By Ariel Bleicher, Illustration: Tim McDonagh, UCSF Magazine, Summer 2023
Lillian Carson was 11 when the fear struck. She had always been a sensitive child who tuned in to the feelings of animals and other people. But after her dad was diagnosed with cancer, she spiraled into worry and sleeplessness. “I would be up at night, huddled in the corner with my dog, and my sheets over my head, thinking someone was going to break through my window and get me,” she remembers.
Her parents took her to therapy, which eased her anxiety for a while. “It was still prevalent in my life, but it wasn’t something that stopped me from being a kid,” Lillian, now 16, says. “Then the pandemic came, and that all changed pretty rapidly.”
Lillian was about to graduate from middle school when the world went into lockdown. By then, her dad’s cancer was in remission. She was dancing hip-hop and going to plays and art museums with her family. She had just experienced “some bad friend-group stuff” and was looking forward to high school. “I thought it would be a fresh slate for me,” she says.
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