College students typically do not return to school telling stories of summer camp. Tales which are gleaming with joy and overflowing with emotion. However, this summer I was given the privilege to volunteer as a counsellor for Camp Kesem at the University of Georgia and found myself returning from the sole week I spent as a counsellor as a changed individual.

As cliché as it sounds, my life has been changed for the better by knowing children half my height and age for merely a week of time. Camp Kesem came into my life years before coming to study in Athens, Georgia. Kesem services children affected by a parent’s cancer and it just so happens that my mother battled breast cancer when I was just entering high school. At the time, I learned to cope with the repercussions the disease had on my home life by taking on heavier roles than expected of an early teen such as accompanying my parents on trips to the oncologist or helping to tutor my younger sister, Olivia. My sister struggled to cope with the emotional weight of my mother’s cancer even after she had completed treatment and entered remission. Camp Kesem was suggested to my family from a friend attending UGA at the time as a means to assist Olivia in her own emotional recovery, but as she ventured off for the week I remained home fearing I was too old to benefit from the camp. However, when picking her up on her final day at the campsite I was able to see the change I her personality immediately. I feared that the camp would dwell on subjects of fear and uncertainty which had brought the campers together and was wrong in the fact that while these circumstances united them on a surface level it was a shared love that created a bond between them.

While I never held the ability to experience this connection as a camper, I vowed to become involved with the organization as a student. As a counsellor, I was able to not only allow for the campers to bond with each other and find a change in heart I also found closure to my own worries and fears in the shadow of my mother’s cancer, which is now long gone. In working with campers, I tapped into a childlike sense of wonder and joy and can confidently say I returned from camp with a brighter sense of life.