Hi, I'm Namo Lanter Combo and my podcast Dear Daughter is available now.

It's a handbook to life for daughters everywhere. Find out more at the end of this podcast.

This is the BBC World Service. I am Sana Safi and welcome to a new series of World of Wisdom,

the place where we explore some of the personal issues that life turns up.

For many of us all over the world, extra time from the pandemic has meant asking ourselves

questions about what is most important in our lives. In this series we will hear people voicing

some of those private questions or looking for advice on personal dilemmas, often given greater

intensity by their pandemic. Our questioners and advisors come from different continents,

cultures and even religions, but I think a sense of universal wisdom emerges.

You might hear that in this moving conversation between Anne from England and sister Danganne

Gim, who is an emigration Buddhist nun originally from Vietnam.

Last year at the onset of the pandemic I was diagnosed with cancer and the double experience of

Covid lockdown plus being diagnosed with a life threatening illness meant that my life completely

shut down. At times I didn't know if I would live for months, weeks, days and sometimes even hours,

but after a wonderful treatment and surgery I've now been given the green light to get on with my

life and live my life. The only thing is I don't know how the trauma of the whole experience has

diminished me physically, emotionally and spiritually. How do we even begin to know or love ourselves

when our own body tries to destroy us? How do we ever overcome the trauma of what our own body

has inflicted on us? Thank you for your very deep and genuine question, Anne. Obviously you have

gone through a very intense experience. So on the one hand you looked at the experience as having

doubt about your body. How can you love or trust a body that has caused you this illness?

I desperately wanted to live and I love life in my spirit. My body had something else in my

...