About
Our mission
Pickles Group’s mission is to provide free peer-to-peer support and resources for kids and teens impacted by their parent or guardian’s cancer.
Having a parent with cancer can be a lonely, isolating experience. Pickles Group creates thriving communities of kids supporting kids whose parents have cancer. Pickles kids strengthen resilience, have fun with friends who get them, and heal along the way.
One in twenty kids will experience a parent’s cancer diagnosis before they graduate high school. With more than 3 million children and teens in the U.S. who are affected, there is an overwhelming and unmet need for the support we provide.
How It Started
The idea for Pickles Group started with the kids in 2019.
While connecting over their own cancer diagnoses, Pickles Group’s founding parents realized that their children shared a common sense of isolation. Their kids felt alone among their peers who didn’t understand their new world.
One of the kids said, “I wish we could get to know other kids who understand what this is like.” Within a month, Pickles Group held its first youth meeting.
As their kids continued to meet together, the change the founding families saw was unmistakable—together they experienced laughter, community, and a sense of relief that they hadn’t felt in a long time.
Why Pickles?
When the Pickles founding kids were first getting to know each other, they played a game to find out what they had in common. One of the first things these new friends realized they shared was a love of pickles— or so they thought! It turned out they had one defector, but the name stuck. It evolved to include a silly theme song that caused them to erupt in laughter every time they were together. From that point on the founding kids referred to themselves as “The Pickles”. The founding families then set out to understand what the name Pickles might stand for as their kids continued to meet and create a peer community where they could thrive:
(P)ersevere (I)lluminate (C)onnect (K)indle (L)earn (E)mpower (S)upport.
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