Insight Interviews: Ginny Fraser

Interview by Mary Mckeone

NEW BEGINNINGS

There is no denying Ginny Fraser’s resilience. Diagnosed, in 2001, with terminal cancer and given six months to live, she defied the medical prognosis and nineteen years later is still very much alive. When I speak to her in December, it is clear Insight has played a prominent role in her life and in particular, her surviving cancer. ‘I didn’t entirely do the conventional treatment route. I used a naturopathic approach,’ she says. ‘And many of Insight’s teachings were by then embedded in my system. I had the belief I could survive. I just had to keep on taking the next step’.

On the recommendation of a friend, Ginny did Insight I, in 1985. At the time, she worked as a journalist, a ‘tough girl,’ who partied hard, but had no idea of who she was or what her purpose in life might be. ‘The truth was,’ she says, ‘I was lost. Looking back, now, to those first three days of the seminar, I was so disconnected from myself.’ Then something shifted. There was no fanfare of drums, no flashing lights, but rather a quiet moment when suddenly going up in the lift to the seminar room on the Friday night, she sensed something inside her had changed. When I question her more on what this shift was, she says ‘Knowing what I know now, I would say that maybe for the first time ever, I connected with myself and my heart. Before that, I had no idea what an awakened heart was.’

Not long after Insight I, she did Insight II. It was, she said, a deepening of what had gone before. During that seminar, ‘I got to really experience the opening of my heart.’ The protective wall she had erected around her ‘tough girl,’ image was slowly beginning to come down and she found herself more willing to show her vulnerability. Insight III followed and then Insight IV. It was during Insight IV she fully acknowledged her desire to facilitate seminars. She knew she was beginning to tentatively step into her full potential and open to a new sense of possibility. The facilitator’s training was a rigorous process. But Ginny knew she wanted Insight in her life, that she was willing to do what it took and to live by the qualities of her heart, demonstrating: commitment; willingness; loving and courage.

By 1988, she had moved on from journalism and was working full time with Insight as their co-Managing Director. She loved the job which involved, amongst other things, organising volunteers, and enrolment. She also facilitated Insight seminars around the world from Siberia to Brazil and many countries in-between. But in 1994, she was diagnosed with skin melanoma. This was treated conventionally. Two years later the cancer had returned, and this time was found in her lymph nodes. She opted for Gerson Therapy (a regime of 13 vegetable juices and 5 coffee enemas DAILY) which she thought was successful until five years later, and not expecting it, she was diagnosed with Stage IV terminal cancer. Tumours were found in her brain, her spleen, her hilum, and her stomach. She was given six months to live. Her life, she said, ‘was simplified down to the question: would I live, or would I die?’

Her journey of recovery was not easy physically. She had brain radiotherapy and embraced a very tough and unconventional, naturopathic regime which at one point involved taking 122 supplements per day and at specific times during the day. Yet, Ginny speaks of this experience as being deeply profound. She says, she found a new sense of serenity and a sense of empowerment from actively participating in her own healing and taking responsibility for her life. How she dealt with her cancer on the non-physical level was, she says, primarily through her spirituality and her manifestation of Insight’s teachings, which she had absorbed over the previous years. In particular, she had a clear intention to get well. At no stage did she rail against the cancer, or the treatment. ‘I stayed pretty present’ she says. By accepting the situation as was, she was able to stay open to the unlimited nature of possibility and the most powerful discovery of all: ‘the power of my heart.’ Since her recovery she has climbed mountains in Kashmir, sailed in the Caribbean and has walked the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, in Spain.

Ginny, who today is an executive coach and international facilitator, is co-facilitating the new online Insight I scheduled for March 2021. When I ask her about it, her response is brief but to the point. She says that not having facilitated it online before, she cannot say exactly how it will be, but she has absolute trust in the Insight process and that those who have facilitated it in the US and South America, are people whose opinion she trusts implicitly. Without exception, they were amazed at the wonderful, connected, and loving experience participants had online. And she is sure, that those who choose to participate in the UK online seminar will have an equally amazing experience.

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