A couple of months ago, I opened my email and saw this subject line: Your Grandmother’s Powerful & Brave Article
Hi, Susan. Thank you so much for sharing your grandmother’s article about her experience with and recovery from breast cancer. It was so kind and generous of her to write the article to encourage other women at a time when there were not many supportive resources and – as you said – the word Cancer and the condition were not spoken about. I teach bioethics, and I’d like to share the article with students in my fall class because they will be unable to imagine how different things were not so long ago. I hope that offering the article for them to read would be okay with you?
Wow. Yes! Please do offer the article to your students!
Grandma would be so pleased to know her experience is being used to help today’s students better understand the progress made in cancer treatment and patient care. She was college educated long before anyone else in our family and had a lifelong desire to learn (and write) even though she was “just” a housewife for much of her life. Thank you in advance for sharing her experiences with your students.
I shared Grandma’s article here at My Place nine years ago this month, shortly after I started blogging, in a post called C is for Cookbook . . . and Cancer . . . and Courage. Grandma’s article about her cancer experience as a young mother was published in HomeLife Magazine in June, 1953—66 years ago. If you’re not familiar with the magazine, it’s a faith-based publication, and Grandma shared openly and confidently about her dependence on God during those difficult days.
And now, students at a premiere institution of higher education are reading her words.
When I told my Dad (who was a young boy during his mother’s cancer scare—and shares his mother’s love of writing), this was his response.
Wow! You never know, do you, where feathers fall or the impact of words long afterward. Thanks for making my day even brighter.
Grandma would be delighted!
Perhaps she is. 🙂 Love you, Grandma!
What a great reminder that our choices today can affect others long after we’re gone. Let’s be sure they’re good ones!
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