I am new here. I'm 37 and dealing with a third family member with cancer. My mum has recently been diagnosed with lung cancer and I am caring for her. When I was 12 I lost my brother to bone cancer, he was aged 20. When I was 19, I lost my father to prostate cancer at the age of 56. I can't believe I am facing losing my mum now too and I don't know how I will cope. Cancer has completely destroyed my family and I just feel complete despair sometimes. It's hard to speak to friends because they don't understand, none of them have suffered a loss before and don't understand what a diagnosis like this is like. I am so very scared and finding it hard to stay optimistic. Thanks for listening x
Hi
I can relate to the idea of friends not having suffered a loss before since for many years I was in that set, though my set was somewhat different too as a "RAF brat" friendships got torn apart all the time as we followed my father from base to base.
Cancer is much more common than people may want to think but is not often a subject people want to discuss. When I came out at work with my wife's cancer diagnosis there have been lots of people who have come to speak to me to discuss their issues when they have never spoken to anyone else.
Something that really helped me was a living with less stress course and perhaps the key element from that related to your story would be the living in the now element. I was doing really well at creating scenarios that turned out to be much worse in my head than turned out in reality. A saying that I sometimes find useful on this is “Worrying does not take away tomorrow’s troubles. It takes away today’s peace.”
Life still of course does like to provide interesting challenges that we never expected - the conscious breathing exercises - step back take a deep breath or two can really help with those.
<<hugs>>
Steve
