Here at Live Better With we’ve been working on a big project.
When you’re living with cancer or caring for a loved one who is, it can be hard to find someone who truly understands. While friends and family may sympathise and offer words of advice and support, the only people who really ‘get it’ are those who, like you, are on this journey. That’s why we’ve created the Live Better With Community.
Set up by Live Better With, who offer advice and practical products to help make everyday living a little bit better for those living with cancer, the Community is a safe space where you can share experiences, ask questions, vent your emotions, swap ideas and give and receive support – all with others who understand.
We know that your journey is unique, so our new community forum has been created with you in mind. We’ve made it easy for you start a new discussion, join existing threads and even start polls to help you make decisions. We’ll also be sharing our own topics of discussion for you to join in on, as well as introducing you to industry and community experts bringing everyone together in one safe space.
The Live Better With Community is a place for anyone going through cancer, or anyone helping someone else with cancer, to be informed, to be listened to, and most importantly to belong.
How is this cancer community different?
For nearly a year, our growing Facebook group has provided a source of daily support and tips for people going through cancer, as well as its treatment and side effects. But the larger the group grew, the more our members needed different things from it.
We wanted to make sure we were helping everybody get the information and support they need, so we decided to build a forum especially for people going through cancer – with a few custom features that make it especially helpful for people trying to manage their symptoms and side effects.
Our Facebook group has grown so big that the conversations move pretty fast – one day you might see a useful tip on coping with itchy radiotherapy burns, but the next day it could have disappeared, buried under lots of new exciting discussions. We wanted to make it easier to find the advice you need, so our new forum has a handy search feature – you could just type in ‘itchy’, and find all the discussions that have ever happened on the forum about itchy skin. Simple!
Over the past 3 years of working to help people live better with cancer, we’ve got to know so many people who are doing the same – health experts, lifestyle experts, and people who’ve been through cancer themselves and have some seriously helpful life lessons to share. We wanted you to meet all of them, so we decided to create a separate category on the forum where you can ask them anything that’s on your mind. Simply post your question and they'll get back to you with a personalised response.
One of the main points of feedback we heard from our Facebook group was a worry about their privacy – having their Facebook profile connected to the group worried some people, who wanted to make sure their friends and family couldn’t see some of the sensitive topics they were discussing.
We wanted to make things easier for these people, so we made it an option to have a username that isn’t your real name on our forum. You can still use your real name if you like – but if you’d rather be FluffyBunny101 and keep it so that friends or family wouldn’t identify you, that’s fine too. The forum is also moderated by a group of dedicated individuals from the community itself to ensure there is no trolling or spam.
Unlike other forums where threads can be lost in a sea of other chats and junk messages, our discussions are organised into simple categories such as 'Working with Cancer' or 'Helping a Loved One Through Cancer', so you can easily find the help you need.