A short radio/YouTube segment (Confession Tuesday) in which life coach Rebeccah Silence answers a listener whose grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Rebeccah shares her personal experience as a cancer survivor and gives practical, compassionate advice for supporting a loved one: ask the patient what they need, validate emotional ups-and-downs, offer presence (visits, calls, sitting quietly), coordinate help via a private group or rotating daily check-ins, and support family members as well. The tone is empathetic and candid, emphasizing listening, permission to feel, and focusing on controllable actions.
It is a Confession Tuesday, life coach.
Rebecca, silence in studio. Good morning. Once again, good morning. So here's what we do on A Confession Tuesday. Rebecca is a life coach. She takes whatever's going on in your world and breaks it down to the nitty gritty. How do you get to where you want to be, no matter what it is in your life that we're talking about and helping you get there? And we take your questions@cnykiss.com and we handle them here on the air, and that way, everyone can kind of get something out of it. Because, honestly, no matter what we're talking about, nine times out of 10, people listening can be like, oh, oh, oh, oh. That makes sense.
Your questions make a difference.
They really, truly do. Here, are you ready for this week's question? All right. Dear Rebecca, my grandmother has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. I know that you've beat cancer in the past. Do you have any tips on how I can help my grandmother as she goes through this?
Thank you. Thank you for this question. My heart goes out to you and your family. It is an incredibly, incredibly difficult and challenging time when someone that you love gets diagnosed with cancer or if it's you yourself. For me, it was the most blind, siding experience of my life. Just one of those things that. How can you prepare for it? You don't see it coming.
Yeah, it literally. I remember it hit you like a truck.
Rocked my world to the core. You know, I also don't know if there's, like, a good way to handle this situation. It's so, so delicate. I would suggest, you know, it's so important to ask the person who has the diagnosis of cancer what it is that you can do. Some people are gonna tell you nothing, nothing, nothing. You know, you can't force anybody to do anything or to give you information. But my experience was that people kind of dealt with me the way I think they would have wanted to be dealt with if it was them.
Okay.
And it would have, in some cases, been really helpful for people to just ask, because if somebody would have wanted space, they gave me space. Well, maybe I would have liked a visit or a phone call. So, you know, just asking the person directly, you know, what do you need? We've talked about it on the air before. Gary one day asked me what I needed, what he could do, and I said, it'd be really nice to have some music. And so I get home one day from a chemo treatment, and on my kitchen table, there are these flowers with a little sign that says smell Me. And there's a brand new, fully loaded ipod that says play me. And I sat in bed, I. I don't even know how many hours or days before I got through the entire thing. And I'm like, oh, my God, in this song. Oh, my God, in this song. And I just was, like, laughing and crying and hurting all at the same time. I couldn't. It still gives me goosebumps. Have asked for a more perfect thing to come home to after a chemo treatment, but I asked for it, right?
And I think that. And maybe this is just me. If I were. Heaven forbid, if I were in the situation where it was me, like, I know when I'm sick, I don't want to talk to anybody. I remember when I went through my head thing a couple years ago, I didn't want to talk to anybody. I just wanted to just be left alone. But I will say that, you know, even if I was like that, I appreciated when people just checked in on me.
Absolutely.
You know, and I think that if. Especially if it's a grandmother or grandfather and, you know, you're a generation removed from it, that may be the best kind of way to go about it. You know, do the initial, hey, is there anything that I can do? And then just randomly just kind of check in, you know, whether. Whether it be a phone call or a text message or whatever. I think. I think something like that, it just means the world.
Right. And depending on treatments, you know, the person may not even remember all of those visits. But the effort is so, so, so important. And, you know, the other thing is, it is a roller coaster ride. So don't be surprised if the person going through the disease one day seems like, okay, you know what? Today's a good day. And then the next day, their whole world is falling apart. That doesn't make them crazy. That makes them human.
Right.
So, you know, making the emotional roller coaster wrong and trying to tell the person, you know, buck up, you can handle this, get through it, is probably the worst thing in the world that you can do. Sure. Because then that person's not gonna want anything to do with you if they're anything like me anym. You know, it's so important to validate that the emotional experience is across the board, and it's gonna be really, really messy. And the person probably feels crazy with all the different emotions already. So just validating them, listening to them, asking them, what can I do to help? What can I do to support you? Just sitting in bed. I had friends that would just come over and sit in bed and watch Netflix with me, because I couldn't really even talk.
I was not one of them. I know that the husband would be upset if I had just shown up and crawled in bed and been like, come on, Rebecca, Netflix, let's go.
You know, there's just no good way to handle it. But I will say this. This is another thing that my coach actually had recommended, and I want to throw this out there, you know, for anybody that's going through cancer or a serious illness or serious difficult time in your life, a private Facebook group where you can just vent and ask for what you need. I highly recommend, instead of just publicly to everybody into the whole world.
Sure.
You know, create. And that's something that maybe a friend could do is ask the person, you know, can I create a private group? And you let me know who you would want in this group and we can check in who's bringing meals. You know, another thing that I had that was pretty cool is for every day of the week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I had Thursday a different person checking on me. That was just their day.
Nice.
So there wasn't ever a day where people weren't checking on me. And then I would just say, you know, if I don't answer, it's just because I can't and don't want to talk today. But you just reaching out means the world, you know, so if there is, like a private Facebook group or an inner circle that can help kind of COVID each day and the family members, I almost think it has to be worse for them. Oh, sure. Than it is for the person going through the disease. So loving up those family members, too, and asking what it is that you can do to help them, it's just an impossible situation that, in my experience, can either tear relationships apart or bring people closer together. And for me, it's the best thing that ever happened to me in many ways, and the most horrible thing that's ever happened to me.
Rebecca Silence is a life Coach inspired results. Coach.com if this is something that you're going through and you want something to talk to outside of your circle, Absolutely. Reach out to Rebecca and set up a time. Absolutely incredible. Or maybe even your circle of friends and have Rebecca come and speak to your circle of friends, that would be an amazing thing as well.
Focus. Whether you're the family member, the friend, or the person going through a diagnosis of cancer, focus on what you do have control over. It's nobody's fault, and it's going to get better. There will be an end to this, and you can use this opportunity as rocket fuel for your life and get to know what you're really made of.
Rebecca. Absolutely incredible as always. Confession Tuesday. More from Rebecca at inspiredresultscoach. Com.
