Skip to content

Whisper Words

Very recently I discovered that, to many people, cancer is one of life’s whisper words.

I was telling a friend about how the Working Women’s Expo went a while ago, and was mentioning how people reacted when I said the word cancer.  People were physically shaken after I said the word.  She said that it reminded her of St. Elmo’s Fire when words were whispered at the dinner table if they were “too horrible to utter.”  It was as if cancer was one of these whisper words.

Well I wrote a piece about just this that was published on I Had Cancer’s blog a few months ago.  You can find the whole post here.

Here is the teaser for the post:

Sometimes those around us avoid talking about the more difficult subjects in life. How can we help those dealing with cancer though, if we’re not allowed to talk about it? How can we learn to go from being fighters to survivors if the word cancer seems too taboo to some? 

What do you think?  Have you experienced cancer as one of the whisper words?