Facing Cancer as a Parent
- Journalist and cancer survivor Joan Lunden, 72, sent her son off to college, highlighting how important family milestones can be after surviving cancer.
- Joan is the mother of seven children who, like many other parents, struggled to tell her young kids that she had been diagnosed with stage 2 triple-negative breast cancer in 2014.
- In a 2016 YouTube video, her daughter Kate and son Max then 12 years old said they found comfort in their parents giving them the facts of her journey in pieces that they could easily digest.
- “If you tell ’em all at once it’s kinda hard to process it all at one time,” Max explained.
- It’s suggested that parents encourage kids to talk about their own feelings about their parent’s cancer and to consider therapy when professional help is needed.
Her most recent Instagram post included a touching photo of two of her seven children Max and Jack, who she had via surrogacy in her 50s hugging goodbye before Jack headed off to college football training.
Read MoreView this post on Instagram“Best moment of the morning as my Max gave a huge hug to his ‘little bro’ Jack, as we left for Ann Arbor MI,” Joan wrote in her caption.
“Tomorrow morning he checks in at Univ. of Michigan football stadium to begin summer football training to be a Michigan Wolverine!”
It’s clear how close this mom is with her children, especially after they supported her through her breast cancer battle.
Joan Lunden’s Family and Cancer Journey
Joan Lunden is the mother of seven children Jamie, Lindsay, Sarah, Kate, Max, Kimberly and Jack.
Jamie, born in 1980, Lindsay, born in in 1983, and Sarah, born in 1987, are the children of Joan and her ex-husband Michael A. Krauss.
After marrying Jeff Konigsberg in 2000, Joan and Jeff turned to surrogacy to have two sets of twins: Max and Kate were born in 2003 when Joan was 53, followed by Kimberly and Jack in 2005 when she was 55.
Lunden proudly embraced her fertility journey later in life and became an advocate for surrogacy.
When talking lovingly about the woman who gave birth to her twins, Lunden said, “She's a woman in our lives we greatly respect, she helped us have Kate and Max and Kim and Jack."
When the first twins were born, it was a happy celebration between Lunden’s family and her surrogate’s.
“It was the most amazing experience in the hospital–a real family affair–Deborah’s 3 teenage daughters and my 3 teen daughter’s oohing and aahing over the babies, and dressing and feeding them. It was way better than I ever could have dreamed,” Lunden wrote on her blog.
“The relationship between our two families has forever been intertwined, and we make sure to get together once a year because we want our twins to know the family who made it possible,” she added.
In preparing to explain to his twins how they came into the world, Lunden had a sweet metaphor ready: “It's almost like we can't cook the cupcakes in our oven because the oven is broken. We're going to use the neighbor's oven."
Parenting as a Cancer Warrior
All the while, Joan was always making career moves. She co-hosted ABC's "Good Morning America" for 17 years in the 1970s and 1980s and later became a correspondent on NBC's "Today" show.
And it was during her time with "Today" that her life along with her family’s was forever changed by her stage 2 triple-negative breast cancer diagnosis in 2014 at age 64.
"Candidly, I never thought I would be one of the women who would get breast cancer," Lunden told SurvivorNet in a previous interview.
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Joan went on to beat the disease with ample support from her family along the way, but it was not easy telling her children about her diagnosis.
In a 2016 video for Joan’s YouTube channel, her eldest twins then 12 years old sat down to discuss what it was like hearing their mother had cancer.
“Dad kind of like got us all together and he sat us down on the couch,” Kate explained. “At first he didn’t tell us what the condition was, he just explained that like there was something going on and that there were gonna be some changes.
“And then he told us that it was gonna be a scary word and he told us that it was cancer, and we were all kinda just shocked for a minute.”
Max went on to explain that he was “kinda scared at first” because the only thing he really knew about cancer was that it was “kind of a deadly disease that was bad and sometimes are not really curable.”
Both Max and Kate tried to act as normal as possible after hearing the news and take things day by day.
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“I didn’t wanna like ask any questions ’cause I didn’t want it to be like rude or offensive in any way and I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, so I kinda just like kept it to myself,” Kate said.
“I was just waiting for the information to be passed on to me, I didn’t want to like ask anything… when it was right for them to tell me like that’s what I took, that’s the information I got.”
The news came for Max and Kate right before they were headed off to summer camp. So, when they came back, a lot had changed.
Joan had even shaved her head because of the impending hair loss that would occur from chemotherapy. But their mother’s brave show of vulnerability for People magazine when she graced the cover without a wig helped them process what was happening.
“It was a shock at first,” Max said. “But then after People magazine we kinda just got used to it.”
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As for their advice for other parents wondering how to tell their children about a cancer diagnosis, Max and Kate shared similar sentiments.
They both feel it was really helpful that their parents were honest but didn’t unload too much information at once.
“Take it day by day with your kids so it’s not really overwhelming,” Kate said.
Max continued: “‘Cause if you tell ’em all at once it’s kinda hard to process it all at one time. So, if you kinda just go day by day say like what’s happening right now, what’s gonna happen later, it’s kinda better than just to say it all at once and then it’s gonna be harder for them to process it.”
Resources for Cancer-Fighting Parents Trying To Support Their Kids
There are many resources to look to if you're a parent with cancer who's trying to figure out how to navigate the relationship with your children while you fight cancer, including specific pages on the American Cancer Society and MD Anderson Cancer Center websites.
"Children tend to think in very concrete terms and like to know what's going on and what to expect," a MD Anderson Cancer Center article reads.
"If they ask something that you don't know the answer to, it's okay to tell them that you don't know and that you will work on finding the answer. The most important thing is to communicate openly, honestly and frequently."
The American Cancer Society says talking about a cancer diagnosis with your children will vary greatly depending on their age(s).
"Children of different ages will have different concerns," the website reads.
"For example, teens, who are testing their independence and limits, will have very different concerns from a 5-year-old who needs parents for basic caregiving. Young children (up to 8 years old) might not need a lot of detailed information like older children (8 to 12 years) or teens."
You'll have to find a balance between sharing too much and too little information about your cancer battle, but children should know how life will change regardless of their age. Most kids of all ages need to know the following basics, according to the American Cancer Society:
- The type of cancer (for example, colon cancer or lymphoma)
- Where the cancer is in the body
- What will happen with treatment?
- How treatment might change how the person looks and feels
- How their lives are expected to be changed by the cancer and its treatment
Licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Marianna Strongin encourages people with sick parents "to talk about your feelings with your immediate family as well as your parents."
She's previously talked about the importance of expressing your feelings in her advice column for SurvivorNet.
"Talking about difficult things does not cause more anxiety," Dr. Strongin said.
"It is NOT talking about the very thing that we are all afraid or worried about that causes our body to feel dysregulated (unable to manage emotional responses or keep them within an acceptable range of typical emotional reactions) and anxious."
For some people, therapy could be a good option, too. Though she was not a child when her mother fought breast cancer, singer-songwriter Jazmine Sullivan can attest to the benefits of therapy when a parent goes through a cancer battle.
"Breast cancer changes everything about your life. I've actually started seeing a therapist and I'm taking care of my mental health because that's something that you just need to kind of figure out," she told Yahoo Life.
"I've been looking up so much since [starting] therapy and getting that pain and everything that I went through out."
In addition, children of certain ages might benefit from attending a local or national camp or joining a support group.
Camp Kesem, for example, is a national camp for children whose parents have a cancer diagnosis that has local chapters.
If your child or teen needs people to talk to outside of the family, see what groups and organizations are nearest you.
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