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When my wife Stephanie was first diagnosed with breast cancer, our twin daughters, Sasha and Alexandria ("Allie"),
were entering their senior year of high school. Stephanie and I had been married twenty years. Facing breast cancer, the
strength of our marriage and our family was put to the test. We learned the hard way that breast cancer is an experience for
the whole family. We were lucky that we lived in a tight-knit rural area; the teachers, school counselor, and even the administrators
at our daughters' high school looked after them when I was preoccupied, taking care of my wife.
I felt like a person groping alone in the dark, trying to make sense of this strange and unwanted journey. Christopher
Vogler's The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (Second Edition) helped shed light on our shared experience.
I realized that there was a recognizable structure to our adventure, the Hero's Journey, whose cognizance would benefit other
men struggling to support their loved ones through breast cancer or other serious illness.
I wrote Be a Hero To the Woman You Love, When She Gets Sick to help men lower the psychological barriers that prevent
them from giving effective care to their loved ones during times of serious illness.
In addition to Be a Hero... I have written speculative fiction, including a novel and two screenplays, and a children's
book about developing resiliency in the face of physical and emotional abuse. All of these projects are in search of a home!
On the personal side, I enjoy hiking, skiing (alpine and cross country), kayaking, and doing 'read-a-longs' with my wife,
as well as writing songs on my guitar. My daughters, Sasha and Allie are completing their second year of college.
| Dr. Luftig |
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| Photo by Scott Lustig |
As the husband of a breast cancer survivor and a clinical psychologist I am in a unique position to articulate the lessons
a man must learn over the course of this journey in order to effectively support his loved one when she becomes sick.
Excerpt from:
Be a Hero to the Woman You Love,
When She Gets Sick
Introduction
When the woman you love gets sick, your world is upended. You've built a life together and now the universe threatens
to shatter the happiness that you've created. Illness touches everyone in the family, altering the trajectory of your children's
lives.
As your journey progresses, you may experience a range of emotions. You may feel:
- Terrified
- Worried
- Concerned
- Fearful
- Angry
- Helpless
- Hopeless
- Confused
- Apprehensive
- Desperate
- Nervous
Those were my feelings when Stephanie, my wife of twenty-years, was diagnosed with breast cancer.
When I could not protect my wife from harm by slaying the beast of breast cancer that threatened my family, when I could
not solve the riddle of this devastating illness, I felt that I had failed the fundamental test of manhood.
Everything I thought I knew about being a hero for my wife and children was put to the lie.
The temptation, when confronted with my own ineptitude, was to wallow in self-pity, consumed with my own drama, rather
than face my terror that I would lose my life companion.
This situation required a different notion of how to be a hero for my wife, otherwise I was in danger of undermining Stephanie
just as she tried to summon the strength and courage she needed to complete her journey.
But I was entering unfamiliar territory. How could I successfully navigate the hidden perils ahead, and in the process
develop a new heroic notion of myself?
As Stephanie and I trudged further into the bleak land of breast cancer, I began to wonder whether our journey possessed
a recognizable structure. If it did, I could use this structure to orient myself, as one uses map coordinates to negotiate
his way from one place to another. Knowing more about this forbidding terrain would diminish my apprehension of what lay ahead
so that I could turn my attention to my wife.
Through my association in a writer's group I discovered Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for
Writers. Drawing heavily on Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces and the work of C.G. Jung, Vogler fleshed out the
underlying mythic structure of the Hero's Journey. He concluded that:
I came looking for the design principles of storytelling, but on the road I found something more; a set of principles
for living. I came to believe that the Hero's Journey is nothing less than a handbook for life, a complete instruction manual
in the art of being human.
The mythic structure of the Hero's Journey appeared to be the organizing principle I had been seeking: An instruction
manual that would remind me in the depths of my despair that our arduous journey would ultimately lead to a deeper expression
of what it meant to be human.
But I was not cut from the same swath as the heroes of old such as Odysseus. I was an ordinary man cast more in the mold
of a Hobbit who would choose to remain safely in the Shire, enjoying his food and drink rather than strike out on an adventure
fraught with danger. Like the majority of Hobbits, I did not possess an excess of courage.
Nevertheless, Stephanie was now negotiating the treacherous path of breast cancer. I would need to become steadfast as
Samwise, who helped Frodo navigate the perils of Mordor to destroy the One Ring in the Cracks of Mt. Doom, if I were to see
her safely to the end of her journey.
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