I try to keep these posts short, easily skimmable. This one is a little longer, bear with me 🙂
The other day I was lucky enough to join a group of friends for a Zoom happy hour / fundraiser. The cause was breast cancer. This group is passionate about breast cancer because a dear friend has been battling stage 4 metastatic breast cancer for 9 years. (Here’s a good article to learn more about this chronic breast cancer).
At one point the discussion turned to how do you stay positive in the face of this incurable, aggressive disease. Her answers highlighted her internal strength and optimism and drive. The other thing that emerged was the importance of accepting help, and learning to ask for help. (note, I’m writing this post from a feminine strength perspective because the “protagonists” are women and as a woman it’s kind of a “write what you know” – but I believe all of this applies to men too – maybe even more as men are not really taught to “ask for help”)
Our friend is super independent and competent. She’s an engineer, she’s a single homeowner, she’s a marathoner. I’m so thankful she has equally strong friends who are not going to take no for an answer. She shared how lucky she is to have a strong support group, and her best friend who insisted on attending all doctors appointments, chemo sessions, CAT scans and continues to do so to this day…managing MBC is pretty much a full time job. She also spoke of a few other friends who just stepped up. There was no waiting to be asked, and there was no accepting any polite refusals.
The conversation made me think of my step-Mom’s experience with breast cancer and my Mom’s experience with bile duct cancer. Both of my “matriarchs” were strong, competent, intelligent women. Neither asked for help, and it was tough to get them to accept help – they were not used to needing help. It was foreign to ask, uncomfortable to accept and pushed them out of their familiar “caregiver, leader, problem solver” roles.
My step-Mom moved – by herself – from France to the US, and then to Canada as a 22 year old. She married a French man and had 2 children. They spent over a year living on a catamaran and sailing the world – with idyllic scenes like my step-brothers learning to dive by retrieving the dishes she’d throw overboard for them to “rinse” but she would also recount huddling under the galley’s dining table clutching her tiny sons as they rode out a hurricane. As they hit the Halifax harbor and she refused to take her children back to sea she was faced with a Peter-panish, dissatisfied husband who had numerous affairs leading her to strike out on her own.
The woman I met several years down the road was still very independent and now had the confidence and surety that comes with age and experiences. She was no nonsense when necessary and fun loving and mischievous pretty much any other time.
She was diagnosed with cancer in 1997 and tackled it much like she did everything else – with intelligence, intensity and humor. She had a strong support group, a big family and many friends. And she would never ask for help. Sometimes we would forget to push it on her because she was so strong and didn’t seem to need it.
The best illustration I have of this is after her cancer has returned in 2002. During a doctor’s appointment where she, my Dad and step-brother learned the doctor believed things were on the right track and they’d know more in a couple of months.
After the appointment Dad, my step-brother and my step-mom chatted about what to do that afternoon. Should they go for lunch or take care of chores, meet up later. They all agreed to go their separate ways. Dad and step-brother headed off feeling a sense of relief – optimistic even. My step-mom, who in her typical independent way had insisted that she was fine, not hungry for lunch and would see them later, went off feeling much differently. She was processing what she’d heard in the appointment – that the doctor thought she probably only had a couple of months left. Luckily later that day the miscommunication was uncovered and clarified.
That’s a perfect example of not being able to ask for help (if you think you’ve just been told you have 2 months to live, you need support, you are not fine) and of not forcing help (anyone going through a psychic trauma – critical illness, bankruptcy, divorce, death is NOT okay and is NOT absorbing and processing normally).
My Momma’s story has many similarities. She learned that she had bile duct cancer in July of 2017. We lost her that October; bile duct cancer is super aggressive and fast moving. We barely had time to absorb the diagnosis before we had to arrange for hospice and put Mom’s estate together. I lived in California, Mom lived in rural Colorado, on the NM border. If I’d listened to her words I wouldn’t have had any idea how much help she needed.
My Momma was fiercely independent and physically so strong. She could carry a 50 pound hay bale in each hand, use one to hold down the barbwire fence, the other to push back hungry cows and climb over the fence by scissoring her legs over one at a time. She was SO bright, and interested – in everything! You know the People magazine most of us have in the bathroom? Her bathroom reading was a laminated chart covering the 4 primary laws of physics — or something like that, I never fully grasped it, I was reading People …😂
When I first got to her house she was so tiny. And overwhelmed. She didn’t understand half of what she’d been told by the doctors. This powerful, bright person – who owned a copy of Winnie the Pooh written in Latin?!? – was doing the best she could and had asked no one for help. She was used to being able to manage anything. I don’t think it even crossed her mind that she wasn’t fully grasping all of this.
Bouncing back to our friend who is currently fighting MBC, she says that yes, this is true – you don’t “hear” the updates. She’ll come from an oncologist appointment and her friend that goes with her will say “okay he said you need to do X, Y and Z” and “the patient” will say “he did? I didn’t hear any of that”.
I definitely saw the same stuff happen with my Mom. And I did it too. When my Mom passed a dear friend said “I’m on my way” and if she’d asked I would have said “no, I’m fine, really, it may actually be harder if you’re here”. Thankfully she didn’t ask and wouldn’t have accepted a refusal. I was in a fog. I didn’t even realize.
These snippets are to illustrate that often those of us who seem the least in need of help are in fact totally overwhelmed, and don’t even realize that we need help.
So – if one of the humans you love is currently caught in personal hurricane – insist that they accept some help. If you are the one saying “nope, I’m good” – no you’re not.
I know you may feel like you can’t admit you need help because what’s getting you through this is grit, but you are strong enough to ask for help. Yes, it takes courage to be vulnerable and to ask/accept but you’re a badass! You can totally admit you’re scared or overwhelmed, or tired. I know it feels like if you say that out loud you won’t have the strength to get back up, but I promise, you will. And the people you’ve asked for help will give you a hand up.
As a side note – not all of us have personal contacts we can ask for help. Here are a few other options.
- Support groups
- Facebook (not only for cat videos) (and other social media)
- Church – even if you’re an atheist
- Therapy – group or individual
Sending love and light your way – you can do this! ❤ 🌻
Wisdom of Friends 