Keeping Your Family Strong During Cancer Treatment: What We Learned

I recently read through the journals I kept during Kicker’s cancer treatment.

Keeping your family strong during cancer treatment is something nobody fully prepares you for. Nobody hands you a roadmap. Nobody tells you that the diagnosis itself is only the beginning of the hard, and that some of the hardest moments will happen not in the hospital room but in your own living room, your own kitchen, your own bed at night when the house is finally quiet.

Reading those journals brought it all back. It felt like yesterday and like a lifetime ago all at once. And because I have been on the other side of a hard that was harder than I ever imagined possible, I want to share what we learned. Not the polished version. The real one. Because you deserve real right now.

It took us six full months into treatment before our family began to resemble anything close to the fun, loving, sometimes argumentative, beautifully normal family that we are. Six months. And through all of it, through the raw and the ugly and the exhausted, we landed somewhere richer than where we started.

I pray this encourages you wherever you are in your own hard journey today.

What Cancer Did to Our Marriage

Josh and I have always had a strong relationship. However, cancer revealed the places in our marriage that needed more intention than we had ever given them before.

In those early months, we could barely find time to talk without being interrupted or completely depleted. And when we did find those moments, keeping our family strong during cancer treatment meant keeping our marriage strong first, which meant we could not afford to spend every rare quiet moment fighting.

But we did anyway. Because we were broken and scared and processing our fear in completely different ways.

I needed to talk, needed to cry and I needed Josh to sit in the darkness with me and feel every terrible feeling together. He needed to move forward. He needed to fix things, to restore order, to bring some sense of normalcy back. As the strong, steady man he is, sitting in the pain without solving it felt almost impossible for him.

One night my sister took the kids for a sleepover. Josh and I finally had time alone for the first time in what felt like forever. He wanted to have fun and escape. I needed to be heard. Predictably, it ended in a painful argument and we both went to bed angry.

After he fell asleep, I made my way to the living room floor and fell to my knees. I cried out to God with everything I had. “Why are you taking my husband away from me now? As if this isn’t hard enough?”

I fell asleep on that floor. And something woke me early the next morning with a clear thought in my mind.

I got dressed and woke Josh up. I told him to get ready because I was taking him somewhere. Twenty minutes later we pulled into a Krispy Kreme Donuts. His face lit up like a child on Christmas morning.

Yes. I know. For those of you who know me, feel free to gasp.

But here is what I understood in that moment. Josh needed me to be carefree. He needed to come home and find an escape instead of more heaviness. He needed his wife back, not just his co-caregiver.

There was nothing naturally carefree about our new reality. Therefore, we were going to have to manufacture it intentionally. We sat there and ate those donuts and for a few beautiful minutes we had not a care in the world.

That morning taught me one of the most important lessons of our entire journey. Keeping your marriage strong during cancer treatment requires a level of selflessness and intention you have probably never practiced before. It requires you to sometimes set aside what you need and give your spouse what they need instead. It is not easy. However, it is essential.

And for the record, I still cannot nutritionally justify a hydrogenated, sugar-filled donut to my clients. But it was absolutely the right thing at the right moment.

What Cancer Did to Our Daughter

Selah was four years old when Kicker was diagnosed. Because of her age, she was not allowed on the pediatric oncology floor and could not visit her brother during our initial 20-day hospital stay.

She was not your average four-year-old. She was perceptive and emotionally intelligent beyond her years. We tried to explain gently what was happening with Kicker and why mommy and daddy could not be as present as before. We watched her become more independent in ways that broke our hearts, because we knew that independence was not growth. It was survival.

Keeping our family strong during cancer treatment meant making sure Selah never felt invisible inside the crisis surrounding her brother.

So we made intentional efforts. We created special mommy and daddy dates just for her. Josh and I involved her in Kicker’s supplement routine so she felt part of the solution rather than pushed to the sidelines. Bringing her along to some appointments helped her feel included in the journey. We gave her her own special vitamins so she felt seen.

She knew Kicker had Leukemia. She knew his medicine was helping make his blood healthy again. We were completely transparent with her about the why and the what, and we consistently asked her how she was feeling. Sometimes she acted out. In those moments we had to recognize quickly that what she needed was not discipline. It was time with her parents.

Her bedtime routine grew longer. She wanted to be held more. By the end of each day we were running on empty, and yet we tried to give her a little extra at night because we knew she needed it. It was hard. However, it was also necessary and sacred. We certainly could have done all of this better and looking back, I wish we had been more intentional with her, but we did the best we knew to in that moment.

What Cancer Did to Our Family

I remember one particular evening standing in the kitchen cooking dinner.

A glass of wine was on the counter. The kids were running and laughing in the living room. Josh was leaning against the counter telling me about his day. Everything was ordinary. Everything was exactly what our life used to look like before the diagnosis.

And it hit me like a wave. This moment, this completely unremarkable ordinary moment, was everything.

Those ordinary moments used to slip by unnoticed. Now they felt like gifts I could not hold tightly enough. Dinner around the table. Kids in their pajamas. Josh telling a story that made me laugh. All of it soaked in a kind of gratitude I had never known before cancer.

As a parent I used to say I never knew I could love someone so much. However, I know now that love has depths that only reveal themselves when you face the possibility of losing someone. When you sit in that possibility, love becomes something bigger and deeper than words can hold.

Keeping your family strong during cancer treatment does not mean keeping everything perfect or holding everything together without breaking. It means showing up for each other in the broken places. It means donuts on a hard morning and extra bedtime snuggles and ordinary dinners that suddenly mean everything.

Our reality was not pretty. However, it was profoundly blessed. And we would not trade what it taught us for anything.

What I Want You to Take From This

If you are in the middle of this right now, I want you to hear something clearly.

You do not have to hold it all together. You’re allowed to fall apart on the living room floor. You can need your spouse in ways that feel inconvenient and messy. Your other children are allowed to need more than you feel capable of giving. All of that is normal and human and okay.

What matters is that you keep choosing each other. Keep showing up. Keep making the small intentional gestures that say “I see you and I am still here.” Because it is those small gestures, a surprise donut run, an extra long bedtime, a family dinner that nobody wants to end, that become the foundation your family stands on long after treatment is over.

Your story is not finished. And the richer reality is waiting on the other side.

If you want support navigating the relational and emotional dimensions of your child’s cancer journey alongside the clinical and nutritional ones, visit us at Biodynamic Wellness. And listen to the Thrive Through and Beyond Cancer podcast for real conversations about what it truly means to thrive through this season as a whole family.

You are not alone. We are in this together.

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