I shared this on Insta already (@thetimebetweenis), but wanted to give it its own post here on my blog.

When you are THE MOM, the uber mom who does everything for your family, your kids and maybe sometimes yourself (barely), it is so hard for your kids to see you have to stop, have to slow down. For a kid to learn their parent is “sick” and has “cancer” is really scary—I talk a little about being a parent and a kid in situations where the mom got knocked down here, but there is more to it than even that.

I am a writer and it is how I process things since 1986 (my first diary). My children are also kind of expressive in either art, music and/or writing (they are a mix). I sat with my oldest and created this children’s book using an app on my iPhone called LittleStoryCreator and put this together using some personal pictures and our story.

If I do decide to do something with this book, in the hopes of helping other children who are going through watching their mom or caregiver deal with cancer, it will be set up to donate the proceeds to a charity that can physically also help these children.

During chemo, I wished for a camp where my kids could live and be cared for and kind of distracted so they would not see me on the couch looking dull and lifeless so they would not realize all of the things I had to miss and not go to because I just could not swing it and for fear of getting sicker. I also did not want them to see me go bald and to see me look so tired. In a way, now I am glad they saw it because I want them to remember that sometimes we fall down and we get hit with things we did not plan for, expect or want but we have to survive, we have to pick ourselves up, put our wigs on and get out there and do what we have to do to make it, to get to the other side.

I hope and pray every day that 1) they never have to go through anything like this and 2) that I am fully on the other side and done with it. No matter what, though, we know we survived and we did it as a family. This book, this story, tells that from the perspective of a 6-year-old and 9-year-old whose first and only question upon hearing I had cancer was, “Are you going to die?”

Let me know your thoughts about the little snippet up above and if you want to see or hear more, let me know. This is what I do in the time between.