Tara Geraghty is a celebrated speaker, entrepreneur, course creator and writer. Tara authored the book Making Cancer Fun: A Parent’s Guide based on her experience helping her daughter—and herself—through a cancer diagnosis. She also has a popular TEDx talk discussing how embracing fun can change the cancer experience for the betterment of all evolved.
1) In arguably one of the most stressful situations a parent can face, you took a novel approach to your daughter’s care. For those unfamiliar with your story, how did you change her cancer experience through the power of fun?
It’s such a great question because it makes it sound like it was a thought-out, deliberate response. When I think back, it really wasn’t. It was my response to having no control. I felt like my whole life was falling apart. I had already been coming out of a pretty horrible divorce where I felt like my life had been turned upside down. Now I get this cancer diagnosis in my 3-year-old. I think when we feel like we have no control over anything, we look for what we can control—because we cannot change what is happening. I couldn’t change whether she was going to respond to treatment; I couldn’t change whether she was going to live or not. What I could do was control the experience of our circumstances. If we’re going to have to face this and we’re going to go through this, I’m at least going to get to choose how we’re going to go through this.
Fun is an effective coping skill, and I didn’t really understand the benefits of fun or what it was doing to her body. I had none of that knowledge yet. I did have development training, through which I believe you can control how you respond to things, the benefits of a positive attitude and the benefit of facing things from a positive standpoint. I had a personal choice to make, I could sit and cry or choose an alternative.
I had a 3-year-old, and I needed her to have a will to fight. I think that hope is super powerful, and it’s what often drives us. If you have somebody who has no hope, you might as well give up, right? So fun is not going to cure her cancer, but boy, if she’s depressed and crying and doesn’t want to fight, then where do you go? So fun was a way to keep her motivated, keep me motivated, and to feel like I had some control. For example, I used fun to explain cancer to her in funny, kid-friendly ways.
For example, her lungs were collapsing, and they were suffocating her. When we saw the X-rays, her lungs were filled with white and having no medical background, the image didn’t mean anything to me. Yet, I had to explain to a child why they just cut her open in emergency surgery to get a chest tube in to save her life.
The problem was white liquid, so I coined it coconut juice. I said to my daughter, “Well, you have coconut juice in you,” which of course is not medically accurate at all, but it was silly. I said, “Well, they have to get the coconut juice out of you.” I remember one night her saying, “Hey mom, how did the coconut juice get in me? I don’t remember drinking coconut juice.” I said, “I’m not really sure,” and then we made up stories that monkeys lived on top of the hospital, and the coconut juice went to the monkeys. It was silly and it was fun. We would giggle about the monkeys. We didn’t escape the problem, but fun made it less scary than having to discuss your lungs are collapsing, fluid is coming out of you, and you can’t breathe. So, the idea that coconut juice is silly and fun, and isn’t scary.
I later learned science backs up this approach. When you give something scary an identity, you have better control over it. For instance, let’s say you have a phobia of a snake and you give the snake a name; for many, that snake is somehow is less scary. Your fear now has a personality you can play with. When we make things fun and less scary, we can cope with them better.
2) As someone who now advocates fun to others facing the same type of challenge, you indicated you now know that science backs up your approach. What are some examples of research that excite you in this area?
In preparing for my TEDx talk on our experience, I went into the U.S. Library of Medicine and just started to search for laughter and fun. There are over 2,200 studies. This comprehensive body of research was so reaffirming to me that this isn’t just something that sounds good, maybe feels good; there’s an immense amount of research that shows our health and our body benefit from fun.
One of my favorite studies is out of Wales. They studied people who had Botox and because they were physically unable to frown, they were less depressed. Just the physical act of smiling, even if it’s not a true smile, even if you’re kind of faking that smile, your body’s physiological response is still positive.
There are awesome studies coming out now about the benefits of laughter yoga. People who are going through cancer treatments are offered laughter yoga before radiation, and it appears this practice reduces the side effects of treatment. And this is not new science. If you go way back, there are studies from the 1300s where doctors used laughter to distract patients from pain. We know that laughter increases our pain tolerance.
If this is true, why isn’t there more comedy in hospitals and emergency rooms? In my experience, people are usually watching the news or shows that are depressing. If fun is as good as we know it to be, then we should be watching funny things, lighthearted things and releasing the stress in our bodies in these types of settings.
Laughter is primal and universal, as far as we know every culture has laughed throughout history. Even babies born without the ability to see or hear will still laugh. Laughter is the body’s natural way to release stress. Lastly, there is plenty of research that indicates people who have a good sense of humor have a higher life expectancy.
3) You’ve shared that sometimes, while advocating the concept of having fun in an environment like a cancer treatment center, your ideas are met with resistance. Through your experience working with others, where and when is fun the best medicine, and are there any non-obvious situations where you’ve determined it’s never appropriate to approach it with a fun attitude?
The ability to have fun is based on somebody’s personality, life experiences and points of view. I have had people feel uncomfortable when I combine the words fun and cancer. They will say, “How can you use fun and cancer in the same sentence?” One of those people was the head of the radiology department where my daughter was being treated. After getting to know us a little bit, he said, “I’ve never met anybody who makes cancer as much fun as you do.” That really stuck with me, what a great compliment. Before writing a book, I started a blog called Making Cancer Fun and Other Things that Offend People. Some of the rational of the title is the truth that some people are triggered by the idea that you can have something so horrific happen and make it fun.
I understand that the word cancer is dark. We hear it, and it triggers fear in us. Fortunately, kids don’t have that same response. They likely have never heard the word cancer yet, or they don’t really understand the word the way an adult does. Cancer to my 3-year-old was the same as if you had told her she had the flu or strep throat. It depends on the person, where they are in life at the time of trauma. These ideas are not as hard for those that believe they have agency over their attitude, their thoughts, and their emotions. Somebody who understands how the mind works, somebody who has had previous exposure to personal growth, previous exposure to developing positive coping skills in the face of difficult times is probably going to be more open to understanding that they have more control over their situation than they realize.
In contrast, someone who has gone through life with a victim mentality, who believes things are always happening to them, someone who believes they have no control over their destiny by any measure—this person is going to struggle. They’ve never taken back their power, right? A tactic I use to ease these types of people into the idea is instead of saying, “make cancer fun,” I say, “let’s help your child use fun as a coping tool.” Using this method, people are much softer to the idea, people are much more open to this idea even though it is the same thing. They acknowledge, “Oh, fun can be a coping tool.”
Sometimes, it’s simply the language that you use with somebody. I also think it’s educating people on why there’s value in fun as a coping tool. That there are psychological and physical benefits. Laughing balances out your nervous system, it increases the cells that fight infection in your body, so it boosts your immune system. It has an effect on your parasympathetic and your sympathetic systems, so if you can educate somebody and say that there are lots of strong health benefits to using fun, then like anything, when we’re educated on something, we’re more likely to embrace it.
Fun is not appropriate when somebody needs to process and grieve, and you just want to pacify them and say, “OK, well let’s just have fun.” When we go through a trauma or we go through something as devastating as a cancer diagnosis, there’s a roller coaster of emotions that people are going to feel, and it is inappropriate to get in the way of the process.
I’m never judgmental. There is no right or wrong here. This is what worked for me, laughing and fun worked for me. I know now science backs up the benefits of fun. If fun works for somebody else, if it resonates with them, then I also want them to have better tools to use it in the most effective way possible. If it is not for everyone, that’s OK. It’s finding what does work for you, what does resonate with you. We are entitled to experience life and the world through our own eyes. We need to honor our differences.
4) Knowing that you highly value the power of gratitude, how do you recommend people benefit from this practice? In your experience, are there any special considerations regarding gratitude when someone is facing a crisis?
When you have somebody who’s in a crisis or going through something like cancer, a week is such a long duration of time. You are taking things day by day. You have no idea what the next day will bring. Facing this type of challenge, finding ways to be grateful daily was extremely powerful for me.
Dealing with cancer, whether yourself or caring for a loved one, somebody is at a season in their life where they’re in a crisis, where every day is just feeling really, really hard—during that season, I believe a daily gratitude practice is helpful. That said, everybody has a different personality, right? So, if having to come up with something every single night is stressing you out, it’s probably not the best practice for you. I think of practicing gratitude like practicing yoga. You can’t regularly go to a yoga class and do the same three poses every single day and think you’re going to grow in your practice. Some days when you go to yoga your body is tight and it’s uncomfortable and some days your body flows. You’re always trying to master that next pose or get to that next level, and there is a certain progression of mastery regarding gratitude as well.
If you’re married and you have three kids, you could say, “I’m grateful for my wife and one, two and three and I’m alive. These are my five things that make me grateful. I’m done.” There is not a lot of growth in this approach. Ask yourself, “Where can I dig deeper? What are the things that I do not see during the day or that I’m taking for granted that I could be grateful for that I’m not even acknowledging?” That’s how gratitude has benefited me with increasing benefits. What are the small things I’m missing? For me, it was those small moments when my daughter laughed, or the person who came by and visited, or the person who sent a card. Putting my attention there was so powerful.
Gratitude helps with perspective. It’s not a quick fix, but with a bit of time gratitude is an effective way of getting into a different vibrational state, calming the body, and feeling more grounded. Gratitude is so incredibly powerful, and for me gratitude is a way to shift my focus and control my perspective.
5) As someone who has developed an intimate relationship with fun, how do you use fun as a betterment tool (outside of your professional practice) for yourself and those around you?
That is a tough question for me to answer. I’m very cautious about what I take in. This is not addressing your question directly but I’m deliberate about limiting negative things in my life, e.g., news, negative television shows, negative people, negative social media. In its place, I’m instead constantly looking for things to laugh about. My daughter and I are very silly together, and I’m always looking for what can we laugh about, what we can be silly about. She has a really good sense of humor, so I think that helps since it’s just the two of us. We are naturally very goofy together. She’s got a very, very quick wit, which makes me laugh.
I do try to be aware of how much during my day am I laughing. I am lucky to have my daughter around because I never was one of those people who would laugh out loud watching a movie or a show. I thought doing this was very strange, but my daughter will watch something and laugh out loud. Her behavior opened the space for me to be able to do that. It’s interesting.
The truth is while I’ve grown at being less judgmental with everybody else, I am still very judgmental with myself. It’s an area I am working on. I’m striving to have more lightness and more fun in my day-to-day. It’s a process, a fun one.
