The Trauma of Revealing a Cancer Diagnosis
Even princesses deserve the time to come to terms with a life-threatening illness
As the world found out that Catherine, Princess of Wales, has cancer, I read the news with a lump in my throat. I have also heard those dreaded words: You have cancer. And like Catherine, I also heard them in my youth. While our lives are different — I am not white, I don’t live in a palace and I don’t work for my husband’s colonialist family — when it comes to illness, a lot feels the same. Revealing your diagnosis is one of those strange steps you reluctantly take because people expect you to share that sort of thing. It would be uncomfortable to keep it a secret. Right? I’ll never really know because I shared my news too early on thinking it was the right thing to do. I quickly regretted it. The Princess of Wales was trying to delay revealing her serious diagnosis, but the world said no. When the public learned that she would be off-duty for several months due to surgery, many thought it was strange that one of the most beloved royals would be out of sight for that long. A lot of people insisted on knowing about her whereabouts. They cared about her, they said. They didn’t.
Many even demanded to see the princess in the flesh, expecting her to return to the spotlight, where they thought she belonged. They…
