group therapy

cancer camp sharing sessions

Okay I’ll say it: Support group is kinda bullshit.

The LCSW who facilitates the group doesn’t really lead the conversation at all. I’m not sure if he is supposed to or not. I’ve never done group therapy before.

Two or three people dominate the conversation, talking endlessly about every bad thing that’s ever happened to them and listing everyone they know or are related to who has died of cancer.

One woman expresses resentment that some rich people she knows got a year of house cleaning and meal trains after their son died tragically. Where is my house cleaning? Where’s my support? she wants to know.

She talks about it as if cancer is an invisible illness. In my experience cancer garners a ton of empathy—I get much more support now than I did when I was debilitated by back pain, or depression, or any of the other invisible illnesses I’ve had.

I’m lucky that I find these complaints about a lack of support so unrelatable. I actually feel the opposite: Guilty that I’m getting more support than I deserve or technically need. I *could* be doing more, most of the time.¹

Eventually the conversation rolls around to us parents of little little kids. What starts as an open-ended question about our experience quickly turns into all the parents with older children taking turns trying to convince us (or more likely themselves) that actually, having a parent with cancer is a good thing for kids.

It makes them more empathetic, the reasoning goes.

I listen in silence as the Big Talkers spin comforting narratives about how cancer in the family makes kids better.

Having been that kid, I call bullshit.

Now look, I understand why this self-serving narrative is deeply tempting. It would be comforting to believe that my illness serves some greater good when it comes to my children’s development.

We are all obsessed with our kids. They’re beautiful genius angel babies to a one.

But I am that kid, which none of these people lecturing me are. My dad had cancer when I was little. Did it make me a better and more empathetic person? Who could possibly say. Maybe I’d be a callous bitch if my dad had been healthy. I like who I am, so I can’t regret the conditions that made me.

But the logic isn’t sound. It’s a self-soothing and self-serving line of thought.

The point is, they’re reasoning backward from a conclusion: I have a great kid, therefore I can’t wish away the circumstances that produced that kid. Fine. I get it.

But if you’d been healthy, would your kid suck today? I doubt you’d think so. You’d probably be expounding on all the reasons why whatever hardships you did face or whatever parenting choices you made are the key to having a great kid.

Cancer isn’t a good thing for kids or adults. Let’s stop kidding ourselves.

That’s not to say we can’t make lemonade from shitty situations, but let’s not go from that to glorifying cancer. Want to raise empathetic kids? Get cancer! is not exactly parenting advice to live by.

And to be perfectly clear, I’m not better than anyone else because my dad had cancer. And my kids aren’t superior beings because their mom is sick, sorry to report.²

The conversation moves on without me speaking up. The unspoken rule of the group seems to be that we all fluff each other up and agree with everything everyone says.

I can’t participate in this fiction so I’m mostly silent.

One woman wants friends to come visit her only if they’re willing to exactly match her mood. If she wants to be happy, you better smile. If she wants to be sad, don’t try to jolly her.

I get that, on some level. She doesn’t want a sympathetic head tilt and how are you reallllllly? when she’s trying to be bubbly and fun. She doesn’t want someone to tell her you got this girl!! when she’s sitting with the sadness.

But this philosophy also seems pretty self-absorbed, friendship-wise. Like…more than one person can have a hard time at the same time. Something doesn’t have to be the worst thing to happen to anybody—or even the worst thing to happen to you—in order to suck. If my friend wants to talk about something hard, I can set aside my happiness and witness their struggle.

Cancer doesn’t give me a lifetime monopoly on bringing emotions to a dynamic.

But the group universally affirms her sentiment. A theme that surfaces is: Don’t ever expect me to be okay, but accept it without question when I am.

One of the main Talkers pulls out his phone and has us all listen to this song on the tinny speaker. People nod and tell him how wonderful it is, how it speaks to them and to the moment. The session ends on this note and we disperse.

At the next group, around the campfire, I have a harder time biting my tongue. Someone begins talking about how there is no ‘after’ cancer. It’s fully defining. You never stop looking over your shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop, anticipating the next blood test, the next scan.

People nod and agree, and expound on this theme of how there is no ‘after.’ One woman underwent her stage-2 breast cancer surgery six years ago and she’s adamant that it never goes away.

I feel like I should be better by now and I’m still in treatment, so listening to a woman who is six years out (and who didn’t have chemo or radiation) talk about how you never get over it is….unhelpful? Unsettling?

I hope I do get over it! I want to be over it already and I’m still in it!

Sorry but I hate that idea, I say, finally speaking up. I don’t want cancer to define the rest of my life. I want to get the treatment and be done.

In the days that follow, I struggle to move on from this idea. Is there such a thing as “after”? As “cured”? Or is it like being an alcoholic, and you have it for life, always in recovery but never recovered?

I’m scared of after in some ways—once the treatment is over am I meant to just bounce back? How quickly? I’m scared all the sympathy and help will evaporate overnight. It’s like after you give birth and get tons of help and attention for the first few weeks, but then it becomes old news before you’ve even stopped bleeding.

Will I ever recover fully from cancer, or is this who I am now?

In the group therapy session people are calling themselves warriors—I prefer it to survivor—and saying that cancer makes their identity.

No thanks. I don’t want that for myself. I’m not a warrior, I’m just a person doing what she has to do to get through the day. Hopefully I’m doing it with some amount of grace and strength, but let’s not be grandiose about it.

When we’re saying our goodbyes on Sunday, a man approaches me to thank me for my comments in group. I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said, about not letting this define you, he tells me. I have PTSD as well as cancer and I hadn’t really thought of it like that before. I don’t want this to be how I’m remembered, as depressed and sick.

He hadn’t seen it as a choice before, but now he does.

I hope it is a choice. I’m not as far in my cancer journey (blech) as the other people in the therapy group. So maybe I’m naïve, and I’ll find out soon that they’re right and I’m a fool. Maybe this experience will inevitably define me.

I don’t think it will. I would rather define myself as a loving mother, a loyal friend, an artist, a witchy weirdo, a reader, a gardener, a great cook, or any number of other things that have nothing whatsoever to do with cancer.

1. The main limitation is the unpredictability of my side effects and energy levels. Maybe I’ll feel fine, or maybe I’ll be puking and exhausted or pooping my pants—who can say??

2. They’re superior beings because they simply are. Nothing to do with cancer. Duh.