It's isolating to have cancer. Making a connection with someone who understands makes all the difference.
Searching for Someone to Talk To
Tag: loneliness
What Are You Struggling With?
The triumph can't be had without the struggle. Wilma Rudolph In the five years since my cancer diagnosis, I've struggled with a lot. At first I struggled alone with loneliness, anger, survivor's guilt, fear, body image and grief. Even though I had supportive friends and family, no one really understood what I was going through. It took some time but, eventually, [...]
Welcome Old Friends & New Friends to the WWGN Community!
This week we’ve been blessed with many new WWGN members, mostly due to the guest post I wrote for Cure Magazine. (Right now the iconic Girl Scout song: “Make new friends and keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold,” is playing in my head. Because not everyone has been here from the very beginning, I though […]
A Cancer Diagnosis by Any Other Name
A reader recently wrote an email seeking my opinion on a controversy, opining "I am sure that you have thought about this . . . a lot." I've struggled with how to respond because, ironically, this controversy brings up issues I've actually tried very hard to avoid. The controversy is laid out in a New York [...]
How to Express Your Cancer Anger, Even if Something Gets Broken
Question: How many cancer patients does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: A few months after my April 15, 2009, mastectomy and TRAM flap reconstruction, I changed a light bulb. The light fixture had a cover which I removed to get to the bulb. Everything went well until I tried to reattach the [...]
Love & the Vastness of Cancer
For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love. Carl Sagan The greatest gift of WWGN for me is my interaction with you. Sharing our stories tears down, brick by brick, the emotional wall we inevitably hit on our cancer journey. A WWGN reader left a powerful comment that eloquently sums [...]
3 Things You Need to Make Your “New Normal” Just Plain Normal
How would you react if your husband presented you with an individual volume of New Jersey Superior Court Reports as a present? I bet you'd be as stunned as I was. To be fair, my husband and I are attorneys (I'm retired), but I still had absolutely no idea why he thought I'd be excited [...]
Inspirational Life Lessons: How to Live & Die
This is a hard post to write. Last weekend I had a joyous Thanksgiving with my very large family. The next morning, I joined another family to mourn and celebrate an exceptional woman. Her name was Peggy and she died at age 66 from ovarian cancer. Peggy and I served on the Pathways Women's Cancer [...]
Where We Go Now 