Everyone copes with hard news differently. By sharing my experience, perhaps another kid out there may manage to give themself a bit more grace. Some general takeaways are that this journey is different for everyone, and there’s no right way to feel. Don’t be afraid to ask how you can best show up for your loved one; nobody can read minds, and it never hurts to ask. It's especially hard when you can't physically be with your loved one.

I’m typically very quick to cry and don’t always have the best control over my emotions. I cry when I’m happy, sad, scared, frustrated, sentimental… but when I heard about the abnormal mammogram and that my mom was getting a biopsy, no immediate tears sprung to my eyes. My immediate thoughts were that everything would be okay and whatever it was would be handled. I was put off by my own knee-jerk reaction to shut down my emotions. Was that helping or hurting how I could show up best for my mom? I knew i wasn’t going to help anything by being a mess, but I was taken aback by my own unwillingness to confront the feelings that her diagnosis brought up for me. I wasn’t going to worry until we knew what it was. I certainly was sad for the anxiety and fear I knew my mom was experiencing, but it felt like when given this info, I walled off these feelings and went into a different mode completely. It had been caught early, and I knew she’d have the best care team around her, so I felt calm. I wasn’t scared to talk about it with my friends. Why could I talk about it without crying? I guess I just needed to take my time and process in my own way.

I also felt guilty for living out-of-state. I was adjusting to a new environment and my time wasn’t always my own, and I felt like I wasn’t doing enough to support her. I couldn’t be there to take her to appointments or help take care of her after surgery. All I could really do was FaceTime as often as possible and ask questions and listen. It just didn’t feel like enough for me.

The day she started radiation, I lost it in class and broke down in tears. It felt so wrong to not be back home, and I think the weight of my mom’s cancer just finally came crashing down. All I wanted was to be able to hold her hand and sit in the waiting room with her, and give her a hug. It felt like a whole chapter of my mom’s life that I wasn’t truly present for. Especially because it was a turning point that changed her outlook on life. And then I feel more guilty for making my mom’s cancer about me and how I’m feeling.

All this to say, that we all cope differently and have our own timeline. If I could, I’d go back and tell myself not to compare my process to anyone else’s and to start journaling a little earlier so that I could work through my feelings to create more space to show up for my mom during this process. Sometimes the best way to show up for a loved one is to also show up for yourself.