Shout out to my frinz dealing with cancer. In my experience, a cancer diagnosis and treatment is a whole other thing. It brings a lot of big and subtle feelings and seems to demand all our attention. Let’s talk about it. What do we hold on to when we’re going through cancer?

What I noticed in my own cancer journeys (Hodgkin’s disease, Large-Cell Lymphoma, Breast Cancer) is that cancer seems to rob us of our identity. It seems to take over. Now we’re “cancer patient,” and our time and focus is taken up with medical appointments, medications, and dealing with side effects. You know, even as I type those words, they contain so much more: all the driving and sitting in waiting rooms. All the fluorescent doctor’s office lights. The way the treatment ravages our bodies.

Then there’s the fears and the way fear creeps in to every moment. I noticed that fear was a constant background (and often front and center!) in my thoughts.

And the way cancer can change our role within our relationships. Now all of a sudden we need help. Maybe we can’t keep up the same schedule and activities as before. And it can change how other people view us. All the concerned looks that people gave me – drove me bananas. People start to treat us differently, gingerly perhaps. Or they stay away because they’re uncomfortable and don’t know what to say or how to support us. I definitely felt “othered.” I didn’t like having to teach other people how to support me.

In all these ways cancer can make us feel diminished, reduced. With so much time and attention and energy that has to be given to the cancer, with all the ways it changes our day-to-day lives and changes our relationships, where do “I” exist? Who am I, other than “cancer patient” and how do I keep the other parts of me alive?

I love to support my cancer-having clients learn how to keep themselves broad. How to stay in touch with all of their identity. How to keep connection to their creativity, their passion, their effectiveness, agency, competence, and humor.

I support them in expressing anger. I support them in expressing fear. My session space is a place they can let it all out and be heard and be understood.

I support them in returning to their fullness and hugeness and sense of themselves, them-awesome-selves, regardless of what cancer tries to say about it.

With love,
Jonna