Spirituality and experience of being a member of a family with heredity breast and ovarian cancer

Most families with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC) have a history of multiple cancer occurrences and possible deaths during the young middle adult years. There is a constant threat of that history being repeated in other family members. Despite the threats and occurrences of cancer, the women in these families often display remarkable resiliency, mutual support and family cohesiveness. Many attribute their strength and ability to cope with adversity to their spiritual beliefs. The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between spirituality and the experiences of being part of a family with HBOC among BRCA1/2 mutation carriers. An examination of three philosophical approaches to the study of spirituality reveled interpretivism as the most appropriate paradigm in which to situate this study. Hermeneutic phenomenology provided the methodology an 16 women who are carriers of BRCA1/2 mutations were interviewed about their experiences and how they related to their spirituality. The narratives from these women have presented, in the words of one participant, "a mixed bag of experiences." It was a mixed bag in the sense that their experiences were often unpredictable and beyond their control with contrasts of positives and negatives. The contrasting experiences included: family history as a welcome warning as opposed to a source of worries; models of strength versus the anguish of losses; a legacy of cancer forever lurking but life goes on; and mutual support versus isolation. The majority of the women identified a Christian perspective to their spirituality, but three did not identify any religious affiliation and two of the latter were uncertain about their belief in God. Yet there was a common theme in the reciprocal relationship between their experiences as members of families with HBOC and their spirituality, their experiences influenced their spirituality and alternatively their spirituality influenced their interpretation of the experiences. Their experiences influenced their spirituality by: intensifying spiritual struggles; strengthening their spirituality, and providing models of spiritually. Their spirituality influenced their interpretation of their experiences by providing: sources of support; and aid to decision-making, and gifts and gratitude