When you're knee deep in the mess of stress, anxiety, disappointment, panic, fear -- you name it -- isn't it nice to escape for a moment, to feel relief from the burden of heavy emotion? I think so. And I happen to know from personal experience a few techniques that have a calming effect on the most overworked of minds. I'll make it brief, because I know reading volumes of self-help advice is not what's on your worried mind.

• Listen to a favorite song, or any song. It will shift your focus and put your mind in the context of the song. You may even feel recharged and motivated.

• Write down your thoughts. Just write. Don't worry about grammar, spelling, or sentence formation. Just jot down what's on your mind. Transfer your emotion to paper -- or the computer screen -- and see how relieved you can feel.

Valerie Monroe, beauty director for The Oprah Magazine, writes a monthly column -- Ask Val -- that appears on the pages of Oprah's feel-good publication. She responds to questions about make-up, skin care, hair care, and overall body care too.

In her February 2007 column, Val writes, "Many of you have written to tell me that you began to be less critical of your body when you appreciated the things it could do." As I read this, I had what Oprah would call an Aha! moment, a moment when something just clicks and makes sudden sense. Aha!, I thought, as I considered all the things my body can do, completely independent of how I look on the outside. So while I was jogging today -- my body can now easily run three miles -- I ran through all of my body's accomplishments, and I stored them in the files of my mind so I could later write them down.

Here are seven things my body can do. As you read them, consider your own body -- its strength, its power, its capacity for greatness -- and remind yourself of your wondrous self the next time you start to criticize the way you look.

• My body can partner in the creation of human life. It can carry babies and deliver them and love them and care for them and raise them. Not all bodies have this power. I am lucky.

• My body can climb an attic staircase, crawl into cramped and dark corners, pull large boxes out of wedged spaces, drag them back to the staircase, and walk backwards down the stairs with goods balancing on my head so that I can fulfill the wish my five-year-old child who wanted so badly in early November to assemble our Christmas tree and decorate our house for the holidays. "Let's wait until Daddy gets home," I told Joey when I found myself crammed into a tiny space in the attic, wrestling with a heavy box full of artificial tree parts. "You can do it, Mommy," Joey said. "You are strong." And so I fought my way through the frustrating feat because I was afraid of the lessons I would teach this little boy if I didn't. In the end, it was Joey who taught me the lesson. I can do it. I am strong.
  

• My body can endure and conquer a 5K run when it once could barely run around the block. With a little extra effort and push, I think my body can accomplish even more.

• My body, once weak and without definition, can lift increasingly heavy weight and can generate muscle tone. It can even do push-ups -- real push-ups. It takes dedication and practice and persistence and mental toughness too. But I see progress. I feel progress. And I want more.

• My body can help others. I can use my fingers to type words on a keyboard that will reach friends and family and people I don't even know. My words can inform and support and encourage and heal. I can use my hands and my semi-creative talents to create hand-made gifts, to cook and deliver very mediocre meals for friends in need, to massage my husband's sore back, to braid my niece's beautiful hair and paint her tiny nails. I can use my arms to hug my little boys with all my might. I can use my voice to communicate, my ears to listen, my senses to feel.
  

• My body can tolerate surgery and chemotherapy and radiation and horrible allergic reactions to antibiotics. My body was badly beaten by a treatment protocol intended to cure me of a disastrous disease. And somehow, in some way, it survived.
  

• My body killed cancer. With the aid of medical intervention and a hopeful attitude, my body overcame the worst and best thing that has ever happened to me. And if it could do nothing else, I would be truly happy for this one thing my body can do.
  

Author and breast cancer survivor Barbara Delinsky has just released an updated edition of her book UPLIFT: Secrets from the Sisterhood of Breast Cancer Survivors and like her previous editions, this one delivers inspiring real-life stories from real-life survivors -- like Deb Haney, an administrative assistant diagnosed in 1996 at age 48, who reveals her secret to surviving breast cancer in the workplace.

"My boss at the time was my brother. He suggested I go for radiation treatment in the morning, work a few hours, then go home and rest in the afternoons. That is what I did, because even though I looked great, I was unbelievably tired. When illness comes, we need to listen to our bodies and give them the time to rest and recover. I hadn't anticipated it, but those afternoon hours became a truly peaceful, nurturing time to read and rest and enjoy quiet time."

Delinsky offers a chapter in her book called A Workplace Manual -- it's a place where survivors like Haney share strategies that helped them maintain the crucial balance between cancer and work.

Delinsky writes, "What works for one woman may not work for another. What works in one job may not work in another. The thing is, you need to take a step back, think about yourself and your situation, then speak up about what may work for you. In every situation, you have choices, and the choices are all good. What pleases one woman may not please another."

And so the women featured in UPLIFT share their individual choices. And their choices become options for the millions of women surviving a disease that throws everything off balance.

Rosamary Amiet, a program manager diagnosed in 2000 at age 48, shares, "I juggled cancer and work by just giving up some things, like housework. I discovered that the house could go for weeks without being vacuumed or dusted -- and not only did the sky not fall, it didn't even crack!"

UPLIFT is not all about the workplace. It's also about chemotherapy and losing hair and losing breasts. It's about family and humor and men. It's about religion and exercise and diagnosis. It's about help. It's about hope. It's about sisterhood -- plain and simple.

Just two months after her mother lost her battle with gall bladder cancer, Liane was diagnosed with breast cancer. It all happened earlier this year -- and while Liane is still mourning the loss of her mother, she is also still managing the madness of her own disease. Liane is surviving with courage, with determination, with the same powerful spirit that powered her mother's fight.

Liane lives in a small city -- population 43,000 -- in northern Alberta Canada. She has been happily married for 18 years and has two daughters, ages 13 and 15, and a golden retriever named Sunny. Liane loves to garden, cook, read, and spend time with family. She normally works full-time in a real estate and property management office but has been blessed with six months off for treatment. Liane is already -- without a doubt -- a survivor.

This Tuesday, July 18, Talk to America will host a call-in talk show to discuss new advances in cancer treatment, prevention, and research, and issues of being a cancer survivor.

Expert guests on the show will include Dr. Denise Johnson, MD, from Stanford University Medical Center; Dr. Thomas Brown from the Department of Gastro-Intestinal Medical Oncology at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston; Texas, Dr. Martin Raber, MD, cancer survivor and former Chief of Physicians at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center; and Dr. John Niederhuber, Acting Director of the National Cancer Institute.

Talk To America, a one-hour international talk show, which airs live Monday through Friday at 10:00 a.m. EDT / 1400 UTC, is Voice of America's first daily international call-in talk show. You can ask questions of the guests by calling in to +1-202-619-3111 or sending an email to talk@voanews.com. For more information on how to call at no charge, or listen to featured broadcasts, visit VOA's Talk To America webpage.

When I first started going to counseling, I was told I would need eight to 10 sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy to help me deal with my anxiety, my panic, my fear of breast cancer recurrence. My first session was in May 2005 -- and I am still going. Those initial sessions are possibly all I really needed -- and perhaps I could have stopped the therapy long ago. But stopping never came up and no one told me I had to call it quits so I kept on marching into territory I had never before traveled. I have a degree in counseling -- but I'd never been counseled. I know how to listen to others and share empathy and ask open-ended questions -- but I'd never been the one talking and sharing and venting and crying and answering questions. Until last May -- when I discovered the appeal and the comfort of the counseling chair.

I marched into one of my sessions yesterday and plopped into a brown faux leather recliner. I talked about my recent graduation from Herceptin therapy and about how I might manage in life now that treatment is over. I talked about my jobs -- as a writer and a preschool teacher -- and how they fit into my world. I talked about the level of stress in my days and about how my once constant fear that cancer was trailing me has largely diminished. I talked about how breast cancer is no longer my constant companion -- about how it is now just an acquaintance. And I talked about how counseling was once so necessary and about how it is now just a luxury that helps me maintain peace as I live forward.

I am not sure when I will stop going to counseling. But I'm not completely sure of much anymore. And I've learned from counseling to not really question the future -- to just live in the moment and to give thought primarily to the here and now. And right here, right now, I'm sticking with my sessions, my one hour every month, my comforting counseling chair.