The hardest part of this journey – telling our girls – we finally faced today.
As a parent, the last thing we ever want to do is see our children hurt. We’ve raised our girls with so much love and protection in the hopes that they would always feel safe with us. As a family, we’ve been through a lot the past 23 months and we’ve tried to be as honest as we could with the girls, letting them know along the way how much we love them and that everything would always be “okay”.
Today we had to do the hardest thing ever… today we told the girls that the chemo isn’t working and the tumors are still growing. And even though daddy was going to continue on chemo the next 6 months, ultimately it’s just to get more time together as a family and after that, there isn’t much left and the tumors are going to keep growing and daddy unfortunately, isn’t going to be able to fight it anymore.
It was so hard. But we knew in our hearts it was time to tell them so that they can prepare and we can love on them as much as we can.
They cried, of course. We cried, of course. But it felt so good for Steve and I to get it out in the “open” and to begin to make even more (and better) memories with them, and to let them to begin to cherish those memories as they are being made.
It was sort of “freeing” if that even makes any sense.
They handled it much better than we expected. And we know they are going to have waves of emotions at different times. But the strength that they’ve displayed today, amazes me.
It’ll probably hit them more in the next few days, weeks or months. But we reassured them everything will be okay and it will continue to be okay, even at the hard times.
I also reminded them how much love they have around them not just from us, but from our friends and our family. And that they can talk to anyone at anytime, when they need to. Even their own friends. Because their closest friends’ parents, are also preparing them, so they can help Allison and Holly through this. (How lucky are we to have such great friends like that!!!)
Please keep us in your prayers for them to have strength when needed, a shoulder to cry on when needed, and love in their hearts from this day on and moving forward. Thank you!!!!