Just Attitude: A kind of guidebook for the journey through breast cancer and beyond

I Am Not My Breast Cancer gathers the warm, loving, frank, and informed voices of more than eight hundred women—from every state in the nation and from continents as far away as Australia and Africa—who reveal their fears, trade advice, share experiences, and express their deepest, most intimate concerns. Essential reading for any woman with this diagnosis, it offers the companionship of other women dealing with this disease. Taking the reader chronologically through the stages of diagnosis, treatment, recovery, and self-discovery, I Am Not My Breast Cancer offers women a deeper understanding of themselves and living with cancer.

Laughing through the Tears of Breast Cancer is a source of inspiration for women who have recently been diagnosed with breast cancer, and for their caregivers. The easy-to-read style of writing takes you through a year-long journey of dealing with the emotional experiences of the breast cancer diagnosis and the physical treatments that lead to eventual healing.

Although it is a personal journey, this story offers enough similarities that help those who are part of the breast cancer "sisterhood" recognize that, even as they are experiencing their own pain related to this diagnosis, many blessings will result.

By sharing her story through journal writings, emails and inspirational messages, Carla creates enjoyable reading, in a girl-talk format, with an abundant amount of practical information about breast cancer. You will laugh while the tears flow from your eyes as you read her story and share her experiences.

Amy’s story is a most inspiring one to read for anyone going through life’s struggles - one that will give encouragement whatever one may be dealing with. First and foremost, this is an account of a “cancer journey;” a journal revealing an absolute faith that God is willing to walk the journey alongside of you, all the way! If you are reading this and you are someone setting out on, or already in the middle of, a similar journey, this is an important read for you! Amy’s story will certainly not hide any of the rough times; but it will tell you about many positive aspects as well, and how faith is the only way to make the trip. This book is not just for cancer sufferers, but also for anyone experiencing life’s many trials, whatever they may be.

Amy’s raw and emotive style tells it just like it is. You will feel the emotion; shed some tears and certainly draw many smiles. There is little more powerful than hearing this story told literally, while experiencing each and every aspect of the journey along with her. The power is in hearing God’s story, as told through Amy, and that’s just what this is.

You will be encouraged that it’s okay to have roller coaster emotions, to feel anger, to experience joy, to feel spiritually low and equally high; that it’s okay to ask “why me?” Amy is one amazing lady who turned what could have been a very negative experience - focusing on feeling sorry for herself - to one that focuses on making an impact on others. For example - Amy refused to wear a wig once she lost her hair so she would not miss opportunities to testify to others who would otherwise not have approached her.

Perhaps most compelling is how many people have told Amy that while they should have been supporting her in keeping a positive attitude, she was in fact being the inspiration for them. I know! I was one of those people! I pray for them every day and I know that they do the same for me. It is this, together with God, that will keep us all positive and moving forward, whatever the challenges of life that are thrown our way.

This three-part story illuminates an introspective process in coming to terms first with breast cancer and mastectomy and then gradually with the long-term subjective components underlying the disease.

Part I documents my first attempt to make sense of breast cancer. I show how I dealt with the diagnosis and treatments, payng particular attention to the nature of my thoughts, feelings, dreams, and fantasies. I show how, amid the terror, anger and sadness, my creative self-expression in journalling, active imagination, poetry, ceramics and colored drawings made a positive difference.

Part II asks the questions, What was going on in my life in the months prior to the diagnosis that would predispose me to breast cancer? How was I living my life? Were there warning signs? Drawing from minutely recorded details in my journals, I explore my breast cancer experience in a larger context. I show that, in ways fairly typical of our society, I inadvertently participated in the disease process by way of compulsive attention to others and inadequate consideration of myself. My journal exposes a sordid picture of alarming dreams, warped inter-personal patterns, distorted self-evaluations and chronic psychological and somatic disturbancesin my life, all signaling danger for this late 20th century woman. What better metaphor than breast cancer to represent habitual self-defeating patterns of mothering, running madly out of control.

What does it take to fully come to terms with breast cancer? What does it take to illuminate the disease of the soul? In a final attempt to make sense of breast cancer, I follow the metaphor to its source-to the nature of mothering and being mothered. Does the compulsion to "mother" the world and neglect oneself arise from excess or deficiency? What are the implications of selfessness? How does it arise? Part III reconstructs my childhood steeped in my parents' Jungian milieu. It offers a rare and intimate look into the influences of intellectual and psychological immersion on early childhood development. It exposes the precariousness of generations of women in my family who have been, in one way or another, motherless. It remembers my relationship with my overpowering but vulnerable mother who was too much with me-yet still missing. It recognizes the life urge to differentiate from the biological mother and connect with the great, life-affirming Mother spirit. This candid story of consciousness building and psychological reconstruction will appeal to adult readers who are searching for meaning in illness and adversity.

Breast cancer survivors Kelley Tuthill and Elisha Daniels are redefining what it means to be a cancer patient. More than 200,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer each year, but that diagnosis does not mean sitting on the sidelines while life passes you by. Both Tuthill and Daniels worked throughout their extensive cancer treatments and continued to enjoy their family, friends, and high-profile careers while fighting the fight of their lives. You Can Do This! shares with you the strategies that worked, what didn't, and what they wish they'd have known at the time of diagnosis, namely to:

* Send a message to the world that you are healing, not dying.

* Surround yourself with people who know how to make you feel better.

* Try to stick to your routine when possible. Go to work. Take the kids to school.

* Have a plan for what you will do at 2:00 a.m. if you cannot sleep.

* Keep wearing makeup and high heels. You dont have to look and feel like a patient all the time.

* Believe that you can beat this!

Benefiting from the expertise of Dr. Ann Partridge, an oncologist at the renowned Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston who helped both of the authors through their own cancer journeys, this triumvirate answers questions like: Can you keep working? How do you pick out a wig or pencil in an eyebrow? What role might reconstruction surgery and prosthetics play in your recovery? What steps can you take to retain a professional, healthy image despite the effects of chemotherapy? How do you broach the subject of cancer with small children? Is it possible to lose your hair and not your sense of humor or libido?

Inside You Can Do This!, Tuthill and Daniels help the newly diagnosed patient work through the initial shock of diagnosis and move forward to face the coming challenges with courage, strength, grace, makeup, and high heels. By offering advice on looking your best, even when you no longer look or feel like yourself, Tuthill and Daniels emphasize that you can continue to lead an active life and that it's perfectly acceptable to research chemotherapy alongside the latest offerings from Chanel.