Season 9, Episode #81 – Reel Recovery

It's all about their choice and having agency around their lives.

From your experience with just working so many years in the support system for these incredible men fighting through a horrible disease, We know that this episode will air close to Father's Day.

And while I say fathers, I'm really meaning all men because I'd love to talk a little bit about the unique experience that men have shared as they're navigating illness.

How does a cancer diagnosis, for example, affect their sense of identity? A partner or even as a dad, as a provider, right? How have people shared that that's been impacted by cancer?

Well, we actually ask that question

often.

How has having cancer impacted your masculinity, but even bigger than that, your sense of identity, your sense of purpose, your humanity? So I've heard the answers to that a thousand times.

They're probably written on your brain.

Some guys feel like they have to live by man rules.

You hold it in, You've got to be strong.

They're providers for their family.

Maybe they've lost the ability to provide financial stability for their family because they can't work anymore.

That's a huge sense of loss.

We don't see traditional roles.

We want them to break out of that if they can.

But a lot of them have been in that as the provider, as the strength and stability in their families, and they've lost that.

Now they have to ask for help.

Men, we don't like to generalize, but a lot of men have great difficulty asking for help.

Well, now they can't mow their own lawn.

Now they can't, maybe they can't even get to the bathroom.

Maybe they've had to ask for help.

So it changes the relationships that they have had as the one providing the help.

Now they have to ask for the help.

That

can be a real struggle for a lot of men, adapting to that shift.