"Talk to a stranger. Join a support group. Reach out even if you're not the sort of person who does that. Even if it's not your style.
"When you share something, the act of sharing changes you. I remember calling friends of friends, people who were complete strangers to me, just to hear the story of their survivorship. In each case these women talked to me for hours. Though we had never met, they gave me their wisdom and shared their experiences. They had already been through the war and could report back as survivors who knew the score.
"During my treatment for breast cancer I joined a support group. I am shy and usually unable to have a decent conversation with someone new, which means anyone I have known for less than twenty years. All the same, I found myself telling women who were complete strangers the most personal details of my life. We discussed night sweats and nightmares. Love, betrayal, fears, all of it, as if we had known one another not for twenty years, but a hundred and twenty.
"If you join a support group, call one of these strangers in the middle of the night and cry. Go ahead; she won't be annoyed even if it's two in the morning. Unlike everyone else you know, she won't tell you everything is fine. She'll listen to you and she'll understand. Then she'll tell you you had better plan to survive."
