Facing Cancer as a Parent : Helping Your Children Cope with Your Cancer

Facing Cancer as a Parent: Helping Your Children Cope with Your Cancer

The Balancing Act

Cancer is earth-shaking, not only for the patient but for their family as well. It can be the hardest on children whose lives are thrust into uncertainty and emotional turmoil. Parenting when your partner has cancer means balancing the needs of all family members while helping your loved one fight the battle of a lifetime.

How to Help Your Children

Your children know more than you realize and will imagine the worst if they don’t get clear answers to their questions. How do you talk to them about their fears? What can you do to make the changes that are happening in your family easier for them? Where can you turn for support and help? How do you help them deal with feelings of sadness, anger, and even guilt? What if their parent doesn’t survive?

Facing Cancer as a Parent

Heather Erickson has lived with these questions and sought out the answers. With the help of Melissa Turgeon, Registered Art Therapist and Certified Child Life Specialist, Heather shares the answers to these questions and more! Cancer doesn’t have to steal your children’s joy or their future.

This book is ideal for parents who either have cancer or are caregivers. It is also perfect for anyone who wants to help a child remain resilient throughout their parent’s cancer journey.

Awards for “Facing Cancer as a Parent”

2019 MIPA Awards (Midwest Independent Publishers Association)

Gold Award Winner in the “Health” category

Silver Award Winner in the “Family/Parenting” category

2021 New York Big Book Awards

Distinguished Favorite in the “Cancer” category

Praise for “Facing Cancer as a Parent”

5 Stars!

This is the author’s second in a series of books that help people face cancer. Her first one “Facing Cancer as a Friend,” was of invaluable help to me as a friend of someone with cancer – and I recommend this one just as heartily.

Heather writes this book through the lens of her own family’s experience as they walk through her husband’s five-year battle with lung cancer. This gives this book a very practical and personal feel. I love that she spans all the ages – including the young adults that may be going through their own life upheaval as they start working full time or attending college. In addition, she has filled the books with specific helpful tips, trouble spots to watch for, and even examples of specific things a parent could say to help start or guide a conversation with their child.

This book covers a wide range of topics that may affect parents and their children. Chapters include: how to tell your children, how different ages and stages may react to having a parent with cancer, helping your children deal with side effects, getting your children to open up and talk about what they are feeling, dealing with grief, building a support system and facing terminal cancer. She also has a few chapters geared at single parents, adoptive parents, and unmarried couples.

Chapters in the book tend to be short, and Heather does a great job organizing her information and using bullet points for ideas. This makes it an easy read for someone who is already feeling very overwhelmed.

I am very much looking forward to reading other books coming out in this series and am thankful that she is willing to share her personal experience to help others!!

~Marion

Do You Have Children?

Help them come through their parent’s cancer stronger.

Buy Facing Cancer as a Parent Today!