Cancer And Blogging: Why I Keep Writing Part 2

It seems having cancer puts you at higher risk for blogging, breast cancer even higher. Or perhaps with a cancer diagnosis emerges a need to talk or find an audience, a team or group to listen. The need to be heard is a pretty basic psychological need, unmet in many cases but I guess having cancer gives you some authenticity about knowing life and its ups and downs, so people will listen.

I listen, listen a lot, it’s part of my job and has now become second nature, I hear about very personal things, intimate thoughts, even thoughts that people are unwilling to admit as their own.

What makes it useful is the feeling of being heard. That someone out there understands what you are going through.

[Commentary by Dheeraj Raina: This is a previously unpublished post of Uzma’s. To read my approach to her unpublished work, read this. Uzma had left the draft of this post untitled. I see it as a complementary to another previously unpublished post Why I Keep Writing. That’s why I chose this title. Besides that my contributions to this post include fixing punctuation and making paragraphs for comfortable reading.]