I thought my experience was rare. During my first cancer, my parents ensured I received the medical care, the pills, and the nutrition I needed to stay alive. Physical, but not emotional, survival. But decades later, I see that repression to the point of cruelty is common. During my second cancer, I watch as healthcare providers act like decapitated beings, robots with salaries who still eat and drink. But I am neither meat nor machine. Cancer survival: We are more than bodie

Winter might be the time for holiday caroling, but quite different sounds emerge from my body at this time of year. As the ice and snow bombard western Canada, an ordinary car ride with my spouse becomes an exercise in terror. The moment I find myself freezing in the passenger seat any unprocessed or semi-processed trauma comes zooming out of my nervous system like an army of flying monkeys. While I cannot purge trauma from my life experience, I can name it, recognize it, ove

Small slights have big consequences for us traumatized folk. Years of abuse sensitizes us to harshness and cruelty of all sorts. I was thinking about this today as a doctor’s office asked me to fill out forms using their new online system. Did I ever have cancer? Did I ever suffer from depression and anxiety? Standard stuff, but I could feel my pulse quickening, physically and emotionally. Facing an empty patient portal, I am reminded that trauma does not evaporate into thin

Grappling with PTSD from emotional and medical trauma, I search for support groups in my community but find none. Instead I bond with characters from outer space. I have followed the character of La’an Noonien Singh on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds with interest, respect, and recognition. And La’an is not alone in being a survivor of trauma on the Enterprise. If only respect and understanding for trauma survivors arrived on Planet Earth, now, and not in a fantasy future.

There are many ways to kill people without physical violence. All it takes is obedience. A willingness not to think or care. A vulnerable person might cringe as the faces harden, and the backs turn into impenetrable walls. The sanctuary turns into a collapsing house of cards, where someone is always going to end up crushed at the bottom. I offer this writing as an incendiary and hope that the flames give warmth and light to those looking for relief from the cold and the dark

Rule #1 and #1000: Never try to cheer up a cancer patient. Is it really so hard? Letting others be themselves?

A survivor of cancer and childhood abuse learns she is not entirely free of her troubled past

A Canadian cancer patient shares observations from the front lines of an overtaxed and underfunded system

Quoted from “The Gaslighting Recovery Workbook: Healing from Emotional Abuse” by Amy Marlow-MaCoy, LPC, Rockridge Press, 2020 Adapted...

If my parents had left bruises, I would, even as a 10-year-old, have found my way to the Auburn Police Station and testified against...

Source: Canadian Women’s Foundation https://canadianwomen.org/blog/signs-of-emotional-abuse/ According to the Canadian Department of...

I went to college unsure of myself. I had been driven underground by my own family, told again and again I was wrong, ugly, and stupid,...