It’s a story I hear from nearly every client.

“I thought this person would be there for me. But they vanished when I needed them  most.”

Or the flip side, when you push them away: “I had to let her go. She said something so hurtful, and I just couldn’t un-hear it.”

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Whether you've been ghosted or had to ghost someone else, it hits hard. 

Especially when you’re already carrying the weight of a cancer diagnosis, treatment, and everything that comes with it. It feels personal. Like betrayal stacked on top of trauma.

Cancer changes everything. You. Your relationships. The lens you see the world through. It strips things down to the bone—and not everyone can handle that level of rawness.

In addition to everything cancer does to you, it also triggers all sorts of fear and discomfort in them—your friends, family, coworkers—many of whom just don’t know how to show up when life gets that intense.

Sometimes it turns friends into strangers…and strangers into friends.

Some people go silent because they don’t know what to say.

Others disappear because your diagnosis makes them a little too aware of their own mortality. 

But for many, it’s not even their fears about themselves. It’s their fears about you. About what might happen to you. That’s a place too terrifying for them to go. So they don’t. They back away instead.

Others mean well, but fumble. Or they try to “fix” it with positivity and platitudes, when all you needed was presence. 

And then there’s you. You’re fighting to survive. Your patience is thin. Your energy is precious. You don’t have the bandwidth to coddle, explain, or forgive thoughtless comments that cut too deep.

You’re left hurt, confused, and feeling even more alone during one of the hardest times of your life.

And if being ghosted by people didn’t hurt enough—you may have pushed people away, too, and rightfully so. During the acute phase it's time to circle your wagons closer and focus on taking care of your own needs. 

But later, once you're past that phase and the dust has settled, you get to decide which of those friends you want to invite back into your circle.

And the best way to do that is to get yourself to peace about what happened, and to realize it was never about you, but about their own fear. 

Once you are at peace and have let anger and hurt go, you are in a place where you can have a conversation with them that won't devolve into accusations on your part (no matter how justified they might be) and defensiveness on theirs. 

You can simply express how you felt when it happened. 

And here's the clincher - you need to get to peace around this either way - whether you resume and repair the relationship or not - because even if you decide to let the relationship go in the physical world, if you haven't let go of it emotionally you will still be feeling the hurt and anger. 

If you need help with this, please speak with me because healing wounds like this is one of my superpowers.

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