A Young Warrior You Should Know

Kairol Rosenthal is a quintessential warrior, fighting not only for her own life, but for all of us who’ve been kicked by cancer. She entered my life through a mutual acquaintance when I was writing Help Me Live…, and the then-29 year-old Kairol penned an incisive and beautifully written piece for my book about young adults and cancer. She recently birthed her own book, Everything Changes: The Insider’s Guide to Cancer in Your 20s and 30s, and although our approaches differ, similar crucial messages resonate throughout both.

Perhaps the most important: to simply listen.

That’s what I encourage you to do this Sunday, when Kairol appears as a special co-host on the Group Room Radio Show (click here to find a station or listen online) with Selma Shimmel, CEO and founder of Vital Options International, to launch Young Adult Cancer Awareness Week.

Listening is what Kairol, a choreographer, writer, and thyroid cancer survivor did when she crossed the country to interview 25 young adults with cancer. The result, Everything Changes, is an outstanding book of, as Planet Cancer describes, “gritty and ultra-confessional stories of fear, tenacity, jealousy, frustration, embarrassment, and hope. . .the unvarnished stories in Everything Changes reveal what most young survivors are thinking but few have the nerve to say.”

Like my book, which reveals what most survivors, young, old, and in between, are thinking but don’t have the nerve – or the heart – to share with others, Everything Changes, exists to open eyes and ears, help cancer patients and their friends and loved ones, spur action, affect change, and ultimately provide great hope. The stories, diverse as they are honest and revealing, will introduce you to young people who want and need and yearn for - well, you will see.

Listen to these people. I believe that when we listen, truly listen, without feeling compelled to jump in, answer, or respond immediately, we experience true compassion. In fact, it is only then that we can. And when we experience compassion -- feel empathy – put ourselves in another’s shoe’s -- we do the right thing. Even if we don’t say the “right thing” – and “It’s okay to say or do the ‘wrong thing’” is a key statement that people with cancer want others to know – we do right by simply focusing our attention on the other person, not ourselves.

It’s not just the people in Kairol’s book who bear listening to. It’s Kairol, too, who’s clever and funny as well as unabashedly honest and extremely knowledgeable, providing extensive tips and resources.

This young cancer warrior does not pull her punches, and in this book you will not hear not about being touched by cancer, but being punched by it. Cancer immutably changes the nearly 70,000 young adults it assaults each year. Reading these stories will change you, too, and hopefully inspire you to make changes.

I can’t wait to listen to the show this Sunday. Please let me know your impressions. I'll check back on Monday.

With gratitude, love, and always hope,
Lori
Author, Editor, Essayist
www.LoriHope.com

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This post originally appeared on Lori's CarePages blog, "what helps. what hurts. what heals."