Try to think of these nuggets of wisdom as suggestions — not as edicts or threats designed to freak you into silence. Most people just want to know that you’re there, and that you care.
The worst reaction I got when sharing news of my breast cancer diagnosis and impending double mastectomy last year was from a neighbor, who texted me this awkward but well-meaning flub: “Well, at least you’ll look even skinnier now!”
So how did everyone know what to do? Sometimes it came naturally; sometimes the knowledge was hard-won. Other times, it’s because they asked, “What can I do?” and I somehow figured out what to tell them. Some women so dread that disappearing act that they opt to keep news of their diagnosis to themselves. “They say, ‘I realize if I don’t tell people I won’t get support — but if I do, then I have to risk being very disappointed in them,’” Massie says.
But try to think of the nuggets of wisdom below as suggestions — not as edicts or threats designed to freak you into silence. Everyone is different, after all, and most people just want to know that you’re there, and that you care. As one survivor told me, “Personally, I worry that the more 'instructions' we give people about what not to say will scare them from saying anything. And THAT is the worst thing you could do.”Don’t disappearIt seems basic.
“Plato said, ‘be kind, everyone is fighting a hard battle.’ So it’s pretty easy to say, ‘that darn friend, she just walked away, I don’t know why she walked away, I thought I knew her but I guess I don’t.’ We mere mortals have reasons for what we do and what we don’t do,” she explains, “and sometimes we just can’t do it.” So try to look at it as a lesson, she suggests, about who you can count on and who you can’t.
Others resent questions like, “What size will your new ones be?” which come with the assumption that they will be getting reconstruction, when many women, in fact, opt to go flat.
Don’t be like, “Oh, my [mom, sister, aunt, etc] died of breast cancer”It’s truly the opposite of comforting to hear, while grappling with the shock of diagnosis, about someone you knew who was killed by the same disease.
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