By Cameron Steele
I used to be 22 weeks pregnant and mountain climbing beneath Sinopah Mountain in Glacier Nationwide Park when I discovered the lump. It felt the best way the Montana mountain named after my husband’s ancestor seemed: exhausting, immovable, asking to be addressed.
This wouldn’t be my first rodeo with breast most cancers—I had been identified for the primary time in 2021 and had been by means of a double mastectomy, endocrine remedy, and chemotherapy. I had spent years paying shut consideration to my physique, attempting to reside with, attempting to regulate to ever-shifting objective posts of “new normals.” So when I discovered the lump on trip, I knew what the analysis can be earlier than the biopsy confirmed it.
Discovering the Proper Phrases
Triple-negative breast most cancers, however this time with the added complication of getting to see myself by means of being pregnant and beginning as we made remedy selections. As I put my then four-year-old son to mattress the night time after the official analysis had come by means of on MyChart, I attempted to not cry over the Most cancers Hates Kisses kids’s e book resting on his pillow. My husband and I had pulled the trusty story again out for him to assist us with what typically felt like the toughest a part of having most cancers as a younger mother—discovering the best phrases for the expertise. Was it attainable to inform the reality about dwelling with most cancers in a means that left us feeling empowered? Might we use tales of affection, honesty, and marvel to assist us by means of the inevitable ache and concern of analysis, remedy, and, hopefully, restoration?
These final questions are vital ones for me, as a author and an educational who has spent the final decade finding out and educating narratives of ladies’s sickness, first on the College of Nebraska-Lincoln and now for most cancers sufferers at UVA Hospital. I’ve been educating Writing As A Approach of Therapeutic: Writing Via Most cancers to sufferers and survivors who obtain remedy at UVA for just a little greater than a 12 months now.
I used to be within the midst of educating the primary workshop final summer season after I obtained the information that my very own most cancers was again. On the time, I puzzled if, now that the road between “instructor” and “affected person” had been crossed, I’d be capable to proceed educating the workshop. Would it not be too exhausting to satisfy with different most cancers sufferers every week as I handled the realities of my very own breast most cancers recurrence and being pregnant? What hope might I presumably provide to folks after I was within the thick of it myself? Might “writing,” because the workshop title inspired, actually be a means of “therapeutic?” In that case, how so?
I didn’t have solutions to those questions. All I had was a nascent belief and a contract I wanted to uphold.
Discovering Steadiness
To say that the Writing Via Most cancers collection has fulfilled each expectation—of mine, of my fellow sufferers and survivors within the workshops—is to overlook the magic and the facility of such a assist group. It wasn’t one thing that I did, because the instructor. It’s one thing that each one of us do, as an intimate group, once we come collectively on Zoom every Thursday afternoon with open hearts and a willingness to inform the reality, with or with out concern, anger, disappointment, pleasure, humor, hope, or any variety of feelings that attend the realities of dwelling with most cancers.
One of many hardest elements concerning the most cancers expertise is studying easy methods to steadiness the need for a satisfying life with the power to face the realities of the illness. At school, we write collectively about striving for this steadiness. We write about our wins and losses. We write about what we don’t know easy methods to say ‘in actual life’: we categorical fears, hopes, and desires. We reclaim what feels or has felt complicated or tough about tales and share them with one another, and—on the finish of every six-week writing workshop—typically additionally share them with the bigger group by means of public readings in entrance of household, associates, and employees at UVA Well being.
Able to Strive Your Hand?
Be part of this writing group and see different assist teams for most cancers sufferers.
Discovering ‘Moments of Zen’
“Since my first most cancers analysis, I felt blocked and emotionally lower off from my emotions,” stated Sharon Zoumbaris, a two-time breast most cancers survivor who participated within the Summer time 2025 iteration of Writing Via Most cancers. “This group has helped me entry my feelings … Having a spot to take a seat and be snug with ideas of most cancers, sickness, remedy, mortality, and spirituality has been a a lot larger present than I even knew I wanted.”
Liz Grissom, who participated within the Spring 2025 group concurrently present process chemotherapy for a breast most cancers recurrence, agreed. “I used to be on medical go away from work, and the workshop gave me one thing to look ahead to, helped me course of my feelings in a wholesome means, and engaged my inventive considering,” Grissom stated. “I’ve stored in contact with considered one of my fellow writers, and we’ve in contrast remedy choices and recurrently swapped survivorship recommendation. I began an article I continued to work on for 2 months, and it was later printed.”
And Margarita Figuerosa, a breast most cancers survivor and a caregiver of a cherished one with most cancers, stated the group has helped free her from a lot of the emotional misery that accompanied each her and her cherished one’s diagnoses. “The category is structured in a means that makes it straightforward to take part, even for a novice author,” Figuerosa stated. “I had my ‘second of Zen’ proper after every class, that cathartic second after being freed from an emotion that I used to be holding to a specific occasion up to now.”
Writing might not be capable to heal our bodily our bodies or treatment most cancers. However studying to precise important and core feelings concerning the expertise of extended sickness and remedy, and the accompanying huge questions on life and demise that include it, can imbue a affected person with each a way of energy and a way of ease. “As a most cancers affected person, I search for survivorship experiences which can be empowering reasonably than ones that make me really feel caught or outlined by sickness,” Grissom stated. “This felt like a assist group the place I might take a extra energetic position and create some artwork and friendships out of chaos.”
Be part of Our Assist Teams
Our subsequent six-week group can be open solely to breast most cancers sufferers and survivors in honor of Breast Most cancers Consciousness month. We’ll start on Thursday, October 9, and meet each Thursday for six weeks on Zoom from 2:30 to 4 p.m.
Extra workshops for sufferers and survivors of all most cancers varieties will occur in Winter and Spring of 2026. To register for the workshop, e mail cancersupportservices@uvahealth.org.