Cancer Sucks, So Let’s Talk About it More: a New Publication

A safe space for people to talk openly about their cancer experience

Gang I am working on the graphics ok this is not my strong suit! photo author

Hi! Welcome to my new (at the time of writing this!) publication, Cancer Sucks, So Let’s Talk About it More.

I aim to create a welcoming space for anyone at any stage of dealing with cancer to feel free to write about it openly.

So what prompted me to decide to do this? I don’t usually put myself in leadership or organizer type roles to be honest. I have spent three years here at Medium floating around, publishing where I feel like, without ever feeling a great need to start my own “something”.

I think the impetus for me to start a cancer specific publication is both recent and long brewing in some ways. I underwent successful treatment for (aggressive mediastinal) Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma when I was twenty eight/nine.

I recently started sharing more of my writing about cancer here at Medium. What especially moved me in the comments was the deep yearning so many people seemed to have to share their own experience of this crappy disease.

The outpouring of stories was overwhelming (in a good way) to me.

Sometimes I felt terribly alone with my own cancer, and that feeling lingers, even after years pass by.

Cancer is so difficult to navigate, and it often feels like all we are given are pat altruisms that do not offer real support or comfort. It is largely up to the person with cancer to come to terms with it and move on from it in whatever way they can.

For me it was far from easy, and I often felt like the fear of it coming back would never go away. It does fade, and we keep going, although it imprints on us in ways that can take years to grapple with.

And while each person’s experience of it is unique, we seem to connect over so many similarities we all experience.

So many of us go through it, or watch loved ones go through it, and become increasingly isolated and upset by how socially awkward and frustrating many aspects of it can be. And that’s on top of the basic horror and strain of dealing with the disease every day.