“Your child has cancer.” My wife, Terri, and I heard these words on October 17, 1996. Our son, Ryan, at two years and two months old, was diagnosed with childhood cancer (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia). In an instant, our lives, and the lives of Ryan and our four-year-old daughter Olivia, were changed forever.
As I write this in June 2024, 27+ years later, Ryan is [closely monitored and] doing well today. He is a five-time cancer survivor – 3x childhood leukemia and 2x adult tongue cancer (secondary malignancies resulting from the extensive treatments he received through his wars with leukemia). In March 2021, Terri published her memoir The Focused Fight: A Childhood Cancer Journey from Mayhem to Miracles, detailing Ryan and our family’s journey through what often felt like impossible times.
Our heart breaks every time we hear of a family receiving the news that their child has cancer. A child and family stricken with cancer through no fault of their own. I pray no one reading this is facing a childhood cancer situation, yet we know bad things happen, and our lifelong mission is to be a gentle shoulder of support for others impacted as we have been. Maybe this helps one person, one family, piece together the swirling insanity that is happening in the center of their lives.
With this introduction, I will offer my list of “Life lessons learned from dealing with a childhood cancer diagnosis:“
Life is not fair.
- If we are blessed to live long enough, realizing the randomness and unfairness of life events will strike us. There is tragedy and heartbreak happening all around us.
“Life breaks all of us, but some of us get stronger in the broken places.”—Ernest Hemingway.
Work is important. Family is EVERYTHING. Carpe Diem.
- Treasure each day. Life contentment is in the small, everyday, ordinary moments. Recognize and embrace the “ordinary.”
- Small things are not small things.
Keep your eye on the ball. Thank you, Abe Pollin.
- Be determined and unapologetic in identifying and setting boundaries around your priorities. Learning to kindly yet firmly say “no” is imperative.
People need people.
- You are not alone.
- Thinking “I/we can handle this” is dangerous and not helpful. Seek, be open to, and be willing to ask for help. People want to help – accept their generosity and commit to “paying it forward” into the world one day.
- The Postcard Project was a wonderful initiative that gave Ryan hope and inspiration as he endured treatments to get him to his life-saving bone marrow transplant on November 4, 2004.
- Embrace communities of support. Special Love is our community of support that brings joy through their summer camps dedicated to children fighting cancer and their siblings.
Erica Neubert Campbell shared a quote included in The Focused Fight:
“In a tough situation, few people wake up every morning and say, “I’m going to be resilient today.” Most people under extreme stress wake up with heavy hearts but with a quiet voice that tells them never to give up. Resilience is listening to that small inner voice and finding people and organizations to help you slowly turn up the volume.”
Your environment matters.
- Surround yourself with the best. Lift others up, and they will lift you up.
Self-care is imperative.
- Self-care is not selfish. We cannot pour from an empty cup.
Kindness matters. Prioritize kindness to yourself and others.
- Sometimes we cannot see a path forward, and are hanging on doing our best. Everyone, in some way, has these moments. “The next step,” a moment of kindness given or received, may propel you or someone else forward for the day.
- Express appreciation and gratitude. Never default to “this person is just doing their job.” Everyone deserves to be seen.
“Don’t underestimate the power of a chocolate chip cookie.”—Terri Tomoff.
Don’t ask. Do.
- Choose to take the initiative.
- There are many moments in life where we can help meaningfully. In small ways and without permission, a difference can be made.
Everyone has unique gifts. Identify and nurture those gifts.
- Ryan’s relentless fight and inspiration to the world.
- Olivia and the gift of soccer to our family.
Trust and know that everyone has a story.
- “Be gentle. Be kind – you have no idea what someone is going through.”—Bill Tomoff.
Post Traumatic Growth is possible.
We all endure suffering in our lives. David Brooks, in his book The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, provides a compelling perspective on the meaning of suffering:
“Whether the valley is a personal one or a societal one or both, there’s a lot of suffering. You’re enduring a season of pain, a season of feeling lost. This can be a period of soul-crushing anguish, but it can also be one of the most precious seasons of your life.
John Keats said that we live in a mansion of many apartments. When we’re on the first mountain, we’re living in what Keats called the “thoughtless chamber.” This is the default chamber; we just unthinkingly absorb the values and ways of life that happen to be around us.
We want to stay in this chamber. It’s comfortable, and everybody nods at you with approval. In The Age of Anxiety, W. H. Auden wrote,
We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
Seasons of suffering kick us in the ass. They are the foghorns that blast us out of our complacency and warn us we are heading for the wrong life.
There’s nothing intrinsically noble about suffering. Sometimes grief is just grief, to be gotten through. Many bad things happen in life, and it’s a mistake to try to sentimentalize these moments away by saying that they must be happening to serve some higher good. But sometimes, when suffering can be connected to a larger narrative of change and redemption, we can suffer our way to wisdom. This is the kind of wisdom you can’t learn from books; you have to experience it yourself. Sometimes you experience your first taste of nobility in the way you respond to suffering.
The theologian Paul Tillich wrote that suffering upsets the normal patterns of life and reminds you that you are not who you thought you were. It smashes through the floor of what you thought was the basement of your soul and reveals a cavity below, and then it smashes through that floor and reveals a cavity below that.
Suffering teaches us gratitude. Normally we take love and friendship for granted. But in seasons of suffering we throw ourselves on others and appreciate the gifts that our loved ones offer. Suffering puts you in solidarity with others who suffer. It makes you more sympathetic to those who share this or some other sort of pain. In this way it tenderizes the heart.
Suffering calls for a response. None of us can avoid suffering, but we can all choose how we respond to it. And, interestingly, few people respond to suffering by seeking pleasure. Nobody says, I lost my child, therefore I should go out and party. They say, I lost my child, and therefore I am equipped to help others who have lost their child. People realize that shallow food won’t satisfy the deep hunger and fill the deep emptiness that suffering reveals. Only spiritual food will do that. Many people respond to pain by practicing generosity.
Finally, suffering shatters the illusion of self-sufficiency, which is an illusion that has to be shattered if any interdependent life is going to begin. Seasons of pain expose the falseness and vanity of most of our ambitions and illuminate the larger reality of living and dying, caring and being cared for. Pain helps us see the true size of our egotistical desires. Before they seemed gigantic and dominated the whole screen. After seasons of suffering, we see that the desires of the ego are very small desires, and certainly not the ones we should organize our lives around. Climbing out of the valley is not like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different. The poet Ted Hughes observed that the things that are the worst to undergo are often the best to remember, because at those low moments the protective shells are taken off, humility is achieved, a problem is clearly presented, and a call to service is clearly received.”
I hope that my perspective provides you an inspiration to move through whatever challenge you are dealing with or enduring. Take this journey of life one day at a time. Do your best. Be kind to yourself and others. Embrace and treasure the ordinary. Believe in better days. We got this.
