Sharing our stories shows great kindness

[July 17, 2020: Grand Forks Herald]

Have you ever been encouraged by someone else’s story? I bet you have. It’s a special brand of kindness to share our vulnerabilities because it reminds others in their scariest moments that we’re not alone.

Fargo resident Pat Pobst recalls a time many years ago that she needed to draw on another family’s story.

“Back in the late 1980s, The Forum ran a series of stories in the newspaper. Cathy Mauk (now McMullen) and her photographer followed a patient named Paul as he went through treatments for a rare type of cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma.

"No one knew what Paul’s outcome would be, but each Sunday we got to cheer him on through Cathy’s reports. In one of the columns, Cathy wrote that the doctors had found something suspicious on the scan. The next Sunday I learned that when they opened him up, they discovered scar tissue and no cancer. Paul was cured!

"I remember thinking I could never go through what his parents did during Paul’s illness. Little did I know we would soon be living that story with the same type of cancer... MORE