualization.  Cancer, she said, was the best thing that ever happened to her.