Cancer taught mom to say no
Ignoring her own care put Windsor mother close to death.
Heather Chauvin almost missed her chance to live for herself.
The mom from the Windsor, Ont., area first noticed a lump in her abdomen around a year after giving birth to the youngest of her three sons.
Figuring it was probably a lingering symptom of pregnancy recovery, Chauvin let it be. But a couple of months later, her belly had swollen to latepregnancy size, while every other part of her was getting smaller.
When she eventually got help at an emergency ward, she was given a series of tests and, shortly after, a pretty grim diagnosis. At 27, Chauvin had Stage 4 Burkitt’s lymphoma, a kind of rapidlygrowing cancer that starts in the immune cells.
This news came in December, which meant waiting until after the holidays to meet with an oncologist. At home, feeling guilty about missing her son’s laser tag birthday party on a Saturday in early January, Chauvin was burning up as if it was the hottest day of the year. Still, she assumed it was fine to wait for her Tuesday appointment with the cancer doctor. Her mother-in-law, an oncology nurse, told her “You don’t have until Tuesday.” She was right. At Emergency once more, Chauvin was sent directly to oncology where lifesaving chemo was administered that night.
A former social worker who now works as a leadership coach for overwhelmed women, Chauvin shares her story in a new self-published book “Dying to Be a Good Mother: How I dropped the guilt and took control of my parenting and my life.”
Prior to cancer, Chauvin said she’d ignore an inner voice when it told her she wasn’t living authentically, and instead had spent her entire adult life striving to be a good mom.
“The second I put on this mom hat, I felt like I needed to become somebody that I wasn’t,” said Chauvin, in an interview. “I was literally doing everything to make sure that my children were successful. And it wasn’t until I got sick that I realized you can’t just live for other people.”
She started making shifts that would allow her to take care of both her children and herself. “I first started doing that because … my goal was to stay alive. I didn’t understand that it was a cultural revolution to actually feel good as a woman, and to consider my needs and to put myself on the calendar.”
That doesn’t mean simply shoehorning a yoga class or paint night into an overly packed schedule, she said.
It means being willing to go against the current if it’s sweeping you toward jam-packed extra-curricular schedules, thankless extra hours on the job or volunteer work that doesn’t light you up.
It can help to take a moment to ask yourself why you’re in a pattern of saying yes, said Chauvin, who is also host of the Mom Is In Control podcast.
“And a lot of times we’re saying yes from a wounded place,” she said, either because we’re trying to overcompensate for things that happened in our own childhood, or we’re people-pleasers, or feel like we’re not enough.
Chauvin also suggests examining whether being on that committee or having a kid on the travel team makes you feel good, or if it’s causing burn out.
The problem is we pick up on a lot of messages that motherhood is measured in self-sacrifice.
“From an early age, we’re taught that nourishing ourselves — not just with food, but with self-love, self-actualization, creativity, attention, self-compassion — is taking away from others,” Chauvin writes in the book. “In obvious as well as more subtle ways, we internalize the idea that self-sacrificing makes us more worthy … that caring for our children first and foremost is what will make each of us a ‘good’ mother.”
Another problem, she explains, is that self-care is marketed to women as something that feels not only selfish, but expensive.
“It feels like it’s pedicures and manicures … but to me, self care is really respecting myself on a deep level. And that can be from holding a boundary to creating space for myself.”
When Chauvin started making changes after completing cancer treatment seven years ago, not only did she and everyone in her family benefit, her business — once a not-so-profitable side hustle — took off, bringing an end to financial struggles they had endured for years.
Yes, people have bills to pay and may not be able to walk away from work that makes them miserable, said Chauvin.
“But what if you stop working during your lunch? What if you go home when you’re supposed to go home? What if you just stop replying to those text messages and answering emails after working hours? What if you go on a walk without a phone and you’re just with your family?”
Today Chauvin’s own self-care encompasses how she eats, sleeps and exercises, how often she checks her texts and how the family spends its weekends. It also has created a culture where there’s dialogue about how she, her husband and their children can all get their needs met over the course of the day.
Chauvin said she hopes moms who read her book will come away with a sense that change is possible.
“I just hope they gain some insights and I plant some seeds of possibility that there is another way to mother and there is another way to live.”