Staying Connected to Those You've Lost to Cancer
- Actor Jamie Dornan is most famous for his role as Christian Grey in 50 Shades of Grey. But Dornan didn’t always want to be an actor. When he dropped out of college, he struggled to find direction.
- Dornan’s mother passed away from pancreatic cancer before he ever pursued acting as a career. He is grateful for his success in recent years, but he wishes he could have shared it with his mother.
- Luckily, Dornan was able to celebrate his success with his father who was diagnosed with lymphocytic leukemia in 2005, and passed away from COVID in 2021.
Jamie Dornan broke into the acting spotlight with his role as the murderous madman Paul Spector in The Fall, a thriller British television series that ran from 2013 to 2016. His knack for playing a serial killer led him to be nominated for the 2014 British Academy Film Awards, and also helped him secure the star spot as Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey.
Read MoreJamie Dornan admits that he was "probably depressed" after his mother's passing, describing himself as "a bit rudderless and confused." When he dropped out of college, Dornan's family was concerned about his lack of a path. He remembers one particularly challenging conversation with his father. “He said he couldn’t handle me wasting my life," Dornan remembered. "There was lot of discussion in my family of, like, 'What are we gonna do about Jamie? How do you solve a problem like Jamie here?'"
But Dornan's life turned around when his sister suggested he attend an open casting call for models. His modeling career is what eventually jumpstarted his love for acting. Dornan's mother never got to enjoy her son's success, but his father did see his son's career take offthough he passed away in March 2021 from COVID-19.
“He was always, always so proud of me," Dornan said. "Dad always had my back. Some people go their whole lives without hearing those words from their folks." Jamie Dornan's father had been previously diagnosed with lymphocytic leukemia in 2005.
"I consider myself very lucky that everything I got to achieve, he got to experience and was proud of.”
Dr. Scott Irwin discusses the challenges of grief and the potential benefits of talk therapy.
Coping with Grief & Loss
Grief follows the loss of a loved one to cancer, and it also can come after a cancer diagnosis, too. Many people experience grief, anxiety, anger, and even depression after they've been diagnosed with cancer.
Dr. Scott Irwin is the Director of Supportive Care Services Cedars-Sinai, and in an earlier interview, he speaks about the grief some people go through after getting their diagnosis. "Grief comes in waves, says Dr. Irwin. "It often gets better over time, but at certain days, it can look like depression."
"Other days, people look perfectly normal and can function," he says. "They're grieving the change in their life, the future they had imagined is now different. In cancer care, sometimes, we're actually forcing some body changes that are beyond what would be normal aging, and that can be even harder for people to deal with where they don't feel like themselves."
In her column for SurvivorNet, Dr. Marianna Strongin has written about how grief can emerge in response to many different kinds of losses, and it can look different for different people. “The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance,” she wrote. “These labels are tools to help us frame and identify what you may be feeling. They are not linear and can occur in a variety of ways.”
One of the central challenges of working through grief is figuring out how to validate your emotional journey, while still acknowledging that your emotions will change over time. You shouldn’t dismiss your feelings, but you also want to give them the space to change so that the burden of your loss can eventually not weigh so heavily on you. “As you find yourself experiencing some of these stages,” Dr. Strongin writes, “It is important to remember that the emotions you are feeling are meaningful yet temporary. If you approach them with compassion, kindness and eventually acceptance, you will come away from this period in your life more connected to your resilience and strength.”
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