Feeling Guilty

When my daughter Betsie was diagnosed with leukaemia, the world didn’t just stop — it tilted. The ground felt uneven, like I was walking on a floor that could give way at any moment. And somewhere in the middle of hospital corridors, medical jargon, and the constant beeping of machines, I found myself crying not just because she was sick… but because it felt so unbearably unfair.

And then came the guilt.

The guilt for thinking why her?

The guilt for thinking why us?

The guilt for feeling sorry for myself when she was the one going through chemotherapy.

The guilt for the moments I thought, I can’t do this.

There’s a particular shame that creeps in when you’re the parent of a sick child. You tell yourself that your only job is to be strong. To be the steady one. To absorb the fear and keep going. So when you break down — when you cry in the shower or in the car or in the quiet hospital bathroom — it can feel selfish.

How dare I cry when Betsie is the one with leukaemia?

But here’s what I’m slowly learning: grief and fear don’t cancel each other out based on who “has it worse.” Loving a child who is seriously ill is traumatic. It just is. The diagnosis doesn’t only happen to them; it happens to the whole family. It moves into your home, into your body, into your sleep.

When I cry about how unfair it is, I’m not saying Betsie shouldn’t fight. I’m not saying other children don’t suffer. I’m not saying I don’t love her fiercely and believe in her strength.

I’m saying I’m her mum.

And being her mum means I would take this from her in a heartbeat if I could. Being her mum means watching her endure things no child should have to endure. Being her mum means living in constant vigilance — reading blood counts, watching for fevers, holding my breath at every test result.

Sometimes the tears are about her pain.

Sometimes they’re about my helplessness.

Sometimes they’re about the life she should have right now — school runs, birthday parties, scraped knees instead of IV lines.

And sometimes, if I’m honest, they’re about how hard this is on me too.

That doesn’t make me selfish. It makes me human.

We don’t talk enough about the emotional load parents carry during childhood illness. We praise resilience and strength, but strength often looks like falling apart privately and getting up again five minutes later. It looks like crying in the dark and still showing up the next morning with a soft voice and steady hands.

The truth is, suppressing the “this isn’t fair” feeling doesn’t make you a better parent. It just makes you lonelier. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging the injustice of childhood cancer. It is unfair. It’s unfair to Betsie. It’s unfair to every child in treatment. It’s unfair to families who have to learn words like “remission” and “relapse” before they’re ready.

You can hold two truths at once:

You can be endlessly grateful for doctors, nurses, treatment plans, and hopeful statistics —

and still rage at the universe when the house is quiet.

You can be strong for your child —

and still crumble sometimes.

You can love them more than your own life —

and still mourn the life you thought you’d have.

If you’re a parent walking this road, and you’ve cried because it’s unfair, because you’re exhausted, because you’re scared, because you miss who you were before the diagnosis — please hear this:

Your tears are not selfish.

They are evidence of love.

They are the overflow of a heart that cannot fix what it desperately wants to fix.

Betsie’s leukaemia is not a test of how strong I can be. It’s a reality we are surviving together. And part of surviving is telling the truth about how much it hurts.

So I’m trying to let myself cry without adding shame on top of it.

Because if I would never call my daughter weak for crying, maybe I can stop calling myself selfish for doing the same.