Carrying Grief and Joy: How to lighten the load when cancer joins the family

There's so much we've done wrong as parents, but I like to believe that providing a loving home that feels like a breath of fresh air is something we've done right. It is not uncommon for us to hear a literal sigh of relief from our children the moment we arrive back home from somewhere else. It's as though they've been holding their breath or holding it together all day and they can finally let it all out.

My hope is that each time they walk through the front door, they can shed their fears and stresses and know they are loved and accepted exactly as they are. In our home, we welcome all emotions. In response to what we've been through these past few years, we've found it crucial that our kids get familiar with joy, annoyance, anger, sadness, angst, confusion, disappointment, and every emotion in between.

It goes against my innate desire to keep life easy and happy for them, but I hope they'll be better equipped for life as they get cozy and comfortable with the complexities of their own minds. Unfortunately, kids who watch a parent endure cancer don't have much of a choice but to face the full impact of what this awful disease is doing to their lives and to their family.

This experience has also forced me to create a home environment where emotions are validated rather than silenced, embraced rather than ignored, and shown empathy rather than shamed away.

Who knows, perhaps my kids may have a better chance navigating through this crazy place we call Planet Earth by enduring such hardship now. I find myself clinging to these "silver-lining thoughts" as I desperately seek reasons for why cancer arrived at our doorstep.

I am the first to admit how hard it is to maintain a state of mind that is able to stay strong and calm in the midst of madness parenting brings with it. I'll also admit that I'm usually the first to blow my fuse when they have an angry outburst or show them nothing but impatience when they stomp through the front door full of negativity when all I wanted that day was the positive stuff!

I recognize that my short fused responses are usually because I'm overstimulated, overwhelmed, exhausted, or all of the above.

Ty and I absolutely refuse to allow a cancer diagnosis to steal moments of joy from us. We will not be owned by cancer and will never let cancer take the spotlight in our lives or our children's lives.

We learned that the colon cancer had found a way to spread to Ty's liver the day before our oldest son's graduation from elementary school. We wept in disbelief in each other's arms before gathering ourselves back together when it was time to pick up our kids from school.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, we don't have time to dwell in the hard times as we have four impressionable little people who need us to stay firmly grounded and to keep moving forward.

So, instead of laying in bed in despair, which is exactly what we felt like doing, we had a silly shirt made with our son's face on it, smiled big, laughed even bigger, and even danced in the rain like maniacs at the graduation party!

The beautiful graduation ceremony was drenched in the very rare summer rain we get here in Santa Barbara, but we barely noticed as we tried to focus all our energy on the fact that our firstborn was ending the sweetest chapter of childhood.

We had to work hard to choose joy that day.

We showed up to every single last-week-of-school event and truly enjoyed every minute of it. We didn't know it at the time, but we were practicing a skill that would become vital to us as we battle this war with cancer.

We were teaching ourselves and our children that we can carry both good and bad at the same time.

Grief and Joy can share space together.

Fear and Bravery can even become friends.

Even while we waited for the right moment to tell our children the truth about their dad's health, there was no denying they already suspected we were keeping something important from them. They began asking questions and would give each other glances when we would respond to something with vagueness.

This felt both counterintuitive and frightening, and made us truly understand why so many parents dealing with cancer decide not to tell their children.

The news is going to hurt them and it's likely going to hurt you even more as you see the pain it inflicts on their sweet little souls.

We so desperately wanted to shield our four little loves from this devastating news, and that is why we packed the news tightly inside of us for over a week because we knew their lives would forever be altered once they learned this information.

To us, it felt as though we were popping that sweet bubble of ignorant bliss that every child deserves, one they had just finished blowing back up again after the last bout with cancer they saw their dad go through.

I know it's so hard to understand the concept of finding joy amidst absolute despair, because I did not understand it myself until I was forced to.

But I keep holding onto the sacredness we experienced this past summer and force myself to re-read the journal entries I wrote when I was truly experiencing the magic of finding joy amidst suffering.

Journal Entry: July 12, 2023

Each day, we get the most thoughtful texts from the most loving friends, checking in on us and asking what our needs are. It's almost jolting to get these right now, since we truly are thriving. This week has been full of nothing but goodness (if you don't count the dozens of kid tantrums and endless sibling bickering) because we are enjoying our treasured annual trip to Lake Tahoe with our extended family.

Most of our time this week has been full of family bike rides around the meadow, digging in the sand, playing sunset games of badminton on the beach, and stuffing our bellies with Grandma Thann's cooking.

We did not invite cancer to join us on this vacation and we've somehow been able to keep thoughts of it from intruding on our joyful moments this week.

If someone told me last month, when we first got the cancer diagnosis, that I'd be truly happy and even content this summer, I would have spit in your face. I was spitting mad back then and my mind was full of vitriol for all the things in our life that were stolen from us.

I was grieving the plans I thought we were about to embark on and it took me a few weeks to get to this place of true acceptance for the path we are forced onto instead.

Today, my oldest daughter and I put on silly matching tank tops with kitty faces on them so we could go horseback riding at Zephyr Cove Stables. We were giddy with excitement as we drove to the stables and I can tell you with complete honesty that we were truly happy!

On the drive, we even talked about how good it feels to embrace this new plan and to trust that God is walking us through it every step of the way.

The Spark Fades

As I sit here writing on this gorgeous fall day in October, I will be honest and report that the spark of light within me is no longer bright.

In fact, it took a lot of effort for me to even open up this computer and put my fingers to the keyboard. I hear doubt creeping back into my thoughts and hopelessness trying to nestle back in.

But, I refuse to give up on me and I refuse to give up on the dreams Ty and I share, so I forced myself up and decided I’d fake it for today.

This past month has left both Ty and me feeling broken, bored, and bone-tired. I hate feeling this way as depression and anxiety takes hold, but I try to give myself the same grace I do with my children.

It’s ok to have only negative feelings.

It’s ok to not see any silver lining in sight.

it’s ok to not be ok.

Sometimes I am carrying grief and there just isn’t room for joy.

This is actually an important part of my process as that sadness inside me exists whether I give it a voice or not, so if I always suppress the grief and trauma, it will find a way to wreak havoc on my nervous system.

For me, writing has been my greatest escape from ensuring the traumatic events don’t take me down to a deep dark place. As I write, the chaotic thoughts in my head seem to slow down and become a steady flow of words that no longer takes up space inside me.

Lighting the Spark to Life Again

The first thing I did was shower the sleep off my body because everyone feels better after a hot shower, right?

Then, while my hair straightener heated I began getting lost in my current obsession, which is Audiobooks. We each have that one thing that makes us feel more put-together, and for me, it’s always been when I take the time to do my hair. With my hair done, I find I stand a little taller and feel more beautiful. I often feel like I’ve aged at least 20 years in the past three years, but when I do my hair and put on a favorite outfit, it sends a message to my brain that I still have so much life ahead of me to enjoy!

So I let the cathartic words from Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert sink into my soul again, just like it did many months ago when Ty and I listened to the book on a roadtrip we took together.

Listening to the calming voice of one my favorite authors caused me to remember that wild fire that ignited within me when I finally embraced the circumstances my family was facing and decided to allow them to transform me instead of crush me.

My goodness, if I could recreate those life-altering conversations Ty and I had while driving down 101 at dawn, listening to Big Magic and dreaming the biggest future we could possibly imagine for ourselves.

It almost felt like we were in an altered state of mind since we were defying all expectations of how we should be feeling when faced with a cancer diagnosis.

Ty had just been released from a weeklong stay in the hospital after a major surgery that removed a tumor in his liver, and his entire gallbladder.

If we followed social protocol, we should have been holed up at home in a state of fear and sadness. We were facing the big C, after all, and this gives anyone full permission to be as fearful and sad as they'd like.

Somehow though, by the grace of God, we felt more alive than ever before. We were filled with so much motivation, it practically burst out of us! Hours upon hours were spent bouncing ideas and inspirations off each other and it felt to me that we were a united force that would only grow stronger when facing danger.

Nothing could break our spirits and nothing could knock us down.

I realize now that it was easy to stay in a magical state of bliss when the cancer treatment Ty would endure was still hypothetical. We had dreams that went on for miles and felt like the sky was the limit when it came to launching our website and beginning to write our book.

We have not given up on that dream, but with each round of chemo that is injected into Ty, it seems our motivation gets replaced by pure exhaustion. Our current desire to write is foggy even on our best days.

Big Magic

Ty just began Round Four of chemotherapy and I need to battle my own inner demons to find that Big Magic again.

When I need to reignite that spark, I find my favorite quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert and remember that car ride with Ty when we decided to take the sourest lemons life had to offer and turn them into something resembling lemonade.

"The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them...Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?." ~Elizabeth Gilbert

"What do you love doing so much that the words failure and success essentially become irrelevant?" ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

"Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest of it will take care of itself." ~Elizabeth Gilbert

"Don’t rush through the experiences and circumstances that have the most capacity to transform you." ~Elizabeth Gilbert

"You must learn how to become a deeply disciplined half-ass." ~Elizabeth Gilbert

"Inspiration is trying to send me messages in every form it can—through dreams, through clues, through coincidences, through déjà vu, through kismet, through surprising waves of attraction and reaction, through the chills that run up my arms, through the hair that stands up on the back of my neck, through the pleasure of something new and surprising, through stubborn ideas that keep me awake all night long . . . whatever works. Inspiration is always trying to work with me." ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

So, dear friends, I am currently in my Oxymoron Era where my life is upside-down, right-side-up, sideways and straight, all at once.

Some days, I carry it all with Grace, and other days I let it all fall clumsily to the ground.

Welcome to my Kind of Crazy life!

*Full disclosure: Note that we highly recommend reading or listening to the Audible version of Big Magic and that we receive a tiny commission if purchased using the links on this blog