“Welcome to the Sisterhood You Never Wanted to Join”

After my diagnosis, I had a dilemma. Do I tell people? Who do I tell? When should I tell them? How do I tell them? These are hard questions because this is not your “run of the mill” news that you can drop on people easily. For example, you are taking a walk down the street and you run into a friend. While standing six feet apart, they ask: “How are you doing?” What do you say? “Well, I just got diagnosed with breast cancer and I have to start chemo for 4 months and then they are going to surgically remove both of my breasts. Oh, and I probably won’t see you at all because I am going to have to self-isolate in my house, keeping my distance from my husband and children because we have this global pandemic happening and if I get the coronavirus, I could die. How are you doing?” See. S-U-P-E-R Awkward.

Then there is the issue of how people will now look at me in the professional setting. Suddenly, I am not the Kim that I was previously. They may consider me now as “sick” Kim. Will I be too sick to work? Will I be considered irrelevant or not reliable? Do I want to risk losing clients who may consider that somehow I might not be able to do my very best for them? Do I want to risk people writing me off as a potential consultant for the same reasons? There is a real risk in telling people. I know colleagues who have kept their diagnoses quiet — people who have gutted it out and bore the burden of illness silently.

For those of you reading this, you probably already know that it would be IMPOSSIBLE for me to stay silent (OK, I heard that snort of laughter). I am not one who wants to, or is capable of, hiding how I am feeling. So, I decided that I just needed to trust that it is the right thing — for me — to tell people. If clients want to revoke contracts, so be it. If potential clients turn away, so be it. If friends look at me now with pity, thinking to themselves: “I know times are tough for me right now, but at least I am not Kim,” so be it.

Let me be clear here: Telling people is not easy for me. I have always prided myself at playing this superwoman role. You know, the woman who brings home the bacon and fries it up in the pan. The one who has the career and then comes home and cooks a full meal, keeps the house tidy, helps kids with whatever they need, volunteers, bakes cookies, etc. — a kind of kick-ass June Cleaver (my kids might say more like a bossy maniac). I know I am not superwoman and keeping up that pace is exhausting at times, but I loved it in my control-freak kind of way. Telling people — showing people — that there is a chink in my amour is hard — hard to admit that I cannot do it all.

I decided that if I am going to tell people, I’m going “all in” — thus, the public blog. Plus, it is a much more efficient way of communicating out to everyone so I do not have to keep having serial conversations about how I am doing, which is EXHAUSTING. I had absolutely no idea of how my news would be received by friends and colleagues, but nonetheless I took the plunge.

It has been amazing. People have been incredible. Honestly, I should have had more faith. Indeed, the response has been overwhelming. Supportive messages and phone calls have come flooding in since I have let the world know about my battle. There have been so many offers of help and acts of kindness that I have gone from pity-party to celebration of the fact that I am so lucky to have many fantastic friends and colleagues.

I think the response that has overwhelmed me the most has been the outreach to me from fellow cancer patients — now survivors — and those who have had significant others undertake this battle. This is the reasons for the title of my blog post today: “Welcome to the Sisterhood You Never Wanted to Join.” Actually, it should be more gender neutral than sisterhood because I have been hearing from men and women, but I went with this title because that was a greeting from someone who wrote to me to offer support and advice. I thought it was very apt. So, I am “borrowing” it.

This not a sisterhood or fellowship I wanted to join. No one wants cancer. But, here I am. And, what a fellowship it is. The individuals in this fellowship who have reached out to me with observations, advice, and messages of support are beacons of hope to me. They went through what I am going through or, starting tomorrow with my first round of chemotherapy, will be going through.

When I was first diagnosed, a good friend of mine connected me to someone who had the exact same type of cancer I currently have, but she went through her ordeal about ten years ago. At that moment, when the diagnosis was still fresh — like a open wound — her willingness to sit with me for an hour and talk about what I was about to face was similar to someone throwing out a life preserver to someone who is drowning. I was drowning in fear, doubt, sadness, and anger. I felt lost and unsure of what to do. Just the sheer act of her telling me her story, answering questions, and giving me advice made a huge impact on me. Walking back to my car after meeting with her, I felt lighter and the iron-fist of fear wrapped around my heart loosened.

The second survivor to talk to me is a good friend — one who has gone through three — yes, three — fights with cancer. She is feisty and spiritual and one hell of a “mama bear” for those whom she has chosen to bring into her posse. I am one of those lucky ones. I called her right right away because I knew she had my back in this fight. I was not wrong. Since she knows me already, her advice was targeted right at me. She talked to me about taking care of myself first (not something I am used to) and about learning to accept help from others. She helped me think about my fight differently. She wisely explained that when you first tell people about your diagnosis, their responses are usually ones of fear and dread because they worry about you, but if you accept their offers of help, their energy changes from negative fear to positive assistance and hope. So, by accepting help, you are helping not only yourself, but others. Boy, she totally gets me.

I also reached out to a mom whom I have known for many years as our boys have gone to school together since Kindergarten. She also battled breast cancer and won. I had watched her fight and admired not only her tenacity, but how she kept it together while raising two boys and seemed to be so positive. She has been another one of those pillars of support. She spent a lot of time on the phone with me and texting back and forth to check in. She has given me so much practical advice about how to weather chemotherapy, how to interact with doctors, how to interact with your family and how to just take care of yourself. She also was very frank in talking about how you feel differently around people who are healthy and how it can be hard to look around at your healthy friends and wish you were back in that space — the space of being healthy, happy and relatively worry-free. Her honesty has been a lifesaver to me.

There are also many people — including the three mentioned above — who have made a very similar observation that I have found to be helpful and hopeful. They have told me that while this battle will be the hardest fight of my life, I will come out of it a better person. (My first sarcastic thought is: how do you improve perfection? Ha, Ha. I get the irony of that thought.) Seriously though, there is a repeating theme from each survivor: You will emerge better and stronger. I guess that when you look at your own mortality square in the eye and have to battle to regain your health, something in you shifts. You find strength that you did not know was there. You see clearly what is really important in life. You appreciate the small things and do not sweat the small stuff. I am not there yet, but I do see changes in how I look at the world and my circumstances. I am a work in progress, but if I can achieve a fraction of that new perspective, I would indeed be a better version of me.

I could go on and on about all of the people who have reached out and communicated with me. In a nutshell, their information has been so useful. I’ve had recommendations about books to read, when to shave my head if my hair starts to fall out, what are the softest hats, what is the best mouthwash and tongue-scraper (who knew?), what are the best drugs (including some generous offers about the best cannabis products), and many other small details that a novice would not know.

I will be forever grateful for my new fellowship. I have grown my circle of friends in ways that I could never have imagined pre-diagnosis. I have seen the very best of people — people willing to share what is probably one of their hardest and scariest moments of life with someone who may already be a friend, who was really just an acquaintance, or who they did not even know until they talked with me.

I have started a practice — one that is probably LONG overdue — in which every night I walk through a “gratitude list” in my head. My family tops that list, but that list has grown almost every day with a new addition to my fellowship. So, yes, cancer sucks. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But, a silver lining to this diagnosis has been the discovery of this fellowship and the growing list of friends and their love and support. And, for that, I count myself as blessed and fortunate.