The first photo I shared on social media after my 8-year-old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia was of her propped up in her hospital bed in periwinkle scrubs, a collection of plastic horses arranged on the rolling tray table. Her brown hair hung around her face and a plastic IV line trailed from her outstretched arm. She smiled as she reached for one of the horses, and as I took the photo I felt the enormity of what was ahead for us settle on me like wet cement.
Within minutes, my phone lit up with notifications. Messages of support poured in, and with them offers of help. People I hadn’t spoken to in years reached out asking if they could cook us a meal or deliver groceries or drop off toys and craft kits for my daughter. A group of local friends sent texts insisting they’d be the pillars I’d lean on through the years ahead. There were heart emojis, prayer hands and earnest promises that we wouldn’t have to go through it all alone.
For a time, those promises held. The first few months of our cancer years were a blur of gift baskets left on my doorstep and encouraging texts sent late into the night. I left a key box on my home’s door and gave the code to a few close friends, and I’d often get home after weeks-long hospital stays to find my dishes done, my laundry folded and a casserole slipped into my fridge with a note reminding me that the people in my life were determined to hold me together as I was beginning to fall apart.
Eight months into treatment, there was a shift. The group of local friends who had professed their unwavering support at the beginning of my daughter’s diagnosis were harder to reach. Responses to my texts slowed, then stopped. My calls went unanswered, and I watched as the people I’d considered closest to me quickly faded away. It took me months to understand that I was being ghosted in the middle of my daughter’s cancer treatment.
At first I struggled through denial. This just didn’t happen — none of the movies I’d watched about kids with cancer included anything about the mother’s friends suddenly disappearing. I began to rationalize it, telling myself they were busy, maybe they were sick, maybe they’d forgotten to pay their phone bill. I reached out repeatedly, not wanting to believe my friends would vanish during what felt like the worst time a family could possibly experience.
Occasionally I’d hear back, always a day or two later. The explanations varied. Sometimes they told me they were busy with work, other times they offered a vague “sorry we didn’t get back to you, we had plans.” As the silences stretched on, they became impossible to rationalize. These were the same people who had left fervent comments beneath that first photo of my daughter, who had sent texts swearing to come through with anything I needed. Now, in the thick of the most difficult time of my life, they were nowhere to be found.
Things came to a head one night as I was taking a walk downtown. It was a Saturday night, and I’d reached out asking if anyone wanted to get together in my yard for a socially-distanced chat. My daughter was home from the hospital but staying at my mother’s nearby, and I had a rare night to myself. More than anything, I hoped to see a friendly face and have some adult conversation.
After waiting hours with no response, I went for a walk around town and passed a local dive bar a block away from my house. I glanced in the window and recognized the group of people standing around one of the high-top tables. It was the friends I’d texted earlier asking to get together. I saw one of their mouths move, and the rest of the group burst out laughing at whatever was said. My stomach twisted into a knot, and hot tears flooded my eyes, blurring my vision.
“Hurt” isn’t a sufficient description for the sharp sting of realizing that people you trusted have quietly slipped away when you needed them most. But underneath my hurt was a deeper, more profound loneliness — the kind that settles in when you realize that your safety net is full of holes. I felt abandoned, and in that abandonment, I began to question everything I thought I knew around friendship.
There is a common narrative, especially among women, that our friendships are supposed to be our lifelines. We are taught that our closest friends will be the ones to show up for us in our darkest moments, and it is understood that we will be the ones to hold our friends’ hands through all of life’s storms. I was raised on this narrative, and so when I saw friends pulling away, I immediately thought that the problem was me. This crisis, my daughter’s cancer, had become too overwhelming for the people in my life to handle.
It was easy to reduce the friends who ghosted me to caricatures. For a long time I thought of them as cruel, unfeeling or selfish people. I blocked their numbers and refused to acknowledge them when I passed them on the street. I focused on the friends who did continue to show up, telling myself that those were the only people worth knowing.
Over time, I’ve realized the answers aren’t so simple. The friends who ghosted me weren’t heartless or unfeeling. They were humans struggling with their own human limitations. For some of them, the weight of my daughter’s illness was probably too much to bear. Cancer, I’ve learned, isn’t just hard on the people living through it; it’s hard on everyone around them, too. It’s a mirror that reflects back the fragility of life, and not everyone can face that reflection.
Cancer, I’ve learned, isn’t just hard on the people living through it; it’s hard on everyone around them, too. It’s a mirror that reflects back the fragility of life, and not everyone can face that reflection.
There’s a certain selfishness to trauma, an expectation that when your world falls apart, those around you will be able to absorb your pain. It’s assumed they will summon the strength to carry your burden as if it were their own. Some friends will, but the problem with crises, especially prolonged ones, is that there are no clear end points. They stretch on like marathons, and not everyone has the endurance to keep pace.
The quiet resentment I carried toward these people stayed with me despite so many others continuing to show up for us through the entirety of my daughter’s treatment. But as time passed, that anger softened, and I began to reevaluate what friendship meant to me and the expectations I had around it. I had spent so much of my life expecting that the people I loved would be there for me no matter what. Faced with the reality of their absence, my expectations shifted. I learned to see the people in my life for who they were, not who I wanted them to be.
Some friends were incredible in small ways — they sent funny memes when I needed a distraction from the hospital minutiae, or a string of heart emojis when they thought of me throughout the day. Other friends stepped in with practical help, bringing groceries over or offering to help with household chores. And the people closest to me, the friends who really stayed, were the ones who understood that the most important thing they could offer, beyond solutions, was their continued presence in my life.
I realized I didn’t need everyone to be everything to me, just like I couldn’t be everything to everyone I cared about. Expecting every friend to carry the full weight of my grief and fear left little room for them to show up in the ways they were able.
The idea that crises reveal true friends and that the people who stick by you in the worst moments are the only ones worth keeping are flawed understandings. I’ve come to understand that friendships, like all relationships, are fluid. People come and go, not due to lack of care, but because they’re living their own complex lives with their own challenges and limits.
My experience of being ghosted during my daughter’s cancer taught me about the fragility of friendship, but also its resilience. I learned that relationships can survive even when they falter, and that there is room for forgiveness and grace. I discovered that some friends may drift away, but others will surprise you with their quiet, steady presence. In the end, I gained a deeper understanding of what it means to be both a friend and a person in need, and I’ve learned to be grateful for every person who walks into my life — even the ghosts.
