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

I keep living into the same answer. It is the same answer because it is the same question. I give people millions of chances. I don’t start from cynicism. I make allowances for mistakes, fatigue, and frailty. And still I am disappointed. I am hurt, ignored, mistreated, or misunderstood. Time after time, I reach the same conclusion of midnight desperation: No More.

Having long been gaslighted by authority figures, I tend to gaslight myself, but I am done. Believing myself is healing, is health.

A survivor of multiple cancers reflects on her relationship with panic, how PTSD has shaped her life and her character.

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

Having recently cut all ties with my family of origin, I have moved from anger, shock, and loss to feelings of freedom, joy, and release....

My parents’ training of me started early and was original in its cruelty. Christmas day, 1975, when I was five years old, I cried because...

Unlike the character played by Ingrid Bergman in the 1944 film, Gaslight, I had nothing valuable to motivate my father to undermine me:...

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...