TRAILER
Welcome to the first soundbite from the upcoming My Sister's Cancer podcast! Whether you’re new to the community and curious about who we are, or whether you’ve been following along with our poems and essays for months, we’re glad you’re here. I'm Kayla Crum, registered nurse and writer, and for this podcast I’m partnering with my sister, Ella Beckett, social worker and cancer survivor. Our mission is to care for the cancer community through the sharing of real life stories, a sprinkle of sass and lots of support. We plan to have wide-ranging conversations that speak to anyone who has had cancer or knows someone who does - which is practically everyone. We hope you’ll join us in a new kind of pity party: it's a pity so many of us carry the heavy burden of cancer alone, so let's make it a party and carry it together.
TRANSCRIPT
Kayla 0:08
You're listening to the My Sister's Cancer podcast. I'm Kayla Crum, registered nurse and writer.
Ella 0:14
And I'm Ella Beckett, social worker and cancer survivor.
Kayla 0:18
We're sisters on a mission to care for the cancer community through the sharing of real life stories, a sprinkle of sass, and lots of support.
Ella 0:27
Join us in a new kind of pity party. It's a pity so many of us carry the heavy burden of cancer alone, so let's make it a party and carry it together. 5s When you are diagnosed with cancer, 2s it's really easy for you to just feel super sorry about yourself and your situation, hence the pity party. And I think it's also just a very isolating experience, because you feel like no one really understands what you're going through. And so reframing it as a party and focusing on how others might understand more than you think they do. And also the fact that there's a lot of people out there have dealt with really similar diagnoses, or just life situations that can really resonate with each other to create a sort of community, I think is really what we're hoping to achieve in this podcast.
Kayla 1:33
I really felt alone when you had cancer. We were young adults, late teens, early twenties, and I saw a lot of support online and in communities for young children who had siblings with cancer and for adults with a spouse or a child going through it. But siblings who were adults seemed sort of like a lost audience. So that led me to start writing my own way through it. And I then wanted to find other siblings and kind of build a community of those of us who get it and have gone through it. As far as framing the conversations, we're going to follow a seasonal pattern. Ella’s cancer happened to follow a seasonal arc. She was diagnosed in the summer, received treatment in the fall or autumn. 1s Ended up having a time of isolation and transplant in the winter and then sort of emerged into remission and survivorship in the spring. So that's sort of the pattern that this podcast will follow. We'll take the summer and really unpack diagnosis and those early days of having cancer and how that feels, and then of course, move into the other phases with the actual calendar.
Ella 3:00
We're really, again, trying to reach a broader audience and I think a lot of our episodes are going to resonate with listeners. Whether you've been a part of someone's life who has had cancer or not, I think a lot of the things that we're talking about reach further than just the cancer world. I think, yes, we're going to be talking about my actual diagnosis and kind of getting the word out and how people responded, but we're also going to be talking about things like a loss of control and grappling with your mortality at a young age, how life's not fair and things not to say to people in difficult times. Our dark humor as a coping mechanism - I think that that was something that really served us well. And I think it has a time and a place. We're going to be talking about the struggles of school, maintaining college, a job or anything like that while you're going through something really difficult. We'll talk about our faith and kind of how we questioned where God was in the midst of everything, and a wide variety of other topics that I didn't hit on but that I'm really excited to discuss with you, Kayla.
Kayla 4:22
We're going to be putting these episodes out once a week on Thursdays, and honestly, we already have a year's worth of ideas. That's how broad this topic can really be. And like she said, I think it will relate to people both within and outside of what we've come to call the cancer world. So we can't wait to share our discussions with you. Give us a follow on Instagram @mysisterscancer or check out our website, mysisterscancer.co. There's a podcast tab over there for you to check out. So starting on Thursday, June 8, you'll have a weekly episode in your ears and we can't wait to share it with you. See you then.