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Kindness brings cancer patient back from the brink
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Vancouver Sun (One of Canada's leading newspapers)
Posted: November 30th, 2015
http://www.vancouversun.com/touch/story.html?id=11109726
In late 2012, Brice Royer was lying on a bed in terrible pain, thinking about how to kill himself. Today, the pain is still there and the malignant tumour in his stomach is no smaller. But he has never been happier. A year ago, Royer, 31, decided to give and receive freely without the use of money in an effort to build community. Thinking he was staring down a death sentence, Royer [researched] and reflect on the causes of illness. Toxins in the environment. Loneliness. Stress. The root cause (is) a lack of love in our society, Royer says. A lot of the problems that we have today - anything from the housing crisis in Vancouver, how expensive things are, to working at a stressful job, making ends meet and not having much time to have community or friends - all these things I feel led to a lot of health problems and in my case, can aggravate cancer. Royer researched where the healthiest people in the world live and the lifestyle they practise. They all take care of each other. They all have big families and small communities and they all have something called the gift economy. They are isolated from the market economy, Royer explains. [He] suggested to a friend that they practise this within their own circle using a Facebook group. True to philosophy, he offered to pay someone elses rent ... for a year instead of his own. The woman he helped was a chronically ill single mother. The biggest payoff, he says, is the community hes built and the love and support he gets from friends.
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