Kindness is a quality of being warmhearted, considerate, humane, tender, and generous. Some people are kind to others and not to themselves, and vice versa.
Genuine kindness is a fundamental nature or quality and the essence of an individual. This level of kindness is internalized and extended to others.
Shared kindness is attentively focused and expansive with interest in the totality of another human being. Kindness contains unity and interconnectedness.
Cancer patients feel support for their health and healing through kindness. Those that have not personally dealt with cancer may not know what to do and how to be. Expressing and extending support may feel awkward in relationships when cancer raises fear of mortality. For everyone, dealing with cancer takes self-awareness, self-compassion, and courage.
Giving kindness to cancer patients is medicine. The experience of kindness for the giver and receiver can be restorative. Love is medicine. In severe vulnerability, people with cancer may especially need love from the community.
People with cancer can feel lonely through dissociation physically, mentally, and emotionally. The physical body housing cancer cells and any parts with discomfort can feel foreign and create a sense of alienation with self and those around them. The mind-body connection with unresolved, painful thoughts and feelings can cultivate disconnect internally and externally. Without the capacity to identify, stay with, move into, and express the mental and emotional reactions, people can reject themselves and others. Any suppressed, stuck emotions can become toxic to the physical body. To support people with cancer struggling with these reactions, in particular, kindness can aid in the process of self-integration. Also, for patients without a cancer-related disconnect, kindness supports their journey through cancer.
Cancer Caregivers need kindness. Often, the intensity and urgency of supporting a loved one with cancer take center stage. This is frequently a necessity, and a consequence may involve the caregiver neglecting themselves. Giving kindness to a caregiver is essential in creating a healing environment.
What are some forms of kindness? Giving kindness to oneself involves roles and levels of self-love, self-care, self-awareness, compassion, patience, play, joyfulness, tenderness, and other dynamics. Giving kindness to others involves attention through the expression of care. The specifics vary depending on what another person needs, as well as what the giver can provide. Family and friends can do things such as running errands, bring food, being a companion at appointments, offering invitations for fun activities, conducting research, being an advocate, and other types of support. They can also be with another person through listening, hand-holding, sharing a cup of tea, giving presence, engaging in silence and stillness, walking in nature without conversations, and offering heart-full care.
- How are you kind to yourself?
- How can you give more kindness within?
- Where does the motivation come from?
- Who in your life is kind to you?
- Who offers kindness to you through ups and downs?
- Who in your life exhibits true kindness to you?
- Do you graciously give to people and allow others to care for you? What does that look like? What does that mean?
Many ways are possible for kindness in a healing environment. Explore additional information about social support for cancer patients and cancer caregivers. Consider help from other sources and strategies, including with assistance from a cancer coach.
