OK, so, “How did you tell people” isn’t a frequently asked question but it is one I was asked last week—and I realized it’s a really interesting, layered one.
The question came from a cancer survivor and it made me think: this is one of the hard parts of a diagnosis no one really talks about. And it applies to more than just cancer.
I will never forget my parents telling me my best friend had died—and then how they spent the rest of the day calling the parents of my friends to tell them. It was just awful. But it’s something that has to get done.
So, how did I do it? How did I tell people the worst news of my life?
Two things worked in my favor:
- I had a test run the year before when I had to tell everyone my husband wanted a divorce. So, as My Unlikely Friend would say: I had already done a rep.
- I’d spent the better part of 15 years as a communications professional.
The first people I told were my parents, step-parents, and brother.
Three hundred sixty-four days after I called each of them to tell them my husband wanted a divorce, I called them to tell them I had breast cancer. Stage 0.
It is a terrible thing to call your parents (and step-parents) and tell them their child has cancer.
It is a terrible thing to call your little brother and tell him his big sister has cancer.
(Sidenote: my brother had recently been visiting me and was, at the time, in Richmond visiting friends and my dad and stepmom on his way back to Nashville. He immediately drove back to Northern Virginia to be with me and was in my townhouse less than three hours later. He’s the best.)
The next tier came the same day or the day after—memory gets slippery here. My bestie Lyndsay. My two best girl friends from growing up, Katie and Laura. My friend Kate. My Unlikely Friend.
It is a terrible thing to call your peers and tell them you have cancer. Terrifying.
Two days later, when I knew a very rough treatment timeline, I had to call the woman who handles staffing for O2X because I was going to need accommodations for work (no lifting after biopsies, and I needed a few) and was at some point going to have to stop working. I tasked her with telling the rest of the department and the program manager I work with most because I just couldn’t.
And then came the other news.
A third spot of biopsied breast tissue had come back positive for invasive breast cancer—no longer Stage 0—and I had stage three rectal cancer.
So I had to call my parents (and step parents), and my little brother, and my bestie, and my girlfriends, and My Unlikely Friend all over again and tell them the news.
I was spent and, looking back, I don’t really remember how the rest of the cards fell.
This is what happens when the brain protects you from trauma.
But I do remember this: this is where nearly 15 years as a communications professional became very handy—because when you experience trauma you will inevitably cling to, and lean into, absolutely anything you can to give yourself a sense of control.
And I did.
The first thing I had to do was accept that I was going to need help. I was going to need help at appointments, help with food, dog care, house care, financial help, and above all: emotional support.
And in order to get help, I was going to have to tell people.
(PS I hate asking for help. Truly I don’t know how to do it. Read more about that here.)
So, I did what I knew how to do.
I made lists.
I categorized people.
I drafted messages.
Selected images.
Set deadlines.
Built a roll-out plan.
Categories
The categories were:
- People who needed a phone call rather than an email. (Side note: The hardest and worst of these—and the last to get a call because I just couldn’t—was a young former client turned good friend of mine who was a green beret. His way of coping with the news was to talk at me for 45 minutes straight while simultaneously texting the people closest to him “the woman that saved my life has cancer” and saying out loud to me, “I’m just fucking talking because if I stop I’m going to lose my shit.” Heartbreaking. Also kind of adorable.)
- People I had ended up telling about the Stage 0 diagnosis—when we thought that was it—but who didn’t know about the other two. (Luckily I had kept a running list of who I was telling)
- Friends and co-workers I had been in touch with over the last year or so
- Social media
My poor immediate family got delegated telling the rest of my family and our family friends.
Timeline
The day after my official stage 3 rectal cancer diagnosis, I met with my breast surgeon and my mastectomy was fast-tracked and scheduled for 11 days later.
That’s when I kicked my list-making and messaging into high gear.
I knew I’d need certain things during recovery, so I started building a registry. I also created a GoFundMe. Because surgery was happening so quickly, I had to backdate my communications timeline around shipping deadlines.
Which means, yes: I project-managed my own cancer announcement.
The social media post had to go live no later than Tuesday, February 3rd — six days before surgery. Emails rolled out before that.
Messaging
Every audience got slightly different messaging and a slightly different tone.
One group received emails the morning of the social post. Another got theirs the day before.
The last thing to go live was Instagram.
Images
I don’t know why I had been photo-documenting my way from the Stage 0 diagnosis to this point, but I was. Which came in handy for my Instagram post.
Not like anyone cares.
But old habits die hard.
And, like I said earlier, at this point, give me anything I could control and I did.
The IG post had some good—and honestly kind of disturbing—photos to go with it.
(Also one really hot photo of my boobs from Montana last summer because RIP, left boob. And because I was wearing a bracelet that said “badass,” which felt thematically appropriate.)
One of my favorite responses came from a woman I hadn’t heard from in nearly 15 years. She was an early pioneer in digital marketing and analytics (and so freakin’ smart!) around the same time I was “pioneering” (I guess) social media for the arts.
She sent me an email that said this:
Just a quick note to say how proud I’ve been of you, and how you’ve navigated the journey of the past almost 20 years I’ve known you now. Through hardships, and cross-ocean moves, and career changes, and the ups and downs of life, you’ve been meeting it with grace and humor and transparency and of course strategic comms. So it makes all the sense in the world you’d meet a dual cancer diagnosis with a well orchestrated comms plan with clear instructions, a compelling image, useful links, and a well organized spreadsheet. Girl, some things never change.
This made me laugh out loud and feel so seen.
I’ll close with a question I do get asked frequently: does my ex-husband know?
Yes, he knows.
I wasn’t going to tell him directly. We haven’t spoken since October and he’s since blocked me on all social media. I was just going to let him find out through someone who might say something after seeing my social media post. But on the morning I was going to make the announcement public, my heart said that was kinda cruel. So, I asked one of our best mutual friends to do the really hard thing: pick up the phone, call him, and tell him. And she did.
And then the most frequently asked follow-up question: have I heard from him?
No, I have not.
I knew going into this that cancer would teach me a lot about how people show up — and how they communicate.
There is no easy way to tell people you have cancer.
There is no right way.
There is no wrong way.
I’m learning a lot about capacity—my own and other people’s.
One reason I started this blog was because I realized I could not survive saying the worst thing that had ever happened to me over and over again.
So instead, I wrote it down once.
And let people come to me.
Which is also one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
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