Parenting with Cancer
When my diagnosis crashed into my life, I was thirty-four years old, married for nine years, and had two children. Our daughter was six years old, and our son was two. I was still nursing my son about five times a day. He was a sweet one to nurse, and I knew we were done having children, so we milked it. (Pun intended). For some reason, my brain made me quit nursing him the day I heard the tumor was malignant. I didn’t start treatment for another month, so I could have kept going, but my brain just needed it to be that day, and I listened. I am okay with this decision, but it was also such a compacted difficulty that I did it this way. Just like when my daughter quit nursing on her own at thirteen months old, this time, when I stopped, my son was totally fine, and I was not. My hormones tanked, and my steady depression that was always background before I heard the tumor was malignant now covered my body head to toe, inside and out, like a dark, heavy blanket, and then I stopped nursing cold turkey and somehow fell further into the dark, which I did not know was possible.
I’d like to share with you a journal excerpt that I wrote after my diagnosis while waiting for chemotherapy to begin.
February 21, 2021: Today, I am missing everything from the life I had before. Everything feels mundane. Long, annoying parenting days. Having to take my son out of his car seat just to drop my daughter off at preschool. And again, to pick her up. I’m missing worrying about taking two kids to the park and how I’ll potty train another toddler. I’m missing thinking about other things besides appointments and cancer. I’m missing it all. Who I was before. Who I thought I might be. Dreaming. I know, and I feel the difference between now and everything before. I keep thinking about a few lines from The Lord of the Rings. One is where the elf princess tells her dad, “You said there is only death, but there is also life.” And the other is when Frodo says he wishes he was not chosen for the task of taking the ring to be destroyed at Mordor, and Gandalf says, “. . .and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” I know I am not the only person who faces mortality. We all do. Just before now, I could ignore it. As humans, it is common to ignore our mortality. Facing its reality feels to me like my heart lives inside of my stomach and my skin is trying to fold out. It feels like despair—a pounding fear of loss. Yes, I am mortal, and I feel it deeply. And I am also alive. But how do I live here?
An Article from Science Direct Social Science and Medicine helps explain these feelings I mentioned by giving what is happening a name: Liminality (a quality of being in between two places or stages, on the verge of transitioning to something new.) “We believe that all cancer patients enter and experience liminality as a process that begins with the first manifestations of their malignancy. An initial acute phase of liminality is marked by disorientation, a sense of loss and control, and a sense of uncertainty. An adaptive, enduring phase of suspended liminality supervenes, in which each patient constructs and reconstructs meaning for their experience by means of narrative. This phase persists, probably for the rest of the cancer patient’s life.” (Little, 1998) I talk about this before I talk about parenting because it is important for you to know that your baseline is now different than it was before you had cancer. Therefore, first you must remember to give yourself grace. You are a parent, yes, but you are also a human. You have needs that you may have grown accustomed to ignoring, either because, as a parent, you sometimes have to or because you just started to, because it can feel easier in the chaos of child-rearing. Now, in the liminality of this cancer diagnosis, your needs will have to be moved up in priority. And your family will be okay. They will see your humanity, and they will learn beautiful things from it. Hard but beautiful lessons on endurance, living inside your fears, and the truth that we can do hard things.
The feelings that come through when you are attempting this cancer thing as a parent can vary in intensity and scope. But, in general, I would guess I can understand how you are feeling. How much your head is spinning. The depth of your fear. As a parent, there is not only fear of our own death, of course, we also imagine what it will be like for our kids if we go when they are young. This can feel debilitating, and marrying parenting with this debilitating human response to your diagnosis can feel impossible. How do I deal with the day-to-day parenting sludge while not freaking my kids out and also not vomiting on them as I comb their hair or serve them dinner? This is not something I understand well enough to do. All I can say is, you need help, (I needed help) and if you can’t find it, email me at erinsguidetoyoungbreastcancer@gmail.com, and I will help you find some help.
--This is an excerpt from Chapter 5 of my book Young Breast Cancer Your Story and Mine: A Compact Guide which releases everywhere March 18, 2025, and is currently available for pre-order at Barnes and Noble online, on Amazon, and at bookshop.org