Parenting Through Illness: What I Told My Children

Parenting Through Illness

Usually, the holiday season feels like light—Halloween’s sparkle, Thanksgiving’s warmth, the glow of Christmas, and the joy of my children’s birthdays. It’s our most cherished time of year. But last winter was cold and dark. A week before Christmas, I learned I had a 7cm mass. The news cast a long shadow over the season. There were no answers yet—just waiting. No imaging until after the new year, no clarity from specialists, no script to follow. So we—my parents, my brother, and I—wrapped Christmas in gentleness and carried on as if the ground hadn’t shifted. We made it magical for my children, even as something heavy settled in the background, unspoken but present.

What I Told Them and What I Did Not

Ash and Oak, my darling twins, were just learning to walk as I was scheduling the surgery. Their first birthday—meant to be full of candle blowing, sticky frosting, and photographs—was quietly eclipsed by the knowledge that, days later, I would be in the operating room for a radical nephrectomy (kidney removal). I was extraordinarily tired. I managed to get them each a cake and invite a few family members but not much else.

Lily, who had just turned three, was more aware. Grandpa and I took her to meet Santa a couple of days after my diagnosis at an outdoor Christmas wonderland and every time I sat down to rest she asked why. Children at that age easily notice imperceptible changes. Her questions were direct and practical, shaped by her speech delay but no less perceptive: “Tired, Mama?” “Come on, Mama?” “Mama okay?”

I told her that Mama was going to see the doctor so the doctor could help Mama feel better. I explained that we would stay with Grandma and Grandpa for around a week so they could take care of Mama while she rested. I told her that after the second week, she could come home with me because she was so independent. She understood that her little brothers would stay with Grandma and Grandpa for six weeks, because Mama couldn’t yet lift them into the car or the tub. These were the facts she needed to understand the shape of the disruption. Not the diagnosis, not the prognosis—just the logistics of love.

When she tried to bounce into my lap, I steadied her by showing her the incision. She asked about it immediately. We called it a booboo—a small word for a big change—and that naming made it small enough for her to hold. Over time, she asked to see it less and less, as we watched it mend together. We used simple language to narrate the healing: Mama had been sick; the doctor fixed Mama, Mama was still hurting but healing. Each time I showed her, each time I answered, it built trust between what I said and what she saw.

Sometimes she asked if it hurt. At first, it did—and I told her so, validating the worry behind her question. Later, when I could say “not anymore,” she asked less and less. Her curiosity softened into confidence. The scar became less a mystery and more a marker—proof that Mama was getting better. She occasionally still lifts her shirt and tells me “I no have booboo.” I know, baby, and I’m so grateful.

Naming without burdening

There is an art to naming what is true without giving children more than they can carry. For Lily I chose words that were honest and tethered to action: doctor, rest, heal, tired, gentle. I did not call the operation by a heavy word that would seed anxieties. I used “booboo” for the incision because it made a place in language where she could look and learn without fear. Those choices were not avoidance; they were translation—turning adult-scale concepts into child-scale sense.

The Practical Limits of Bodies and Love

We asked for help. We accepted it with gratitude. Friends delivered meals, both homemade and store-bought, each one a quiet offering of care. Family stepped in to support the grandparents, offering baths, errands, and moments of rest. Hundreds of prayers were said—some whispered, some spoken aloud, some folded into casseroles and clean laundry.

The boys went to their grandparents’ for a season, where they were safe and joyful, while I began to heal and returned to work just a week later. Lily stayed at home with me because I could meet her needs, and because that closeness steadied us both. It kept her in her daily rhythm—catching the bus to preschool, returning to familiar books and bedtime songs, holding onto the framework of normalcy. We visited her brothers every evening as soon as I finished work and snuggled until it was time put them to bed each night. Grandma kept us all fed.

Asking for help wasn’t surrender—it was a redirection of love, a way to keep it flowing instead of letting it burn out. It’s a lesson I hope my children will carry with them: that shared love is strength. That support, when offered and received, becomes a kind of grace—holding us steady when we cannot stand alone.

When they are older

I also practiced what I might call anticipatory honesty for the future. There will be time for deeper, factual conversations when they are older and able to hold the medical facts, the decisions made, and the grief that sometimes accompanies recovery. For now I hold a smaller truth: Mama was sick, Mama had a doctor help her, Mama is getting better. Those sentences are sturdy enough for a child to hold onto.

Right now, little facts and tactile reassurances fit. Later, when they are older, we will unpack the rest: why the kidney needed removal, what the recovery looked like in clinical terms, what the risks were and why the decision was made. Those conversations will be candid and age-appropriate, rooted in the same principle I used when they were very small—truth translated, not diminished.

I imagine us at a table years from now—older hands, different worries—pulling out journals or photos and saying plainly: here is what happened, here is what we learned, here is how it changed us. The narrative will include the medical anatomy and the emotional architecture; it will be as much about how we adapted as about what was removed. I want my children to know the truth when they are ready.

A Final Word to My Children

You deserve stories that fit your hands. You deserve to have your world named in ways that let you understand. When you ask, someday, for the full story, I will give you the scaffold of facts and the tenderness of the rest: the hospital room that smelled of antiseptic and lavender, the way your uncle stayed with Mama the whole time and was far more worried than he let on, the friend who brought him dinner because he forgot to eat, the quiet triumph of Mama lapping the hospital floor with the nurse that first night. I will tell you how asking for help kept us afloat, how small rituals became anchors, how love was rerouted but never diminished.

For now, I will keep the language simple. I will show you the small evidence of healing and let you mark time by the shrinking of the scar, by the way Mama’s laugh returns and I try—daily, imperfectly—to be more present with you. I will teach you that bodies are both fragile and repairable, that asking for help is an act of care, and that family is the place where we make promises to keep one another safe.

There is grief here, yes—but also enormous relief. There is loss, and there is the tender work of reclaiming ordinary days. Going back to work, going back to school, making new memories, reading books, making dinner. That is how we parent through serious illness—not with grand declarations, but with a thousand small acts that say, over and over, you are safe, you are held, you are loved.