Friend #37 - Allie
The California girl
Allie is refreshing. The two of us met through a tech program earlier this year—maybe it was late last year. I can’t remember.
She lives in California and I’m nestled outside of Toronto so we’ve never met in person but her friendship has touched my heart. Allie was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma when she was 18 years old. It was the summer before starting college and all of her friends were leaving California to study in places across the country.
“I’ve always defined myself as studious,” says Allie. “But being diagnosed with cancer so young was a big pause. I was fearful as to how it would affect my identity.”
Allie explains that going through illness showed her who her true friends were. Sharing that there were people she didn’t know well who really stepped up for her during that time.
“My friends that were local made an effort to come to see me in person,” she says.
She decided to attend university in California and now as a career woman has worked for health care companies centered around cancer.
“People often say ‘You’re better, you’re fine,’ but it’s something that affects you for life,” Allie says and uses the term scanxiety. The concept of being scared of new scan results.
Growing up, Allie was always close with her father and describes herself as a daddy’s girl. “We’re very similar and think the same way,” she says.
Her mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's years prior and hasn’t been able to address Allie by name since 2017. Interrupting their time together, her mother currently lives in a memory care facility.
“Do you ever feel like you have to explain something because it is a part of your identity but struggle with it coming across as oversharing versus vulnerable?” I ask.
“It’s like you’ve read my mind,” says Allie. “I find that especially in dating. I’m not sure if I should share that I’ve had cancer beforehand but I hope that they won’t narrow in on it.”
We discuss fertility. A topic that has been given more attention and even startup funding in the past decade. Allie didn’t have enough time to freeze her eggs before beginning treatment and her male oncologist didn’t recommend waiting the extra two weeks she would have needed.
“Women’s health is taboo and conversations have increased but there is a long way to go,” says Allie who emphasizes the importance of a supportive doctor.
Women in general can often be overlooked and when it comes to loneliness in particular can be taken advantage of because of their gifts of empathy. Particularly among men.
To steal an expert from Vivek H. Murthy’s Together, “...psychologists Drs. Carol Gilligan and Annie G. Rogers teamed up with communications professional Normi Noel in describing “the more puzzling aspects of women’s psychology: the tendency for women to become selfless or voiceless in relationships, to care for others by diminishing themselves, to use their gifts for empathy and relationship to cover over their own feelings and thoughts, and to begin not to know what they want and know.’”
“If a woman has a doctor’s appointment that she’s had scheduled for months, she’s willing to change it for the good of the group,” says Allie. “A man would simply say that he can’t make it.”
From personal experience, I can relate. Women are willing to do a lot to seem unproblematic or unbothered but that can lead to discontent. I’m beginning to learn how to advocate for myself because frankly if we don’t think about ourselves, no one will.
"Don't think about making women fit the world — think about making the world fit women.”
―Gloria Steinem
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