My career was going nowhere. I had moved to Florida with the idea that I would get a job at Disney, move up the ranks, and eventually find my place in a creative role. But that is not what was happening. Instead, I was sick of being screamed at by guests about how their vacation “wasn’t magical enough,” simply because they couldn’t get a dining reservation at their chosen restaurant or because THE attraction their four-year-old just had to ride was shut down for the day. I needed out. I needed a job that made me feel like I was contributing. I needed a career with meaning.

A good friend was taking a job leading a brand-new nonprofit, and knowing I had a little experience in that field before Disney, she offered me a position. The organization was funding immune-based research for children’s brain cancer, specifically medulloblastoma, by a woman whose son had recently died at 8. When my mom was 10, her sister died of brain cancer – her 8 year old sister. I knew this was where I needed to be, this opportunity had meaning.

I threw myself into the work, learning all I could about cancer in general, pediatric cancer, brain cancer, the history of cancer research, how research is funded and classified, and how exactly this immune-based research was to work at chipping away cancer cells. I did Google searches, I read “The Emperor of All Maladies” by Siddartha Mukherjee, I read the classic “Death be Not Proud,” a 1949 memoir by a father who had lost his son to brain cancer. I was finding meaning in every word I read. Later, though, I learned that for me, meaning had a price.

Several months into my new job, I went to a funeral – as part of my job. Which is to say, in a professional capacity, I went to a funeral for a young child. The church was filled with family, of course, but also the boy’s schoolmates – this was my first punch to the gut. His parents were at the front, they spoke about their beautiful boy, their much-loved son who would have no more baseball games, no more days of school, no more birthdays. Punch number two. At the end of the service, everyone filed toward the altar to greet the boy’s parents and offer their sympathies. At my turn, I held my hand out to the father to introduce myself. He gently smiled and said, “Oh, I don’t shake hands, I’m a hugger.” But I did not want to hug him. I did not want to embrace this man whose life had been on one track, but was now finding his way down a path he never wanted. I knew that a hug would make me cry, and I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to make my emotions his problem. But I had to hug him, he was hurting and this was what he wanted. I did my best to hold it together, then move on. The knock-out punch.

The same thing that drove me to work in a field that serves others, empathy, had become a liability. I don’t simply empathize with others, I experience and internalize their pain – I have hyper empathy, which, according to the website UK Therapy Guide, “occurs when you are too in tune with other people’s emotions and mirror them to the same intensity. In other words, you care too much. People with hyper-empathy may find it hard to regulate their emotions and may have a tendency to pick up on negative feelings.”

Meaning for me did, indeed, carry a steep price.

But I went on. I attended a weekend event each September for the next few years called CureFest, where organizations funding research and care for pediatric cancer would gather in Washington, DC, to meet, discuss common issues, and set up tents on the National Mall to inform passersby about our work, hoping it would inspire awareness and donations. It was also well-attended by families affected by pediatric cancer. I met children who were now cancer-free, but still carrying signs of their treatment – still bald and likely would be for the rest of their lives; kids with enormous scars from surgical procedures; children who survived bone cancer because they had a limb amputated; a 15-year-old I had mistaken for a child of about 8, because his growth was forever stunted by the radiation and chemotherapy that bombarded his brain to kill the invading cells; parents who had lost their children; children who had lost their siblings. 

I was learning that meaning had a price I could not afford.

Though each time I went home from DC spurred on to further promote the research we were funding, I would also be exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally. These effects were tolls I paid to travel the road toward professional development. But the price was too high. The tolls nearly emptied my emotional wallet. Whenever I saw my own children, I was grateful that they were healthy, but the fear and knowledge that cancer could be hiding and growing in their bodies was always in the back of my mind. It was eating at me every day.

My family bore the brunt of my emotional fallout. I angered easily, I would sometimes lose focus on their needs, my language became more and more inundated with foul words. Then I was riddled with guilt for not being the present, joyful wife and parent they deserved. But I couldn’t move on, at least not yet. There were Facebook posts to write, there were runners to encourage in peer to peer fundraising, There were so many children still dying from cancer.

Did you know that every day in the US, an entire movie theater full of kids dies from cancer? Or that kids diagnosed with brain cancer before the age of five and make it to the other side may never learn to tie their shoes? Did you know that treatments for cancer can also cause cancer? The American Cancer Society underfunds childhood cancer. So does our federal government. So do pharmaceutical companies. They justify this because the number of children who get cancer is relatively small compared to adults. So it is left to devastated parents to take up the mantle and fight like Hell to get the disease some attention. But often, donors find the cause “too depressing.” They would rather fund vacations for dying kids than help those same kids live another day, another month, another several years. They would rather the kids get five days of Disney than a lifetime of memories of proms, graduations, college, and their own families. Charities that provide those brief respites from disease are worthwhile, indeed. But a cure should be held above all else. 

After about four years, I couldn’t take it anymore. My boss moved on to another organization, and I followed her. It was to an organization that focused on reproductive rights, so of course, I was angry all the time rather than sad, but at least I didn’t have to reckon with grief-stricken parents any more. However, I still harbor feelings of anger at the lack of support for these kids; I still feel incredibly sad when I think of the parents whose tables will forever have an empty seat; still wondering when the time will come for a cure. 

Recently I made a shift to working for a breast cancer organization. When I took the job, I internally reconciled the decision by acknowledging that while there is definite sadness in this field, as well, it couldn’t be as heartbreaking as meeting all of those parents whose children were gone forever. If I thought that the price of meaning was too high for me, then it was certainly too high for those parents.

Most of the time, my hunch was correct. But then . . .

I was at a gala a few weeks ago for work and seated at a table of donors. I introduced myself to my table-mates. The guest to my left, a well-dressed woman in her sixties, thanked me for what I do, which, when you work in nonprofit, is a pretty common occurrence. I thought that maybe she was a survivor. Then she told me about her daughter, Trish, who was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer at the age of 32. Trish died not long after, regardless of the fact that she was an employee at a world-class medical center and had the best oncology team possibly in the world. To remember and honor her daughter, the woman at my table carried Trish’s purse. Her beautiful pink purse. Here I was, in my “less sad” job, sitting next to a mother, ANOTHER parent, who had lost her child to cancer. Again, I was faced with the problem of wanting, needing, to cry, but having to hold it together so as not to infringe on that parent’s pain. 

Working toward solutions to the world’s biggest problems can be humbling, sad, sometimes joyful, even. It is not only meaningful to the employees, but also to those we serve. But then . . .

I don’t know how much longer I can do this. It’s just too much.