Meet Stephen, Our Featured Community Member of the Week!

Meet Stephen.

Home: Yorba Linda, CA

Horoscope: Aquarius

Favorite book: Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad

Hero: Bruce Springsteen

Superpower: Empathy

Hardest challenge: Handling post-treatment survivorship and anxiety

Guilty pleasure: Gummi Sharks (most candy, really)

Favorite Lacuna Loft Program: Unspoken Ink

Proudest moment: Getting onstage after treatment and playing a song about it and getting hugs and high fives from friends after.

The best piece of advice I’ve received: “Everyone moves at their own speed.”

How I stay mentally healthy: Staying connected with friends, writing, therapy

Personal Mantra: “It’s chaos. Be kind.” Michelle McNamara

My favorite part of being part of Lacuna Loft: The community of amazing people who are encouraging and rooting for each other.

GABFEST IS NEXT WEEK

Did you know…that GABFEST IS NEXT WEEK!  We’ve teamed up with Elephants and Tea, taken the greatest pieces of an in-person survivorship conference, brought it online, and spread it out over the next week.

Throughout the week of December 7th, we invite you to share, explore, and learn as we interact together.  You are the expert in your own care, so along with experts in the fields, Gabfest will combine and elevate the individual voices of the young adult cancer community.

We have a great agenda lined up, fabulous opportunities for learning and connecting, a raffle each night (more on that at our opening welcome), and more!

Learn more and sign up here!

Write Now with Jean Rowe: Generosity

Lacuna Loft is proud to present our newest blog initiative: Write Now with Jean Rowe! Each month, come on over to Young Adult Voices and read everything Jean Rowe, Certified Journal Therapist, has to say! Love what you’re reading? Check out the many programs Jean is facilitating (including 30 Minute Tune-UpLost and FoundLacuna Loft’s Weekly Journal Prompt, and It’s a Wonderful Life) and sign up to join one today!

Generosity

We are fully entering the holiday season in an entirely new way. Many of us will not gather with those we love as we normally do. The reframe is this: how can we gather with those we love under the circumstances? Who can we call to our virtual or heart-centered table? How can we invite the energy of those who matter to us into our hearts even if we’re not going to be with them? How can we send this expansive-like spirit into the world so that others can benefit from this generous thinking?

I’m not suggesting that this will make everything okay. Of course, it won’t. It’s a weird time, and, while the holidays bring up all manner of feelings, this year is an extra helping of managing our own.

I recently listened to a journal workshop participant share about how she and friends all cooked the same meal (on their own) and then gathered virtually to dine together and talk about how it went, what they enjoyed, the process. This is a supper club with a twist, and it accomplished a variety of things: creativity, flexibility, finding a new way to be with one another, and a delicious meal.

What comes up for you in thinking about choosing differently to be with the holidays this year? Write about that for 5-7 minutes and see what surfaces. Let me know how it goes! I’d love to hear from you.

“For it is in giving that we receive.”
― St. Francis of Assisi

Stupid Cancer’s Pushing Past Cancer: Stronger Together

Interested in a one-day survivorship conference, offered online and *this* weekend?  Stupid Cancer, UC Davis Health, and UCLA Health have you covered!  They’ve partnered on a free, one-day virtual event for the AYA cancer community.  Join in on Saturday, December 5, 2020 for important information and plenty of opportunities to chat and connect with your peers.

After a long and difficult year, it’s more important than ever to gather our adolescent and young adult cancer community together.

Learn more and register here!