Recently, I received an email informing me that a story I had published in one of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books had been included in their 20th anniversary volume. Even better, the publisher wrote about my story in the book's introduction and told how it impacted her. Here is what she wrote:

 

As part of our twentieth-anniversary celebration, we asked our readers to write about how their favorite Chicken Soup for the Soul stories affected them. You'll find the stories in pairs in this volume -- a new story written just for this book, followed by the story or poem that the reader found so inspiring in one of our past 250+ titles.

 

It's interesting that my own favorite comes from a book called Chicken Soup for the Soul: Hope & Healing for Your Breast Cancer Journey that we created with Dr. Julie Silver of Harvard Medical School. No one in my family has ever had breast cancer, but this story is a standout for me because I feel that it applies to all of us.

 

In "Eliminate the Negative, Accentuate the Positive," Georgia Shaffer writes about what happened when she had a recurrence of her breast cancer. A friend drove her to chemo one day but spent the entire time talking about people who had died of cancer. As Georgia says:

 

"I learned the hard way that I needed to protect myself as much as possible from contact with that kind of negative or thoughtless person...I had never realized that just like the weeds in a garden rob the flowers of vital moisture, nutrients and sunlight, so too the 'weeds' in my life were robbing me of the vital energy I needed to fight cancer and heal. I could not afford to allow interactions with negative people to steal the few resources I had left...I needed to eliminate the negative as much as possible and then accentuate the positive. Like the flowers in my garden turn toward the sun, I decided to focus on the loving, beautiful connections in my life."

 

I am so busy in my job as publisher, author, and editor-in-chief of Chicken Soup for the Soul that I too have found that I need to focus on the people who can cast sunshine into my own life. I don't have as much time as I would like for interaction with family and friends, so I want to make the most of the time that I have outside the office.  ~Amy Newmark

 

You don't need to be fighting for your life, like I was years ago, to consider the high price you pay when you allow unhealthy or destructive relationships to be a consistent part of your life.