How do you tell your kids their Mom might have cancer?

By John Bach

Our three daughters (from left) Georgia, Josie and Greta.

How do you tell your kids that Mom might have cancer?

Greta, 22, had just started her first real job out of college that very day. We should be sitting around a celebration dinner with our oldest kid listening to the news of her day. Instead, we wondered how we share devastating news when all three of our girls aren’t even home. I held Julie in our kitchen, and we both cried out of fear. My God the sense of fear. The sense of confusion and grief that set in immediately. The word cancer hadn’t even been spoken yet, but the 2.5 centimeter mass located in Julie’s left breast was looming over us.

Georgia, 19, and Josie, 17, came home soon after we got there. They had been out together for coffee and kicking around. Georgia immediately asked how things went, even before she had fully shut the front door. She’s an empath like her Mom. She can literally feel someone’s pain from across the room, and she read her mom like a book.

“It’s not good,” Julie said. “I have a mass in my left breast, and I have to have a biopsy.” Georgia melted as she always had when sadness strikes unexpectedly. By about age 2, Georgia would curl her lips and cry if I gave her even a stern look. Big tears immediately surfaced and Georgia went to Julie to ask what she meant.

Josie was still standing over near the door looking rather unphased. Their reactions couldn’t have been more different. We all waited for Greta to get home.

Greta arrived, and Mom shared the news with her, too. Greta sat on the floor and leaned into Julie’s lap and simply sobbed. It was exactly what I had expected. She feigns a hard shell but she’s soft inside like Georgia. Josie still had barely reacted.

Monday night and Tuesday became a blur as we looked ahead to the biopsy.