[2022-05-06] Speech during Mental Health Week

Yesterday, I delivered a speech to employees of the Corporate Services Branch of Health Canada as part of Mental Health Week. The theme of this year's Mental Health Week is empathy. In addition to recounting the story of my cancer journey, I shared what helped me cope with ovarian cancer and perianal skin cancer and what I've learned about empathy over the past couple of years.

What helped me cope

The three most significant things that helped me cope with two cancers were people, blogging and gratitude.

People
I'm incredibly blessed to be surrounded by people who have walked with me on this journey: family and friends (of course) but also many, many colleagues—people I was working with when diagnosed and people with whom I had worked in the past. Through messages, cards, gifts, books, food and many other ways, hundreds of individuals let me know how important I was to them, how much they wanted me to successfully deal with cancer and how much of an impact I had had on them.

One woman who wrote to me at the beginning of my journey said of her own experience with breast cancer some 10 years prior: "I know it sounds strange, but I honestly never felt as protected by love as when I had cancer." I experienced the same love and still do.

Among the many lovely gifts I received since being diagnosed with ovarian cancer was the book The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy. Whenever I was feeling down, I would pick up this book and read one of the quotes, such as:
  • "When the dark clouds come ... keep going."
  • "When the big things feel out of control ... focus on what you love right under your nose."
  • "This storm will pass."
I also shared the book with others, who found it equally beneficial.

Blogging
Blogging has been integral to my maintaining a positive attitude throughout my treatment and recovery. Jenesis became so much more than I ever envisioned.
  • It became a way for me to connect with people I knew, to reconnect with people with whom I had lost touch, and to meet new people who were friends of friends or even complete strangers. Every day, for more than 635 days, I've sent a message out and, like a boomerang, my positive energy has come back to me in the form of funny stories, uplifting messages, beautiful photos, and updates from friends.
  • It became a beacon of positivity and hope in the midst of a time in our collective history when so many of us are struggling.
  • And it became a form of forced self-reflection. Had I not made the commitment to blog daily, I'm certain that I would not have sat down to write something every day. Doing so helped me to work through some heavy emotions. For example, when I learned that I had a gene mutation that not only led to my ovarian cancer but also put me at a very high risk of developing breast cancer, I was bummed for about three days. I worried about my own future and the possibility that I had passed the gene mutation on to my kids.
Some nights when I feel down about something, I go looking for a quote, strategy or story to cheer me up, which I then share with my readers. Jenesis readers often tell me that a given post came along exactly when they needed it.

Gratitude
Gratitude was essential to my emotional resilience.
  • I chose to focus on what I could do as opposed to what I couldn't.
  • I chose to use my story as a way of saying "you can go through cancer and still enjoy life."
  • And I chose to see the benefits that cancer brought to my life—love, connection with others, appreciation for my life and loved ones.
That said, I don't wish cancer on anyone, and I wish that I had never gotten it. But I did, so I was determined to take as much good out of my predicament as possible and to be a light to others. In fact, less than two months into my cancer journey, I wrote a post about my mission, which was to wring every positive thing out of cancer, grow from the experience, and be an even brighter light in the world, both during and after treatment.

What I learned about empathy

One of the most important things I've discovered is that having cancer has made me more gracious, kind and empathic, and better able to support others. Oprah Winfrey said something similar: "The struggle of my life created empathy—I could relate to pain, being abandoned, having people not love me." For me, the increased empathy I developed as a result of facing cancer is the silver lining in the cloud that is this disease.

If you have experienced something difficult in your life—such as a serious illness, the loss of a loved one, bullying or discrimination, or mental illness—you have probably become more understanding of others in the same situation. And if you haven't experienced anything serious or the same as someone else, you can still develop empathy by simply listening to other people's stories.

Stephen Covey calls this empathic listening: "In empathic listening, you listen with your ears, but you also, and more importantly, listen with your eyes and with your heart. You listen for feeling, for meaning. You listen for behavior. You use your right brain as well as your left. You sense, you intuit, you feel." In other words, you put your whole being into listening to the other person.

One of the things I've had to work on to be a better listener is not rushing someone to see the positive side of a challenging situation. I have a tendency to want to take away people's pain, to cheer them up, to help them see the silver lining. But most people want to be validated and reassured that it is normal and understandable to feel sad or worried. They need to hear that it's OK to not be OK.

Another significant discovery for me was learning how much the loved ones of cancer patients are affected by the disease. I learned a lot when compiling answers to my question: "How has a loved one's cancer affected you?" In my post "In your words: cancer's impact on loved ones" (my longest post and one I'm especially proud of), I share the range of emotions experienced by the people who love the person with cancer: shock, heartbreak, sadness, fear, frustration, anger, helplessness, guilt, exhaustion, grief, caring, hope and gratitude.

What I came to understand is that caring for, or even just about, a loved one who is ill can be as difficult as facing a disease oneself. When someone is ill, we naturally rally around them. However, we are less likely to recognize the burden of the disease on the loved ones who care for them. I wish I had known this when I was a manager. Perhaps I would have said to an employee whose loved one was ill, "this must be so hard on you." Furthermore, in the workplace, we are more likely to encounter a colleague who has a loved one going through cancer or another serious illness than we are to encounter a colleague who is experiencing it themselves.

Three key messages

I concluded my speech by reiterating three key messages:
  1. Look for the silver lining in the hardships you go through, such as developing more empathy for people facing similar challenges.
  2. Be grateful for all that is good in your life. Identify the things you're grateful for, write them down, say them out loud—do this every day.
  3. Recognize that the loved ones of people going through a tough time—such as dealing with a disease or mental illness—need your support.