What the World Needs Is More Cancer Blogs!

According to Technorati, there are already 4,180 blogs about cancer (and more every time I check).

But surely that’s not enough. Not when you consider that some 200,000 women are newly diagnosed with breast cancer (my first cancer) every year in the United States, and some 60,000 people are diagnosed with melanoma (my second cancer).

So, in order to help increase the number of cancerites who are online, blogging their little hearts out, and dishing up the love, laughter, and bad cancer jokes to help each other get through this most bizarre and frightening of disease-experiences …

I will be teaching a couple of workshops at Cancer Lifeline in Seattle this fall.

The first is a two-hour workshop on cancer and blogging. During the first hour I'll talk about all the different reasons people blog (yes, I will be outing my friends and favorite bloggers) and the joys of blogging, and introducing some blogs that folks might want to be reading. During the second hour, I will be walking participants step-by-step through the process of setting up a blog. That workshop is Oct. 6, a Saturday, from noon to 2 p.m.

Then, starting Saturday, Oct. 13, I will be leading a six-week writing workshop that is only for people with metastatic cancer. Some of these folks may decide to launch blogs, but we’ll be doing other kinds of writing as well.

If you want to take part in either of these free workshops, contact Cancer Lifeline.

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.

Comments

[laurie]

What a fantastic initiative. Wish I lived closer.

[Sara]

Good for you, Jeanne. This has the potential to do some real good in the world.

The world needs more authentic voices telling the truth of their own lives.

[Jeanne]

Laurie--tell me again where you live? And is there a cancer organization there that you have any contacts with? I'm perfectly willing to travel and do the workshop, as long as a sponsoring organization can pay my expenses and a modest honorarium.

In fact, it was originally my plan to do this all over the country. So far, just Honolulu and now at home in Seattle.

Jeanne

[Teresa]

The workshops sound great, Jeanne! I just found out that there are some 'experts' on ACC up in Seattle area, so a trip that way this fall just might be on my list of things to do! In the meantime, don't be surprised if you get some emails from folks that want to sign you up as speaker here in flyover country.

[laurie]

I'm in Ottawa, Ontario. I wonder if the Cancer Centre here (or other groups) sponsor this kind of thing. I'll give it a think.

[tamari]

hi! i'm starting a blog about living with cancer in the family (my mom) - i'm just wondering if there are any blogger/webrings that i can link into. alternatively, how do ppl find these blogs unless they are looking quite hard for it...

great initiative by the way. blogs are a great way to give people 'voice'.

[Jeanne]

Laurie--I would love to come to Ontario. Is Medicine Hat in Ontario? If so, the last (and only) time I was there, I was in a car accident and all I saw was the hospital--rode there with a very sweet Mountie, though. Not on his horse, however.

Tamari--good luck with your blog. One place you might search is Technorati.com.
That's a listing of blogs. It has more than 4,000 cancer blogs listed, and I think you can search the blogs that it references by "cancer" and "family" and you will probably find some.

Even a Google search should turn up some blogs. And I will send you links as I come across them, although my audience is mostly people living with cancer.

[Sara]

So, as I told you, Jeanne, when I e-mailed you these remarks, I didn't want to put all the following in comments, because I didn't want to start a "But men suffer too!" whine-and-accusation fest, but you have asked me to go ahead post it all here anyway, so here it is:

I think blogging is an especially valuable tool for women, especially around health issues.

Even now women aren't in the habit of or haven't found easy outlets for talking openly about our real physical experiences, and while wearing a T-shirt saying "Why yes, I DO have [cancer/AIDS/MS/other], and yes, it DOES suck" might not be the best, most liberating kind of choice for absolutely everyone, the cultural inclination toward women masking our own suffering and the paucity of outlets that won't just heap more obligations on us -- e.g., perhaps being able to tell someone that we hurt but then being obliged to make light of it for their sake -- can complicate the misery of an individual woman's disease and/or disability experience profoundly. Besides offering an opportunity for us to make ourselves visible, to stand up and be counted in the world the way -- the myriad ways -- we really are, I think blogging offers women something else we haven't had before, and something we really crave when we get sick: a way to talk about what we're going through while closely controlling the platform.

No one ever has to see your face on a blog if you don't want to show it. You don't have to show up on a particular day or at a particular hour. No one you know ever has to read it, 'cause you don't have to tell anyone it exists. People only comment if you let them. You can gain support and share information and control the flow of each, using your own voice, at your own whim.

You can scream [or laugh] as loud as you want. You can tell your story, if you want to tell your story, at your own pace, linearly or piecemeal, whole or edited. You can instruct people how to limit their responses to what you say.

And nobody is going to grade your grammar or spelling. And if anyone does, or if anyone violates any of your chosen boundaries in any way at all, you can can verbally bitch-slap them and then ban them, or ban them without ever having to confront them at all.

Of course, even though I perceive a past preponderance of men's stories or at least stories told from the male viewpoint in what seems generally considered the credible, mainstream media, I do know that men need this kind of honest outlet, too, as exemplified by Mr. Brainhell. The pressure has been on them, too, for a long time to always set an example, keep a stiff upper lip and keep going, no matter what. And some people, men and women, will use their blogs to help them build and maintain just such a façade, and I support unequivocally their right to do so, if that's what they believe is going to be most useful for them, and also to change their minds as they go. But however people choose to employ it or find themselves employing it, ultimately this medium can only be good for everyone. Among many other gifts it offers, blogging can be a tiny patch of control in the middle of a journey which often includes an overwhelming loss of dignity and autonomy.

So, as I said before, good for you for helping people find it and use it.

[Jeanne]

Sara--thank you for starting the conversation. I really want to write more, and get more comments from cancer bloggers, on men and women with cancer and how their writing about it is different.

I kind of started it off with the "where are the men cancer bloggers" post, but now I need to follow up on the blogs that people referred me to and get the conversation going. Just because I think it's interesting--not because I'm into bashing men.

(Well, only once a week--I bash men on Friday nights!)

[Doreen]

thank you Jeanne--I will definitely be taking this class!

[Jeanne]

Doreen--excellent. I'll see you there. Also, start thinking about things that you want to work on, or topics you want to cover, because the class will be guided by what the participants most want to do.

[Jill Cohen]

This sounds terrific! Iam glad to read about your teaching people with cancer how to improve their writing. They couldn't have a better teacher!