Every day there are young moms and dads and even children diagnosed with cancer who find their way through the cancer experience alone, without the wisdom and guidance of all those who have gone before.

This baffles me.

Through the decades, how has no solution been found for this, to eliminate isolation in the cancer experience?

Then, as I went through treatments, and seven oncology teams, never once was I offered emotional support, never once did an oncologist check on my husband or children’s mental health, and never once were we offered support for carrying the weight of a terminal prognosis.

Again, I was baffled.

My children have grown up in the presence of cancer. My husband is required to carry all of us through, yet in society’s perception of cancer, they don’t exist.

I believe in the strength of those impacted by cancer, the patients, survivors, and co-survivors. I believe we have been shaped to become some of the most resilient individuals on the planet. I must believe this for my own family, but if we can live into that vision, then everyone impacted by cancer can as well. I believe we need to be seen and heard, we need a community of survivors, and I believe we need tools that acknowledge and address our experience. We need these things, but they do not yet exist.

I am working to bring these tools into existence, so survivors may know they are not alone and they will be known for their purposeful resilient lives.

Join me in bringing change to the experience of cancer. None of us should walk through this alone.