Caregiving
Parent Mentoring: You Are Not Alone
There are moments in my life that I will never forget. Most of them represent important milestones like getting married, the birth of our sons, the sudden death of a good friend, and the passing of my dear parents. I can recall them all. However, there is another moment I will never forget: the day of my son’s cancer diagnosis.
Read More...Words Matter—but Supportive Silence Can Go a Long Way
Over my father’s two-month journey diagnosed with stage IV Esophageal cancer, he had a parade of visitors. Each person shared something different, many not wanting to share out loud what we all feared.
“He’s strong.”
“He’ll get through this.”
“We need to pray harder.”
It Must Be Me
As I lay there screaming into the ground, nothing came out, not even a faint puff of air. I had cried so many tears the day before from anger, frustration, and grief. I let my face just scrape up against the cold ground. It was the only way I could force myself to feel again: frigid ground attempting to wake me up. Waiting for Ashton Kutcher to tap me on the shoulder and exclaim, “YOU’VE BEEN PUNKED!”
Read More...The Cost of Caregiving: Survivor’s Guilt
If I could turn back time, I certainly would. I try not to live life in the rearview, yet, as they say, hindsight is 20/20. I also believe that we learn from our past so that we can focus on our future more intentionally. However, after losing a loved one to cancer after years spent caregiving, I have admittedly experienced some survivor’s guilt. It has washed over me in waves and disrupted the life and identity I once had.
Read More...Living at a Crossroads: Juggling Caregiving and College
Just a few weeks after dropping me off for my first semester of college in 2014, my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer. Suddenly I had two lives. One where I was home taking care of him and trying to support my mom. The other was at college, where I juggled the guilt of not being present at school with the shame of not being there for my family.
Read More...My Place in the Family of Things
My Place in the Family of Things: How Nature Helps Me Cope as a Caregiver. “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.” – Mary Oliver
Read More...Untangling Survivorship Together
At the end of May 2005, my boyfriend Andrew was diagnosed with Acute Lymphatic Leukemia (ALL). He was twenty-two years old. I was twenty-three. Of all the things we were supposed to worry about in our early twenties, cancer was not supposed to be one of them.
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