This was my first Ukandu Family Camp.

For months, I had heard people talk about it with a kind of reverence that was difficult to explain. Families counted down the days until camp. Volunteers smiled when they spoke about it. Colleagues simply said, "You'll understand once you're there."

They were right.

There is something extraordinary about watching nearly 200 people gather because of something no one would ever choose. On paper, childhood cancer doesn't seem like something capable of creating community. It disrupts lives. It changes families forever. It introduces fear where innocence once lived.

And yet...

By the end of the week, I found myself asking a question that surfaced in several of our family groups.

How can we find a way to be grateful for cancer?

At first, it feels like the wrong question.

How could we ever be grateful for something that has taken so much?

The truth is, I don't believe we are called to be grateful for cancer.

I think we are invited to notice what cancer could never take away.

Throughout my career, people have asked me how I can find joy in work that is so often steeped in sadness. How I can continue showing up when the stories are heavy. How I keep believing in hope.

The answer has never been that the sadness disappears.

It doesn't.

But neither does the joy.

Both can exist at the same time.

This week reminded me of that over and over again.

Every morning, long before the day's activities were underway, families lined up for the Polar Plunge. Children. Parents. Siblings. Volunteers. There was laughter before anyone reached the water. There were shrieks the moment they jumped in. There were smiles that lingered long after towels were wrapped around shoulders.

It wasn't really about the cold water.

It was about choosing joy together.

Throughout the week, there were tears.

Tears of vulnerability.

Tears of understanding.

Tears of joy.

Tears of sorrow.

Tears of relief.

Tears of sadness.

Sometimes all within the very same conversation.

What struck me most wasn't that people cried.

It was that no one had to cry alone.

There was always someone sitting nearby.

Someone offering a hug.

Someone quietly nodding because they understood without needing an explanation.

I met families who admitted they almost didn't come. They weren't sure this was for them. They worried about opening old wounds. They wondered if being surrounded by cancer stories would somehow make everything harder.

Then, almost imperceptibly, something changed.

The unfamiliar became familiar.

Names became friends.

Conversations became connections.

The weight they had been carrying alone became something shared.

By the end of the week, I also met families who wished camp could last just a little longer.

What had once felt uncertain had become a place where they belonged.

That transformation is difficult to explain.

But you can feel it.

You can see it in children who find friends that don't ask awkward questions about scars or ports.

You can see it in siblings who realize they aren't the only ones whose lives have been shaped by cancer, too.

You can see it in parents whose shoulders seem just a little lighter because, for perhaps the first time in a long time, they don't have to explain themselves.

They are simply understood.

Cancer has an awful way of tearing things apart.

Bodies.

Families.

Dreams.

Plans.

The version of life people imagined.

But somehow, almost unbelievably, it can also bring people together.

It creates chosen families.

It deepens relationships.

It reminds us that strength is rarely something we discover by ourselves.

In our shared experiences—however different or similar they may be—we find moments of connection that can grow over time if we are willing to lean in, even when every instinct tells us to turn around.

Perhaps that is the miracle of Family Camp.

Not that it erases pain.

Not that it answers every question.

Many questions remain, and they always will.

But some questions become a little less lonely because we have people to ask them with.

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, "There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship."

Watching families exchange phone numbers, children hug goodbye with promises to reunite next summer, and parents linger in conversations because they weren't quite ready for the week to end, I couldn't help but think about those words.

These friendships are not accidental.

They are forged through courage.

Strengthened by vulnerability.

Held together by compassion.

Built one conversation, one campfire, one shared meal, one Polar Plunge, and one embrace at a time.

So perhaps the question isn't really, "How can we be grateful for cancer?"

Perhaps it is this:

Can we find gratitude for what love, hope, and connection become in cancer's wake?

Because while cancer may tear lives apart, it can never have the final word.

Again and again, I watched people choose one another.

I watched hope quietly replace isolation.

I watched strangers become friends and friends become family.

And I was reminded that from the darkest dark comes the brightest light.

Not because darkness is good.

But because when we choose to carry one another through it, we become the light someone else needed to find.