Let me start with some context: Soon after I was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, I was increasingly experiencing pain and the inability to think. I called a friend Anne Bullock to come over to help me make some decisions about health insurance. When she arrived, she saw that I needed much more than that. I had just undergone a chemotherapy treatment and was in bad shape. This treatment had caused me to totally reject food of any sort. I was weak, drifting in and out of sleep and barely functioning.

Anne helped me in so many ways, I hardly know where to begin in describing her critical contributions to saving my life. She persuaded me to drink liquid protein and other nutrients, bringing me items from her long-time kitchen of healthy foods. Nearly every day she was by my side, keeping me positive, focused, resolute in my will to live and to do the changes in my lifestyle that it took to help my body heal itself. She encouraged me to jump on my rebounder for a little exercise. She took me to appointments with doctors and cancer education counselors. Anne helped me design and follow a discipline that resulted in my recovering–even more rapidly than we had imagined! Within two months, I was bouncing back with energy. She was ‘confirmed’ that what she had been learning and doing most of her life to keep healthy–was also bringing me back from disaster.

  Here’s the origin of ‘Live-It’

Anne, who is conversant in the Rastafari tradition as we know it in Jamaica, overstands the importance of positivity in our lives, including the sounds in our words. For example, typically people might ‘dedicate’ a building–the Rastas would ‘livicate’ the building. Hear the difference! When we examined at the standard American diet that many consume and the resulting incidence of dis-ease and cancer, Anne suddenly exclaimed ‘LIVE-IT!’ She said ‘Cheri, you’re no longer on a life threatening di-et (sounds die-it), you are experiencing a healthy way of eating–let’s call it ‘Live-it!’

I loved it and we expanded it even further to ‘Live-It Up’ encompassing all of the lifestyle changes that I was making and that contribute to a healthy, happy, peaceful way of living.  Enjoy! It can be your positive phrase now too!