There is never a good time to receive a Stage 3 cancer diagnosis.
But having an infant and a preschooler can make that news extra scary.
“Definitely the first thing I thought of when they said, ‘You have cancer’ was about my little kids,” says Oakland mom Haley Pollack, who was 37 when she was diagnosed with colon cancer seven years ago. “My whole experience of cancer was really shaped by my kids and my fears around how my cancer was going to affect them.”
Pollack faced struggles familiar to many cancer patients, from surgery to chemotherapy. But those challenges were exacerbated by feelings of isolation and alienation as she attempted to juggle her treatments, work and parenting very young children. She sought resources to help talk to her kids about her illness but came up short.
“I always felt like I was the youngest at the cancer clinic. Now I know that early onset colorectal cancer is a rising cancer for people under 45, but at the time I didn’t know that, and so I also felt like I was the only person in their 30s who had ever gotten a colon cancer diagnosis, let alone as a new mom,” she recalls.
In the midst of that loneliness, her nutritionist at Kaiser Permanente asked Pollack if she could introduce her to another local woman, Aimee Barnes, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer while pregnant, and who also had a preschooler. The two hit it off immediately.
“I think that Aimee and I both very quickly realized that there was a resource gap for parents like us – you know, parents who were juggling 8 million things between all the things with our kids and our family life and our work life, and then on top of all of that, which is a full plate, a cancer diagnosis just tips that over,” says Pollack.
An Idea is Born
Before long, the pair decided to start a nonprofit to provide the resources that were missing for families like theirs.
Bright Spot Network, founded in 2019 and based in the East Bay, supports families nationwide with children ages 0-10 in which a parent has cancer. It provides downloadable educational resources for talking to kids about cancer – the type of information Pollack and Barnes couldn’t find – as well as educational webinars, various virtual support groups for parents, financial assistance grants and more. There are specific grants for Bay Area breast cancer patients with children up to age 6.
For kids, there are monthly groups that provide social and emotional support, free age-appropriate books about cancer with discussion and activity guides, and a free art box with projects, in partnership with The Dolly Project, based in Alameda.
“Talking to your little kid about cancer is really scary. Having something like a book … can be a really empowering tool to help a parent be successful in that conversation,” says Pollack, whose children are now 7 and 10. The art boxes, she says, give parents everything needed to do a project with their kids without having to round up the supplies.
“If being a parent was one of your primary identities before your diagnosis, and then you no longer feel like you’re able to parent in the way that you could before, that can be really, really, really hard on your emotional life,” she says, “and so being able to provide things that help parents to feel not only like they’re parents, but also to be able to continue to help parents to connect to their kids during such a stressful time is good for the kid, of course, but it’s also good for the parent.”
Supporting Parents Like Them
Pollack is the executive director of the nonprofit, and Barnes is its president. Their work is funded by individual and corporate donors, as well as foundation support. Bright Spot Network supports about 2,000 families a year.
“One out of every five newly diagnosed cancer patients has a child under 18,” says Pollack, who completed her treatment and has no evidence of disease. “Around 3 million children are living today with a parent who has or has had cancer.”
Nadia Walker, 43, of Oakland is one of them. She was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer four years ago while pregnant with her third daughter. Walker underwent 16 rounds of chemotherapy, two major surgeries and radiation, as well as two more years of an oral chemotherapy treatment, which she finished in March
Her daughters were almost 6 and 4 years old, and she decided initially not to use the word “cancer” in telling them about her illness.
“It was hard to know how to engage them in a conversation about what was happening,” Walker recalls. “I explained to them the biggest change they would see would be me losing my hair.”
So Walker set up a “hair salon” and let her daughters cut her hair in some “crazy” styles. She also got a stuffed bear that she would take with her to medical appointments and then could explain to the girls’ what had happened during the bear’s day, putting her cancer treatments on a level they could understand. Bright Spot Network recommends a similar “teddy bear clinic” to help normalize medical treatments for kids.
She heard about Bright Spot Network through word of mouth and received a small grant from them that “allowed me to not feel any guilt and go get a massage.” She also received their conversation-starting children’s books about cancer and the art box.
“It allows you the space to have a conversation without looking into each other’s eyes and going too hard and heavy,” she says.
“I feel really grateful that there was this very small but very mighty resource that could help with the challenges I was facing,” Walker adds. “You do feel quite isolated, no matter how strong your community.”
Walker’s community in Oakland did step up in ways big and small.
“There’s nothing like a cancer diagnosis while pregnant to see how people will show up for you,” she jokes. One way they did was holding a “Get It Done Day” to help Walker, her husband and daughters prepare for the new baby’s birth while she was also battling cancer. (See sidebar.)
“You are past the point of overwhelm,” she says. “What you need is for people to show up in really specific ways. If you love to cook, make some extra food. If you are taking your kids to the park, take someone else’s kids. That’s an easy way for people to show up.”
Pollack agrees that offering specific help is best, rather than asking “What can I do to help?” (See sidebar.) She recommends deputizing a close friend to organize offers of help, from meal trains to carpools.
Walker is now in remission and, despite the challenges of the past few years, can already see some positives from her cancer journey.
“Cancer was a big wake-up call and a big reset in my life,” she says. Her daughters “were fortunate enough to see me go through it in a way where I did feel resilient and I did feel strong despite the circumstances. … I think my children witnessed a mom who had a big pregnant belly and no hair, which must’ve been strange, but they also witnessed people show up, and a lot of love and kindness.”
Janine DeFao is an associate editor at Bay Area Parent.
