By Cameron Steele
I used to be 22 weeks pregnant and mountaineering underneath Sinopah Mountain in Glacier Nationwide Park when I discovered the lump. It felt the best way the Montana mountain named after my husband’s ancestor regarded: exhausting, immovable, asking to be addressed.
This wouldn’t be my first rodeo with breast most cancers—I had been recognized for the primary time in 2021 and had been by means of a double mastectomy, endocrine remedy, and chemotherapy. I had spent years paying shut consideration to my physique, attempting to reside with, attempting to regulate to ever-shifting objective posts of “new normals.” So when I discovered the lump on trip, I knew what the analysis can be earlier than the biopsy confirmed it.
Discovering the Proper Phrases
Triple-negative breast most cancers, however this time with the added complication of getting to see myself by means of being pregnant and start as we made remedy choices. As I put my then four-year-old son to mattress the evening after the official analysis had come by means of on MyChart, I attempted to not cry over the Most cancers Hates Kisses kids’s ebook resting on his pillow. My husband and I had pulled the trusty story again out for him to assist us with what typically felt like the toughest a part of having most cancers as a younger mother—discovering the suitable phrases for the expertise. Was it attainable to inform the reality about dwelling with most cancers in a means that left us feeling empowered? Might we use tales of affection, honesty, and surprise to assist us by means of the inevitable ache and worry of analysis, remedy, and, hopefully, restoration?
These final questions are essential ones for me, as a author and an educational who has spent the final decade finding out and educating narratives of ladies’s sickness, first on the College of Nebraska-Lincoln and now for most cancers sufferers at UVA Hospital. I’ve been educating Writing As A Approach of Therapeutic: Writing By Most cancers to sufferers and survivors who obtain remedy at UVA for just a little greater than a yr now.
I used to be within the midst of educating the primary workshop final summer season after I received the information that my very own most cancers was again. On the time, I puzzled if, now that the road between “instructor” and “affected person” had been crossed, I’d be capable to proceed educating the workshop. Wouldn’t it be too exhausting to satisfy with different most cancers sufferers every week as I handled the realities of my very own breast most cancers recurrence and being pregnant? What hope may I presumably provide to folks after I was within the thick of it myself? Might “writing,” because the workshop title inspired, actually be a means of “therapeutic?” If that’s the case, how so?
I didn’t have solutions to those questions. All I had was a nascent belief and a contract I wanted to uphold.
Discovering Stability
To say that the Writing By Most cancers collection has fulfilled each expectation—of mine, of my fellow sufferers and survivors within the workshops—is to overlook the magic and the ability of such a help group. It wasn’t one thing that I did, because the instructor. It’s one thing that every one of us do, as an intimate neighborhood, once we come collectively on Zoom every Thursday afternoon with open hearts and a willingness to inform the reality, with or with out worry, anger, unhappiness, pleasure, humor, hope, or any variety of feelings that attend the realities of dwelling with most cancers.
One of many hardest elements in regards to the most cancers expertise is studying learn how to stability the will for a satisfying life with the power to face the realities of the illness. In school, we write collectively about striving for this stability. We write about our wins and losses. We write about what we don’t know learn how to say ‘in actual life’: we specific fears, hopes, and desires. We reclaim what feels or has felt complicated or troublesome about tales and share them with one another, and—on the finish of every six-week writing workshop—typically additionally share them with the bigger neighborhood by means of public readings in entrance of household, mates, and workers at UVA Well being.
Able to Attempt Your Hand?
Be a part of this writing group and see different help teams for most cancers sufferers.
Discovering ‘Moments of Zen’
“Since my first most cancers analysis, I felt blocked and emotionally minimize off from my emotions,” stated Sharon Zoumbaris, a two-time breast most cancers survivor who participated within the Summer time 2025 iteration of Writing By Most cancers. “This group has helped me entry my feelings … Having a spot to sit down and be comfy with ideas of most cancers, sickness, remedy, mortality, and spirituality has been a a lot larger reward than I even knew I wanted.”
Liz Grissom, who participated within the Spring 2025 group similtaneously present process chemotherapy for a breast most cancers recurrence, agreed. “I used to be on medical depart from work, and the workshop gave me one thing to look ahead to, helped me course of my feelings in a wholesome means, and engaged my artistic considering,” Grissom stated. “I’ve stored in contact with considered one of my fellow writers, and we’ve in contrast remedy choices and recurrently swapped survivorship recommendation. I began an article I continued to work on for 2 months, and it was later printed.”
And Margarita Figuerosa, a breast most cancers survivor and a caregiver of a beloved one with most cancers, stated the group has helped free her from a lot of the emotional misery that accompanied each her and her beloved one’s diagnoses. “The category is structured in a means that makes it simple to take part, even for a novice author,” Figuerosa stated. “I had my ‘second of Zen’ proper after every class, that cathartic second after being freed from an emotion that I used to be holding to a specific occasion up to now.”
Writing might not be capable to heal our bodily our bodies or remedy most cancers. However studying to precise important and core feelings in regards to the expertise of extended sickness and remedy, and the accompanying large questions on life and dying that include it, can imbue a affected person with each a way of energy and a way of ease. “As a most cancers affected person, I search for survivorship experiences which are empowering somewhat than ones that make me really feel caught or outlined by sickness,” Grissom stated. “This felt like a help group the place I may take a extra energetic function and create some artwork and friendships out of chaos.”
Be a part of Our Assist Teams
Our subsequent six-week group shall be open completely to breast most cancers sufferers and survivors in honor of Breast Most cancers Consciousness month. We’ll start on Thursday, October 9, and meet each Thursday for six weeks on Zoom from 2:30 to 4 p.m.
Extra workshops for sufferers and survivors of all most cancers sorts will occur in Winter and Spring of 2026. To register for the workshop, e-mail cancersupportservices@uvahealth.org.
