Families and caregivers support

For Families & Caregivers

For Families

Supporting your loved one while taking care of yourself. Practical guidance for cancer caregivers and family members.

30 articles written with care
families5 min read

How to Support a Loved One with Cancer

When someone you love has cancer, you want to help but may not know how. Here's practical guidance for being there in ways that truly matter.

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families5 min read

Recognizing and Preventing Caregiver Burnout

Caring for a cancer patient can be deeply rewarding but also exhausting. Learn to recognize burnout before it overwhelms you.

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families6 min read

Talking to Children About a Family Member's Cancer

Children sense when something is wrong. Age-appropriate honesty helps them cope far better than silence or secrecy.

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families5 min read

What to Say (and What Not to Say) to Someone with Cancer

Words matter deeply when someone is facing cancer. A simple guide to being supportive with what you say — and what you leave unsaid.

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families6 min read

Managing Your Own Emotions as a Caregiver

When you're focused on caring for someone with cancer, your own emotions can feel secondary. But they deserve attention too.

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families6 min read

Practical Ways to Help: A Guide for Family and Friends

You want to help, but "let me know if you need anything" rarely works. Here are concrete, practical ways to make a real difference.

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families7 min read

When Treatment Isn't Working: Supporting Your Loved One

Hearing that treatment isn't working is devastating. How to be present for your loved one — and yourself — in the hardest chapter.

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families7 min read

How Cancer Changes Relationships — and How to Adapt

Cancer doesn't just affect the person diagnosed. It reshapes every relationship in its orbit. Here's how to navigate the shifts with grace.

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families6 min read

The Helplessness of Watching Someone You Love Fight Cancer

When someone you love has cancer and you feel helpless, know that your presence matters more than any action you could take.

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families6 min read

The Resentment No One Talks About: When Cancer Takes Over Your Life Too

Cancer caregiver resentment is more common than anyone admits. If you feel it, you are not a bad person — you are an exhausted one.

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families7 min read

When Your Spouse Gets Diagnosed: Navigating Cancer as a Couple

When your husband or wife is diagnosed with cancer, your partnership changes overnight. Here is how to navigate it together.

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families7 min read

My Parent Has Cancer: Coping When Your World Falls Apart

When a parent has cancer, adult children face a grief no one prepares you for. Your pain is valid, and you do not have to hold it together.

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families6 min read

The Guilt of Being Healthy While Someone You Love Has Cancer

Feeling guilty for being healthy when your partner or loved one has cancer is painful but incredibly common. You deserve to hear this.

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families7 min read

Caring from Far Away: When You Can't Be at Their Bedside

Long-distance caregiving during cancer brings a unique kind of pain. The distance does not mean your love reaches any less far.

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families7 min read

Alone in a Room Full of People: The Isolation of Cancer Caregiving

Feeling alone as a cancer caregiver is painfully common. When the world focuses on the patient, who is taking care of you?

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families8 min read

When a Parent Is Dying: Living in the Space Between Hope and Goodbye

Preparing for a parent dying of cancer means living with anticipatory grief. The space between hope and goodbye is where the hardest love lives.

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families5 min read

Boundaries Are Not Selfish: Protecting Yourself While Caring for Someone with Cancer

Saying no, asking for help, and protecting your own needs are not signs of failure as a caregiver. They are how you survive the long road.

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families5 min read

When You Disagree with Your Loved One's Treatment Decisions

Watching someone you love choose a treatment path you do not agree with is agonizing. Here is how to hold love and disagreement at the same time.

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families5 min read

When a Sibling Has Cancer: The Complicated Love Between Brothers and Sisters

A sibling's cancer diagnosis can bring old dynamics and new tensions to the surface. Navigating it together requires honesty and grace.

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families5 min read

When Cancer Creates Financial Crisis in Your Family

The financial toll of cancer extends to the whole family. Acknowledging the pressure and finding practical paths forward is not shameful — it is necessary.

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families6 min read

When Your Child Is Diagnosed with Cancer

No parent should have to live through a child's cancer diagnosis. When it happens, the world changes in ways that require a particular kind of support.

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families6 min read

Can a Marriage Survive Cancer? Yes — Here Is How

Cancer tests marriages in ways nothing else does. The couples who come through it share certain practices that are worth knowing.

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families5 min read

When a Parent Has Cancer: Supporting Your Teenager

Teenagers face a parent's cancer diagnosis with a particular kind of intensity. Understanding their experience helps you support them.

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families5 min read

The Invisible Labor of Caregiving

The work caregivers do is often unseen, unacknowledged, and uncompensated. Naming it is a first step toward honoring it.

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families5 min read

When the Person You Love Pushes You Away

Some cancer patients withdraw from the people who love them most. Understanding why — and how to stay present anyway — can preserve the relationship.

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families6 min read

How to Talk About Death When It Cannot Be Ignored

When cancer makes death a possibility or a reality, the conversations we avoid become the ones that matter most.

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families5 min read

Who Are You Beyond Being a Caregiver?

When caregiving takes over your life, it can become your entire identity. Holding on to who you are beyond this role is essential.

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families5 min read

Life After Caregiving: The Transition No One Prepares You For

When caregiving ends — through recovery or loss — the transition back to ordinary life can be disorienting and grief-filled.

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families5 min read

Asking for Help as a Family: It Takes a Village, and That's Okay

Many families try to manage a loved one's cancer entirely on their own. But reaching out — to community, to professionals, to friends — is not failure. It is wisdom.

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families6 min read

When Treatment Stops Working: How to Support Your Loved One

The conversation about treatment no longer being effective is devastating. Being present through it — for them and for yourself — requires particular kinds of courage.

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