Starting Over Talk - Peer Coaching Support Site

Tara wrote:

QUOTE:
I can see where people think her smile is "fake". She smiles but her eyes look so sad.

Tara, I agree 100%. I hope the life coaches shake her up a little,so she can go full speed ahead to healing.

I believe Allision's reason for smiling is the same as most positive people with cancer is the simple fact, if you don't smile, you'll end up crying all the time, and what good does that do anybody? Unless you have had cancer yourself, or been really close to someone who has, this is hard to understand. Cancer is not necessarly a death sentence anymore, but it sure as hell ain't no picnic!! If she has the courage to smile, and to try to go on with her life helping others through this crisis, I think you are all knit-picking. Give the lady a break, she would you! Pray for her to find her way, she is lost without many friends and not very much family support. She is real and she is a reminder that this could very well be any of us in her shoes. I applaud her smile, fake or not, it is a smile, not a frown!

I think the issue that some people have with her smile is the same one the coaches have with her not showing her emotion. I am by no means putting her down for smiling but if her smile is infact just a mask for her true feeling she is hiding than smiling is by no mean an act of courage.

I don't think a person has to have Cancer to be able to relate to masking their negative emotions and not dealing with them. We all have our own issues that are painful physically or emotionally.

I think she smiles because she thinks she should smile. She wants to make everybody inclusing herself think the is ok. If she was ok emotionally she would not be back on SO trying to "learn how to live after cancer".

I don't know why you assume that because we find an issues with her smile that we do not support her. Nobody is saying the is a bad person or that she is worthless because they question her smile.

Maybe those of us who have an issue with her smile can relate to it ourselves or because we have somebody close to us who has been a similar situation.

Maybe Allison has had to grow up with the old "fake it till you make it" face. I think that is what the Coaches are trying to have her let go of. That she has not completed the "grieving" process for her cancer and the loss of being able to have kids. That is all a grieving process. And the way I see it is at the SO house, what better place to be made to feel the process of grieving. Like ANGER or showing how you truly feel. There is no better feeling than when something horrendous happens to you to be able to stand up and say "AHHHhhhhhhHHHH" I am really P'd OFF! Allison deserves to do that and I believe that is what everyone wants for her. I think it strikes a chord with me because I have a tendancy to do just that. Yes... sometimes smiling is better than crying but you have to get down and dirty to get past it. JMO.

One more thing... I remember the posture analyst saying to Allison that her smile was there but right behind that she saw sadness in her eyes. Just like Tara had said. We all can see it. I think trauma is trauma. Mine may not be the same as the next but I never say that someone can not relate to me because they have not gone through what I have. I do hope that Allison is able to show the emotions that she needs to and get past being the sick one in her mind. I think she is really sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Just because we have not seen Allison breakdown over having cancer does not mean she hasn't done and doesn't do all her crying in private. Who wouldn't? The crying she does do on camera is tied to the cancer. Pain is not compartmentalised, it spills into every area of one's life. So, when we see Allison cry she is not only crying about the topic being discussed at that moment. Naturally.