Why Anna Crollman’s Breast Cancer PR Plan Centered Moms

Anna Crollman was doing everything right to take care of her body. After going off of birth control to start a family, Crollman, then 27, went on a vegan, non-dairy, no-sugar diet. She was drinking tons of water and making juices. “I was the healthiest I had ever been in my whole life,” Crollman tells She Media CEO Samantha Skey on the Finding Flow podcast.

Then, while showering one night, she felt a lump in her breast. Crollman was diagnosed with breast cancer and, to deal with the stress, began blogging and sharing her experience online. “I turned to that right after the surgery as a way to process what I was going through,” she recalled. It was also a way to connect with — and help — others in the same position, and create a community they could all share. “I thought, if I’m looking for these stories of hope and what it’s like to go through cancer as a young adult, then there’s got to be other people out there.”

Crollman was also intentional about the way she and her husband communicated her journey with the people close to her. “We decided from the very beginning, who are our point people gonna be in each family?” Crollman says. “We chose the moms. It was like, okay, each mom, you’re in charge. We are no longer communicating with anyone else in the family.”

The reasoning? Crollman wanted to funnel communication through one family point person in order to take some of that responsibility off of herself and her husband. “When you’re going through something really difficult, it can be so hard to field the questions,” she explains. “And everyone means well … but when you check in and you’re asking a question and you’ve repeated the same answer 25 times, you’re about to pull your hair out.”

Instead, in Crollman’s Cancer PR Plan, she and her husband would send out “briefs” of what they were comfortable sharing, along with ways people could help. For Crollman, that meant asking loved ones to send handwritten cards because, she says, “I love snail mail.” She also welcomed funny memes and sincere, “I’m thinking about you” texts.

“People were really, really kind and supportive and helpful,” Crollman remembers now. And relying on her network of moms to disseminate information was key. It’s a form of kinkeeping — maintaining family closeness — that we know moms are especially adept at, so it’s no wonder they were at the heart of Crollman’s Cancer PR strategy. “It took the weight off my chest,” she recalls, “to feel like I [didn’t have] to be the one communicating.”

For more on Crollman’s breast cancer treatment and recovery journey, watch or listen to the full Finding Flow episode.

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