Hazel decides to attend Support Group

Hazel Grace Lancaster decides to attend the Support Group at the Literal Heart of Jesus church, a decision that leads to her meeting Augustus Waters and sets the entire plot of the novel in motion. This choice, made reluctantly to please her mother, marks a pivotal turn in her life, transforming her from a reclusive, dying teenager into a young woman who experiences love, adventure, and a profound confrontation with her own mortality.

Background and Motivation

Late in the winter of her seventeenth year, Hazel's mother decided she was depressed, presumably because she rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of her abundant free time to thinking about death. Her mother believed she required treatment, so she took her to see her Regular Doctor Jim, who agreed that she was veritably swimming in a paralyzing and totally clinical depression, and that therefore her meds should be adjusted and also she should attend a weekly Support Group. Hazel went to Support Group for the same reason that she'd once allowed nurses with a mere eighteen months of graduate education to poison her with exotically named chemicals: she wanted to make her parents happy. There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you're sixteen, and that's having a kid who bites it from cancer.

The Decision and Its Immediate Context

On the Wednesday she made the acquaintance of Augustus Waters, Hazel tried her level best to get out of Support Group while sitting on the couch with her mom in the third leg of a twelve-hour marathon of the previous season's America's Next Top Model. She refused to attend, but her mother insisted, saying, "Hazel, you deserve a life." That shut her up, although she failed to see how attendance at Support Group met the definition of life. Still, she agreed to go—after negotiating the right to record the 1.5 episodes of ANTM she'd be missing. Her mother pulled into the circular driveway behind the church at 4:56. Hazel pretended to fiddle with her oxygen tank for a second just to kill time. She didn't want to take the elevator because taking the elevator is a Last Days kind of activity at Support Group, so she took the stairs. She grabbed a cookie and poured some lemonade into a Dixie cup and then turned around. A boy was staring at her. That boy was Augustus Waters.

Consequences and Significance

This single decision to attend Support Group, born from a desire to minimize the casualties of her own impending death, directly leads to the central relationship of the novel. It is the catalyst for her journey to Amsterdam, her confrontation with the author Peter Van Houten, her sexual awakening, and her experience of profound love and loss. The decision also forces her to confront her own identity as a "grenade"—someone who will inevitably hurt those she loves. Her choice to attend, against her own wishes, ultimately gives her a "forever within the numbered days" and a story that, while ending in tragedy, is filled with meaning and connection. The decision is a foundational act of love for her parents that paradoxically opens the door to a love of her own.