BREAST CANCER SUPPORTING TEAMS: FEW ADVICES FOR YOU
Several of us have found it helpful while living through this crisis to encourage different family members to attend age-appropriate support or focus groups. Even when children don’t want to go to such meetings initially, they almost always feel surprisingly positive afterwards. With children, it is important to find groups divided by age; the issues most important to elementary school children are quite different from those most pressing to high school students. Even though your kids may be reluctant or resistant to going the first time, most of them will find solace in being with peers (even though they will be strangers) who are dealing with a parent’s cancer. They find it a relief to be able to talk about a range of deep-seated fears and feelings that they are reluctant to discuss with friends whose parents are healthy. If you choose to involve your children in a support program or group, you must inquire about the family situations of other children in the group! Just as it would be frightening for you to attend a group with women who are dying from breast cancer, it would be completely overwhelming and destructive to your children’s well-being to be in a group with others who have a terminally ill parent. Be sure of this before you send your children anywhere!
Having made a careful decision, trust yourself and trust your new doctors.
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Tags: Women’s Health