Having achieved most of what she desired five years ago, her next five-year plan is equally ambitious. Her second book, Crazy Sexy Cancer Companion: Inspirations and Reflections for the Ride, will be out in June 2008. “I’m hoping to make the message broader and take it into more mainstream media. It’s hip to be healthy. I’m trying to approach it in a way that makes people curious, makes them laugh, even gasp a little,” says Carr. To emphasize her point she untwines her knotted legs, rises from her seated position, and kicks a toe high in the air.
More books are in the pipeline. She and her husband Brian Fassett run a production studio, Red House Pictures, and are pitching ideas for series born from the idea of personal empowerment and taking responsibility for ourselves and the world around us. They are creating short wellness themed “webisodes.” They just wrapped the extras section for the Crazy Sexy Cancer DVD that will be out in March: Look for a 30-minute yoga segment with Rodney Yee, and a section on juicing in which Carr investigates the produce isle at her local “pharmacy”—Sunflower Natural Foods in Woodstock.
Carr is hired for speaking engagements at galas, events, hospitals, and wellness centers across the country. She may write a column for a national magazine. She is creating a foundation for integrative medicine for cancer patients. She envisions Crazy Sexy wellness coaches from coast to coast. Trained coaches will help patients renovate their diets and help navigate the world of alternative healing. “It’s very big and it’s overwhelming. I’ve done it already. I’ve done it for you,” says Carr.
She is meeting with hospital staff to integrate juicing programs for cancer patients. “The sickest people are fed the deadest food,” she says.
At the same time, she plans to stay healthy and balanced and remember her roots. She boosts her immune system with enzyme-rich and alkaline-based foods that are 80 percent raw and 99 percent vegan. She starts every day with a 16-ounce glass of vegetable juice, followed by another one a few hours later, then she brings on the salad courses. She drinks juiced wheatgrass every day, although she admits it tastes disgusting. She learned the body heals eight times faster with exercise. And she believes the most important element to healing is attitude. To replenish her own, she meditates in the morning, then reads inspirational writing by great speakers. Books by her friend Marianne Williamson are on her bedside table, and she often returns to The Four Agreements. She loves the poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Carr keeps two photographs of herself and Oprah on the window ledge beside her writing desk. The photographs show the two women standing side by side, flooded with light in front of a hued background. Both are beaming. “[Being on Oprah] was one of the wildest experiences of my life, out-of-body to be exact,” writes Carr on her blog, crazysexycancer.blogspot.com.
Hundreds of people read and post messages on the blog daily. The newly diagnosed, patients, survivors; people suffering from depression or obesity; and people who want to change their lives look to Carr for inspiration and aid. Carr writes, “If you’re reading this blog on a weekly basis you’re committed to change and you’re on the path.” Her favorite healthy lifestyle choices to blog about include fasting and detoxification, food combining, colon cleansing, and positive thinking.
With so many people wanting a little piece of whatever transformed Kris Carr, it’s easy to wonder how she handles the pressure. She has the support of her friends and family, and that of her husband, whom she fell in love with and married four years into her diagnosis (she hired him to edit and shoot her documentary). They are now newlyweds and business partners and they work nonstop. They read the hundreds of letters she receives each week, in which people both praise her and recount heartbreaking stories. “I take things in deeply but I don’t absorb the pain. I know what I can give and I honor my limits and boundaries. That is one thing I learned from cancer,” she says. When she gets the blues or is overwhelmed she sits quietly beside a kitchen timer set for 10 minutes. If that doesn’t help, she walks. “Wallowing is smelly. I can figure out the world’s problems on the C-Loop at Wilson State Park,” she says.