Elephants and Tea - March 2022 - 25

W
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COVER STORY Frustration in Faith
hy didn't you ask for help? "
This question was asked by a relative as we were
packing my family's apartment in preparation for
moving into our new home, and I have been thinking
about it since.
Why didn't I ask for help?
For those who know me, as you're reading this, I'm
sure several answers have come to your mind. When
asked the question though, the answer wasn't so obvious to me.
Why didn't I ask for help? This question has circulated my mind
for days. I brought it up in therapy, I've talked to my wonderful
and patient fiancé about this, and now I'm writing about it... for
the fifth time.
Each time I have found myself at the keyboard, I've written what
could be the first chapter to my memoir but have failed to put into
words exactly why I struggle so much with asking for help.
And then it came to me.
Shame.
Ohhh shame... that beautiful five
letter word that loves to show up in
my life when I need community more
than I need air to breathe.
Why does this five letter word
weigh so heavily on my shoulders?
How does shame find a way to make
me feel like the burden it actually is?
I am not the burden. Shame is the
Burden.
Now where does this shame come
from, anyway?
I spent weeks not being very kind
to myself - blaming myself for a
feeling and an inaction that has been
ingrained into me by people and systems
I have experienced my whole
life. When asked if I need help, I even
have a tendency to say that I don't, or
to simply not respond. And I've been
aware for years that I struggle to ask
for support, but I have never dug into
the reason until now.
Exploring distant memories of
as the oldest of six children, I was preparing to have a significant
amount of new responsibility as my dad worked full-time.
My mind was in overdrive, and I couldn't slow it down. I was
experiencing some pretty bad bullying at school, and everything
just felt awful and hard. So incredibly hard. Once my mom began
treatment, I was averaging three hours of sleep each night trying
to keep up with it all.
Not long after my mom was diagnosed, I began feeling sick and
missed a couple weeks of school. Despite how sick I felt, I would
tell myself, " Well, it isn't cancer, " and I would push through and
continue to do all my homework and the things my mom couldn't
do around the home or for my siblings. During these two weeks, my
mom did her best to save her energy for driving me to the doctor
to figure out what was going on.
I was tested for strep throat, given a diagnosis of bronchitis and
prescribed antibiotics, and had a false positive test for mononucleosis.
But as symptoms persisted, I felt like it may have been
something else, and my primary care
doctor ordered labs. Following the
labs, he ordered a CT scan and chest
X-ray. My chest lit up like a Christmas
tree just in time for the holidays.
On December 3rd, exactly one
month after my 16th birthday and on
the day of my dad's birthday, I was
diagnosed with Stage 2A Hodgkin's
Lymphoma. The exact same diagnosis
as my Mom and only six weeks later.
Everything moved so fast, I didn't
I am not the burden. Shame is
the burden. And shame is not
my burden to carry.
the experience my mother and I had
with Hodgkin's Lymphoma has been
nothing short of overwhelming. This is the time where my shame
grew larger than I could have recognized. It was so deeply inside
of me, it is only now coming to the surface almost nine years later.
When I was 15 years old, on October 22, 2012, my mom was
diagnosed with Stage 2A Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
After having no direct experience with cancer in my life, this
was devastating news, and my mind began spiraling with all the
things that could happen. All I knew about cancer was what had
been portrayed to me through the media and the knowledge that
older relatives in my family had died from it. I was scared. My
family had been living in North Carolina for less than five years,
and we had virtually no community to support us locally. And
even have time to process what was
going on. All of a sudden, my world
and the role I was filling as a caregiver
for my mother was flipped on its face.
Due to being a minor, split-second
decisions about my treatment were
being made, and I had virtually no
autonomy over what was happening.
But during the chaos of getting
everything in order for me to begin
chemotherapy, cancer no longer felt
as scary as the media and ads that
portrayed it. I was numb, and my
concerns had more to do with who
would fill my caregiver role and all
of the social pressures that come with high school. I also thought
that my experience with chemo would mirror my mother's, though
I quickly realized I would have a much harder time since my chemo
regimen was different and far more intense because of my age.
There was no silver lining to having a cancer diagnosis alongside
my mother.
Cancer didn't feel scary for me, because I didn't have time to
even digest the news. I'm 16 years old, I've never had any major
medical concerns in my life - not even a broken bone, and I had
to now navigate systems, paperwork and words that I had never
seen or needed to understand before because my mom was sick and
tired from chemo, my dad now had to be strategic about requesting
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Elephants and Tea - March 2022

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