Moms Alive!

Calling all Moms Alive! Are you a mother whose life has been touched by cancer? Do you have something to say? Something that needs to be heard? Whether you are in-treatment or post-treatment, I encourage you to share your personal “Survivor Story” with this Web site’s community. More…

The irony of discovering my own cancer diagnosis was shocking to say the least. Spending the past seven years of my life working with cancer patients—both clinically as a psychotherapist and administratively as the clinical director of a cancer support center—has marked this journey an unbelievable whim of fate. When you are 33 and a mother of a 2 1/2 year old, cancer is just not something you think is going to happen to you, even when you see it at work all the time. I knew enough to know that cancer can affect anyone, at any time, and that no one, no matter how old one is, expects to get that “sorry, it is cancer” phone call. But, as a young mother, you have this deeper purpose in life that you believe will somehow protect you from a disease that can rob your children of their mother. More…

My name is Jeanne Elium. I am a mother, a grandmother, a published author of four parenting books, a gardener and a zealous lover of the Earth. I had just turned 52 when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Here is my story:

The lump was long and torpedo-shaped. I kept checking it, thinking that the next time I felt for it, it would be gone. You know how you do, assume a magical-thinking kind of strategy? I have always been healthy, just your common childhood illnesses, colds and flus, allergies, occasional sports injuries, and a knee surgery or two—never anything life-threatening, just uncomfortable. I discovered a rather snobbish (or naïve?) belief that I would never have cancer! More…