The digital copy of the parenting through breast cancer issue of Wildfire Magazine releases tomorrow!
I had the opportunity to write about walking through breast cancer with teen boys for this issue. Carter and Owen were in 8th and 7th grade when I was diagnosed, and were suddenly put in a very tough place where they had to think not only about mortality, but also about their mom’s boobs. We tried to be as open as possible with those guys without overwhelming them with more info than they wanted. I think we did an okay job, but they haven’t reached adulthood yet, so time will tell if we totally messed them up when we offered to show them photos of nipple tatoos 😉
The following is an excerpt from my article. To read the whole thing you can click the link below to order a hard copy or subscribe digitally. The magazine is ad free and a portion of the proceeds goes to Metastatic Breast Cancer Research.
Walking Through Breast Cancer with Teen Boys
I’d wake up in a cold sweat and wonder, “Do my kids wake up in fear like their dad and me? Are their minds reeling with questions like, “Has it spread? What will treatment look like? Will mom lose her hair? Will she die?”
My boys were 14, 13 and 8 when I was diagnosed, and prior to January 20, 2016 their lives were pretty insulated. But breast cancer opened them up to some harsh realities about living life here in this broken world. Fear and pain entered, squeezing out ease and comfort.
My mom instinct is always to protect my kids from pain, but looking back, cancer grew them in ways they wouldn’t have otherwise grown. We never would have chosen it, but cancer changed us in some good ways. The five of us are closer now than we were before. And because we persevered through a very hard thing, we know we are capable of more than we thought we were.
There is no step-by-step guide for walking your kids through cancer with you, so we did the best we could one day at a time. And I focused a few things that I think helped my boys process our new station in life. . .
Subscribe to read the complete story and a bunch of other great articles
