Moms Alive!

It’s official: I have now been cancer-free for one year. I observed the anniversary of my last chemo session on March 23 casually, but meaningfully, surrounded by my family, a good friend and some tasty Indian takeout.

While I now have a healthy head of new hair and am feeling 1,000 times better than I was one year ago, that period of intensity and insecurity doesn’t seem that far away. I am still that woman who was sick as a dog, and I have the scars—both physically and emotionally—to prove it. To disown her, to “other” her, as though she were some skeleton in some distant closet, would be dishonest and destructive. As I discuss in my blog entry this month, “A Sense of Wonder,” being present in this moment requires the integration of that recent past. More…

I have a memory of being very young and at Girl Scout camp for the first time. I’m standing at the start of a trailhead surrounded by the wild oaks of the Osage Hills. I hear the roar of bugs dinning thickly in the humid Oklahoma heat. I am flooded with an overwhelming sense of possibility. What could lie beyond that first bend? I am an adventurer. I feel as though nobody has traversed this path before me.

Of course, this is not true. This trail has been traveled by many. It will not take me to exotic locales. But this is no matter. It is only that sense of wonder that matters, that feeling of being exquisitely suspended in the present moment.

We are often suspended in the present moment on our journeys as both mothers and cancer survivors. The feeling is not always as deliciously intoxicating as it was when we were young; we are often terrified of hypothetical situations, of where our paths might ultimately lead. But our tasks at hand, those trailheads we now find ourselves poised at, ask that we focus on what’s in front of us: Facing surgery. Getting through the next chemo treatment. They keep us grounded in the moment. More…

Bonnie Moore is a Los Angeles–based licensed social worker who specializes in helping families deal with the impact of cancer in the home. She runs her own private practice as well as facilitates a children’s support group at the weSPARK cancer center in Sherman Oaks, Calif.

I recently spoke with Bonnie about how mothers with cancer can talk to and support their children during this trying time. One’s initial instinct might be to sugarcoat the situation or offer up assurances of health that cannot be guaranteed—to protect them, of course—but she invariably emphasizes the importance of delivering frank, accurate information to children of all ages. I found her advice to be illuminating—and sometimes surprising. More…