More thoughts on the conference

I've done some more thinking about the conference workshops, so I thought I would blab here. I may have had too high of expectations for them for the first thing.

The first workshop was supposed to be "Living Well with Advanced Breast Cancer". Well, in my mind that was going to be practical advice, maybe organizational tips, things to do to help in your day-to-day life, etc. Well, we got in there, and the "title" had changed. Same speaker, but it was a different topic. A lot of women were wondering if they were in the right room. The title was "Living Well: Coping with Cancer and Healing through Grief". I know that it ended up being really good for some of the women, so I don't want to discredit it completely. It just wasn't what I needed/was looking for. The speaker was a young woman, a social worker who works with cancer patients. It seems that most of her experience came from the work place and not really on a personal level at all. Did I say, she just seemed "young"?? What does that make me? She also had really gorgeous hair that she kept fiddling with. It didn't really bother me, but I know that can be a sensitive thing to other women dealing with hair loss. I do give her the fact that of all the women to speak to, a room full of stage IV girls is not going to be an easy crowd.

For me, it was really stuff that I had heard or read before. It just seemed like common sense stuff to me, but I realize that my own personal life experiences with the loss of our Sunshine and Josh's mom before her was when I really learned a lot about grieving and grief. Josh and I have even given workshops on grief in the past at our local church association conferences. It really is an important topic though, and if you have never been introduced to the fact that grief can consist of loss of even small things, then it may help you to learn to work through those losses as they come. For women with breast cancer it can be many things, and with advanced breast cancer even more things. You have lost your breasts, your hair, your past sense of normalcy, perhaps your ability to have children or nurse any children you may have, your sense of "innocence" in life, and your ability to feel invincible. Some women may lose their spouse through divorce, their friends who cannot handle their diagnosis, and their very dreams for the future. For women with advanced breast cancer, we lose a lot of our week to treatments and recovering from them. We lose energy to take care of our families and spend time with them.

One of the quotes that really bugged me in the workshop was by Dr. Henry Cloud. "[Grief] is the process by which we 'get over it,' by which we 'let it go'. . . It becomes the process by which we can be available for new, good things. The soul is freed from painful experience and released for new, good experience." Then the speaker says something to the effect of--doesn't that just sound like a good ending. I actually laughed sarcastically out loud. Get over it. That just sounds sooo harsh. You don't ever truly get over it. Grief changes you, and yes, you can have good experiences, but that doesn't just replace the painful ones. The pain in my heart can still be felt as sharply and deeply when certain memories are recalled especially surrounding the loss of Sunshine. I haven't held on to them bitterly. They are just still there, and they actually help to make my new experiences good in that I can appreciate them even more fully. I could go on and on about this one. Since I am always one to give the benefit of the doubt, I guess you could say that by "letting go", you aren't dwelling on those losses bitterly to the point where you cannot function. But to say that so flippantly to a room full of women who have truly experienced losses, seemed so wrong. It definitely rubbed me the wrong way.