Coping Together, Side by Side: Enriching Mother-Daughter Communication Across the Breast Cancer Journey

Using a life-span, developmental theoretical lens to guide her mixed-method interdisciplinary research, Fisher offers the first research-based portrayal of breast cancer as a mother-daughter experience, weaving a tapestry of narratives to tell their story, bringing the mother-daughter voice to the forefront of breast cancer. Using authentic lived accounts captured through a mix of survey, interview, and diary methods, she illustrates healthy and unhealthy mother-daughter communication across the disease course to help ease their navigation of cancer. She takes into account important factors such as openness and emotional support, human development, intergenerational dynamics, and stressors. Fisher’s research advances health behaviour theory and research by drawing connections between family communication and health outcomes, and, at the same time, offers insight on the mother-daughter connection, the intersection of family interaction and health, the psychosocial side of oncology, mixed-method research, and how research can be translated to interventions and resources to enhance care. Written to appeal to a wide audience of clinicians, researchers, students, and families, Fisher’s research may serve to humanise breast cancer as a family-centred experience, provide insight on theoretically grounded and translational mixed-method research, and offer women vivid stories of mother-daughter communication that they can utilize to enrich their own shred breast cancer journey.