There is something about serious illness that seems to transform ordinary people into experts. The moment a diagnosis enters the room, advice follows close behind, bustling and relentless, carrying smoothies and slogans and optimism like talismans against mortality.
Everyone suddenly has a philosophy. A cure. A mindset adjustment. A story about someone’s cousin who “beat it” by drinking green juice, manifesting positivity, refusing negativity, praying harder, thinking differently, smiling more, only eating kale, never eating kale — the list is endless and often bizarre. Throwing lemons at the wall?
As though survival were simply a matter of attitude or choosing. As though dying could be corrected by better emotional posture.
And perhaps most astonishing of all is how comfortable healthy people become evaluating the emotional performance of the sick. They study the person carrying terminal cancer like critics reviewing a play. Too negative. Too angry. Too focused on death. Not grateful enough. Not hopeful enough. Not “living in the moment” correctly.
The other day someone told me about a person whose well-meaning family had decided their loved one was “doing terminal cancer wrong.” They told this person that they needed to be more positive. More present. Less doom and gloom. That they needed to stop talking about cancer or the side effects or how their life had changed and just focus on what they had, that their life was more positive than negative and their communication should reflect that.
What an extraordinary step — to look at someone carrying the unbearable weight of their own mortality and decide the problem is not the suffering itself, but the tone in which it is expressed.
People who have never lived beneath the shadow of terminal illness often mistake honesty for pessimism (and maybe you read my previous post: The Burden of Honesty in Suffering). But there is nothing inherently negative about acknowledging reality. There is nothing morally superior about denial.
Some days, living with terminal cancer means terror sits beside you at breakfast. It means your future contracts unexpectedly. It means every ache becomes a question mark — is the cancer spreading, is another body part affected? It means your body transforms from something you inhabit into something you negotiate with constantly, minute by minute at times.
And yet healthy people often demand emotional comfort from the dying.
They want the sick to perform inspiration. To soften the edges of mortality for everyone else. To package fear into resilience and grief into wisdom. Because if the terminally ill remain upbeat enough, perhaps everyone nearby can continue pretending death is distant and manageable and fair.
But terminal illness is not a motivational seminar. It is exhausting. It is repetitive. And living longer with a terminal illness can both be the goal and also add layers of unconscionable suffering.
Carrying a terminal illness is psychologically brutal in ways language rarely captures. There is no right way to emotionally survive the knowledge that your life will be shortened by disease without a reliable timeline. Some people become hopeful. Some become furious. Some become quiet. Some obsess over treatment advances at three in the morning. Some laugh more. Some grieve constantly. Most alternate between all of it, sometimes within the same minute or hour.
None of this is failure.
It is survival.
And survival does not need to be aesthetically pleasing to be valid.
The truth is, people living with terminal cancer are already doing something unimaginably difficult every single day: continuing. Continuing through pain, uncertainty, side effects, fear, scans, losses, financial strain, changed bodies, changed futures. Continuing while carrying knowledge most people are blessed enough to avoid.
That alone is enough.
People who have never carried that weight should approach it with great care and humility, not instruction manuals. Sometimes the kindest thing a person can offer is not advice, positivity, or correction, but silence sturdy enough to hold another person’s fear without trying to reorganize it into something more comfortable.
Not every painful truth needs to be reframed.
Sometimes suffering simply deserves witness instead of critique.
No Half Measures 
This is so true and well said. It amazes me how careless people can be with their words. I always appreciate your posts, I think most of us can relate.
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Appreciate you reading and commenting! Careless is a good label — I wonder, though, if most of it is reflexive fear reaching for platitudes because people have no idea what to say.
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I am grateful you have opened the window to your suffering through this blog and our friendship. I am praying for your “continuing” and now have that word to bring before the Lord. I love you, my friend 🙏❤️🙏❤️
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Grateful for you. 🫶🏻
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I’ve also noticed that people don’t know what to say so they try to help, maybe not much help but they are trying. I have several chronic illnesses and believe you have to grieve your diagnosis and keep a positive attitude as well. Great post.
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I hear you and it is helpful, I think, to try to remember that fear plays such a big role in all of this. And living with a chronic illness versus a terminal one does change the weight of the experience. Appreciate your perspective.
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Have a great day.
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Thank you so much for writing this.
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Thank you for reading and commenting!
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“But there is nothing inherently negative about acknowledging reality. There is nothing morally superior about denial.”
Beautifully accurate.
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Thank you — appreciate you reading and commenting!
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It always strikes me as incredibly, ballsy, brave, intrusive, WTH? When people give completely unsolicited advice about something they know nothing about. Know matter how hard I try with oh they are only trying to be loving or kind my final response is almost always, who asked you? Even though I am never brave enough to actually say it out loud. This is the primary reason why I dont talk about cancer or any of the other things I am juggling.
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Totally valid, Joyce. I vividly remember a Grey’s Anatomy episode where a person with an incurable tumor talked about the progression of seeing different doctors where they begin with the optimism that they can help and it ends with her taking care of them when they cannot. That resonated so much. We know the reality of our prognosis (not the exact timeline, but the reality of a terminal condition) and carry that every day, but end up taking care of other people all too often.
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I have been seriously contemplating bowing out of caretaking. Now be for I go on I am single very few close family entanglements and my friends know better. So that makes it a lot easier for me to say no more care taking of perfectly capable adults. I have no relationship that ties be to that kind of relatioship maintenance. But truthfully that has always been my relational default or I probably would not still be single.
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“Sometimes suffering simply deserves witness instead of critique.”
That sentence is not only the perfect close for this valuable post; it’s also a maxim to live by.
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So very true! Appreciate you reading and commenting, my friend.
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People say stupid things when they have no clue, don’t even seem to have any clue they have no clue. You are right… We should be practicing humility and being able to hold one’s own feelings of desperation and inadequacy. People have said some incredibly hurtful and even damning things. Thank you for expressing your life’s struggles here in your blog 🙏🙏
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Appreciate you reading and commenting!
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I’m relatively new to your blog. I read one of your posts on a MBC fb site. After reading this post I was surprised to be absorbed in self reflection for a few hours. I often redirect or use humor when faced with unsolicited comments about terminal illness. Fortunately I have a sweet tooth, constantly have candy, gum, mints, etc. on me. When my stress tolerance becomes elevated, I interrupt them, “My sugar level is low”, would you like a piece of candy”. Immediately this stops them in their tracks, usually they are relieved not to engage further with advice giving. From my experience a lot of these well meaning advice givers dare not go beyond the shallow end of the pond.
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I love this way of redirecting people! Such a kind and disarming comment. Thank you for sharing! 🙂
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I was only 18 when my mother was badly injured in a car accident. She spent the next 50 years teaching me how to deal with problems. All problems; marriage, illness, the whole business. In the early days she was angry and sad but then she made us all realize that she was still the same mother she always had been. I don’t know how often I failed but I think she helped me I understood better how to deal with life in so many ways. You do too.
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Thank you for sharing this story about your mom — she sounds amazing. Thank you.
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