Nothing Good about Cancer

There is nothing good about cancer.

Nothing.

Not when it’s your child fighting for his life.

Maybe if it were me who had cancer, I could find something good in it.

But not when it’s your child.

And it doesn’t matter how old they are either. I hate this. I hate everything about this disease.

That doesn’t mean I can’t find gratitude, hope, laughter, and joy right beside my pain and deep suffering.

As a therapist and someone who has been healing from my own family and generational trauma, I understand what our bodies and minds do to protect us, and I’m grateful for that.

But in order for this grief not to consume me, I have to be real. I have to be honest about the gut-wrenching pain I feel within me.

The grief of watching my son suffer and not being able to do a damn thing about it.

The grief his siblings carry.The grief my husband carries.

Will we make something beautiful from this pain?

Of course we will. It’s who I am, and it’s who we are as a family at our core.

But we bring our babies into this world with hopes and dreams.

We believe that, as parents, we will get sick and die before our children.

And when those roles feel reversed, the fear, worry, suffering, and pain in your body become more than anyone should have to bear.

Here is what I know:

The beauty that may come from this will be found in the breaking open of our hearts.

My heart.

My husband’s heart.

Our son’s heart.

The hearts of our other son and daughters.

There will be more empathy.

More connection.

A deeper understanding of other people’s pain

.Equality for all.

Wanting a better world for all people, a world and country where universal health care is available for every single human being; where parents can take time off from work and not worry about the cost of health care or losing their job; where no one has to choose between paying rent, groceries, a doctor’s visit, or medicine.

A joy that is not superficial, a joy found in simple, everyday things, not in material things or social media likes.

Love.

Real authentic unconditional love.

Because when you experience both deep joy and deep suffering, as Fr. Richard Rohr says, that is when you experience love.

And when people choose me as their therapist to walk beside them on their healing journey, I will be able to sit even deeper with their suffering because I have lived inside this kind of pain myself.

What I know is this:

He’s going to beat this and kick the shit out of cancer.

Fuck cancer.

And if we are going to heal, one of the most important things we must do is learn to sit with our pain instead of hiding from it, running from it, numbing it, fixing it, or saying the ridiculous things we sometimes say to ourselves and others in an attempt to protect ourselves from pain and sometimes that too is necessary.

Because if we don’t sit with our pain, it will come out sideways.

And as angry as I feel at times, I never want to cause more pain to someone else because of the pain I’m carrying inside of me.

Because while my son is going through the hardest time of his life, he still smiles.

He still lights up every room he walks into.

He still believes and knows he is going to get through this, and so do we.

But I feel like a ticking time bomb, like if one person says the wrong thing or fails him in some way, I could tear them to shreds.

Nor does this mean I don’t have faith.

My faith in God has evolved, as I believe it should as we grow, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still have a deep connection with what I call God.

You may use a different word, or maybe you don’t believe at all, and that is okay too.

But if it weren’t for Jesus and the example he set for humanity, I would not be who I am today.

And none of that changes the fact that there is nothing good about cancer.

Sitting at the hospital waiting for our son to get out of surgery.