How do you make sense of life after cancer? What are you even supposed to do with yourself after all of this? And how do you go on living and living well knowing that death is real? This is Joe Bakhmoutski and welcome back to the Simplify Cancer Podcast! I have a fascinating conversation for you today with the one and only, the incredible Dr. William Breitbart, the founding father of psycho-oncology. Here is what we cover in our discussion today:

How self-love is crucial to human experienceDealing with existential guiltMeaning centered psychotherapy for cancer patientsWhy nobody loves perfect peopleOn living a meaningful lifeBeing connected through loveAnd much, much more!

LinksThe Redeemer of Grand Street by William Breitbart, M.D.

And check out my brand new book on thriving in times of uncertainty:

Full transcript:

William:                    Off the bat, I had thyroid cancer when I was 28 or maybe 29. I don’t remember how old I was. Yes, 28. In the middle of my medicine training. It was a rather quick experience. Surgery, boom, bang, out. That’s not what brought me into the field of psychiatric oncology. That’s not what brought me to Sloan Kettering. Believe it or not. It had more to do with my parents’ experience of being holocaust survivors as very young teenagers hiding in the forest and things like that and my experience growing up in that home with them.

The story of all of that. What my parents needed me to be in the world, so that it would justify the fact that they survived. That’s a lot of what drove me. If you Google search me and you look for something. I edit a journal, and international journey called: Palliative and Supportive Care. If you Google search my name and the title of an essay called the redeemer of grand street. You’ll hear my life story. You’ll hear that story. You’ll read that story. With all the typos I put in.

Joe:                             I will absolutely do that. That’s so fascinating, Bill. I totally get that what you’re talking about with what you wanted to be in the world from your parents. I have a similar sense of growing up with my grandparents who were also holocaust survivors. Both of them were medical specialists who completely went into this world of basically saving people. Just wanting to be that change. Yes, I think I totally understand that what you felt you had to be something in the world that made a difference in some way.

William:                    To make a very specific difference, yes. There were a whole group of I would say about 30 families on the lower east side of Manhattan who were survivors from the same general area of Poland, which is now Ukraine, whatever. From towns like Lvov, Bialystok, Turka. Places like that. They all organized together into what they called a Turka young men’s benevolent society. The main function of that society was to make sure everyone had a cemetery plot. We have a big section of Jewish cemetery out in Queens. Everybody from the lower east side that I grew up with, nobody had relatives, so we were all each other’s relatives.

My Bar Mitzvah, these were the people who came. The same thing with that. The main practical purpose was having cemetery plots. Obviously, it was a network to be able to stay connected. My mother in particular, my father was always working very hard. My mother in particular was a very philosophical person and a very emotionally expressive, thoughtful person. I think if she had the ability to have had her education not interrupted so seriously at a young age, she probably would have gone into something like medicine or something like that. She felt so guilty about surviving and everyone else dying. Everyone of her family died, that she would come up to me. Giving me and my younger brother breakfast every morning, she’d ask, why am I here? The more complete question was, why am I here and everyone else is dead?