BREAST CANCER: WHAT KIND OF SUPPORT DO YOU NEED?

You need a sympathetic ear and advice about how to deal with several issues simultaneously: your own feelings and those of other family members, including perhaps your parents, siblings, children, and friends. You may not feel up to the emotional requirements of dealing with so many people all at once. Both you and your partner may need advice about how best to inform family and friends; your clergy member should be able to help you sort this out and may also connect you to leaders within your community who stand willing to organize other members to help you in the weeks and months ahead.

You and your partner will most likely want to have your intense, almost overwhelming feelings validated by your religious leader. She should respond to your concerns by saying either “I know how you feel” (only if she truly does from personal experience) or “I can imagine how you must be feeling.” Most people we know resent the presumption of another person assuming s/he knows how you feel—even a professional clergy or physician—unless s/he has actually lived through a similar crisis. Even professional training does not entitle other people to assume that they really know how you are feeling; the truth is that, unless they have had the same experience themselves (either personally or through an immediate family member or close relative), they really do not know what you are going through.

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