Mid-Cancer Parenting

And Repair

If you complain loud enough, the five year old will carry you up the hill.

Hello dear parents and caregivers!

For those of you who don’t know, and wonder where I went, here’s a shockah for yah.

In January of this year I was diagnosed with and had semi-emergency surgery for Stage IV colon cancer. It still feels so weird to write that out. Now, it’s September. A lot has happened.

I turned 39, I have been through 12 rounds of FOLFOX chemotherapy and a laparoscopy. I have felt very, very sick and tired. Now, I am off chemo, awaiting a hysterectomy and feeling fabulous. I am also trying to maintain some drastic and some not-so-drastic lifestyle changes around diet, exercise and mindfulness, whilst still wanting to learn and share NVC. These are difficult changes to maintain. Swimming against the tide of plastic-wrapped consumerism and sugar-coated diet indulgence is both hard and illuminating. The new clarity that I have (e.g. the efforts of the sugar industry to maintain addiction in our society) generates more choice in me and so helps me maintain what I want.

I’m not new to swimming against the tide. I’ve done it since I first found Janet Lansbury when Joseph was one. But during the rubbishness of chemo blah, I leaned on my RIE and NVC family more than ever, to help me stay grounded in my parenting values and maintain my connection to my children. Those values - of parent-led respect, trust-building and connection - have been really damn hard to maintain. It looks like understanding age and stage of development, having reasonable expectations based on that (e.g a seven year old who generally can’t sit still unless in front of Blue Planet II or Goldshaw Farm is of course going to be frustrated, angry or uncooperative whilst his mum is on chemo), avoiding punitive and shaming measures to control them, actually avoiding trying to control them at all, and instead building connection and trust through respect and understanding. None of this comes naturally to me, and I have had to work extra hard during chemo to even maintain a baseline. There’s what it looks like and there’s what it feels like during chemo. That being noise, chaos and overwhelm. Many times over the course of these 12 rounds, I lost my cool.

And so I have had plenty of opportunity to repair our lost trust and connection. Wow, what a difference that makes - when I take responsibility for my own actions instead of leaving a seven and five year old to believe it was something wrong with them. The shame that gets internalized from that latter experience can become a life-long struggle. It takes a lot of effort (and maybe therapy) to liberate ourselves from shame.

I have read a lot, A LOT, of Dan Siegel this summer. I took a course with him in Interpersonal Neurobiology. And at some point this golden nugget of wisdom came through to me from his writing:

“It's not perfect, unbroken attunement to our children that is needed, or even healthy! It's the recognition of misattunement and the speedy repair that is what is needed. In other words, the inevitable misattunement that comes in our relationships is a necessary part of a healthy relationship because we need that part to make the repairs. It's the repairs that are crucial.” 

I have been so grateful to have the tools of Nonviolent Communication that allow me to make shame-free, fully responsible, authentic repairs with my children.

Here’s what it looks like in a nutshell:

- Acknowledgement with an observation of what I did.
- Feelings and needs guesses - our empathic path to connection. Not a path to shut down the feelings or the conversation. Authentic, not inauthentic. This involves opening ourselves up to the reality of the impact of our actions on this small person we love so much. It’s tough. It can be vulnerable. And that’s where the power is.
- An alternative and connection-based response - or, what I wish I’d done instead.
- Openness and acknowledgement of whatever else arises from it.

Here’s how that conversation might go. I’ve taken snippets of real conversations we’ve had:

“I yelled at you when you were teasing Aubrey, and it looked like you were scared. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“I am so sorry that I yelled at you. Do you wish you felt safe even when I’m mad?”

“Yes, you darn mummy.” Then, yelling, “You yell at me but you tell me not to yell at Aubrey.”

“Yeah. I imagine that’s confusing. Do you wish it was more fair?”

“Yes, you darn mummy.”

“I want you to feel safe around me always, and I know that when I yell, you don’t. And I so want everything to be fair. I wish I had come and sat quietly with you and remained calm and helped you both in that moment.”

Yelling, “Well, why didn’t you, you darn mummy?”

“I didn’t catch myself in time to recognize that my brain wasn’t working the way I want it to, and I stopped thinking properly for a minute. Next time, I will try to catch myself earlier so that I can do some thing to help me remain kind and understanding.”

“Like what? What would you do?”

“Well, I might have put on my ear defenders. That always helps me. Or I might have taken some deep breaths. And looking you in the eye and sitting down on the ground is usually helpful.”

“I wish you had done that too, you darn mummy.”

“Me too.”

“I wish you didn’t have chemo.”

“Me too.”

“You’re not a darn mummy.”

Aaaaand deep breath.