Gillian, Canada
Healing, to me, has never meant a single moment or a clear finish line.
It began with physical healing. I was diagnosed with melanoma in 2003, before I had even graduated high school. Surgery was my only intervention, followed by lifelong surveillance that continues to this day. Healing meant learning to live with uncertainty, understanding that surviving cancer does not mean leaving it behind, but learning how to live with ongoing follow-up and awareness.
Healing has also meant addressing the parts that were less visible. Some of the prognoses I was given were grim, and they shaped me in ways that extended far beyond the physical. The mental health challenges that followed, fear, anxiety, and a deep sense of vulnerability all have roots in that diagnosis. Working through them has not been linear, and it remains part of my healing today.
My understanding of healing deepened through my father’s cancer journey. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2009. After surgery, he was cancer-free for a year, but over time his PSA began to rise, signalling metastatic disease. He received every available treatment in our own province of Manitoba and did remarkably well. When we believed we were out of options, he participated in an experimental drug trial that gave us several more years of quality time together, years we did not expect and will always treasure.
Witnessing my father’s care showed me what healing can look like beyond the individual: expert clinicians, access to innovation, and research that translates into time—time to live, to connect, and to be present with the people you love. We were incredibly fortunate to experience this through CancerCare Manitoba.
Healing, for me, also means care and community. It means recognizing that no one heals alone. It is found in shared stories, advocacy, and the responsibility to contribute to progress so that others may benefit from the same opportunities we were given.
Continuing my father’s legacy, through spreading awareness, supporting research, and giving back, has become an essential part of my own healing. It is a way of carrying love forward.
Healing also means surviving long enough to grow into the life cancer once threatened to take away. It means becoming a nurse, informed by lived experience. It means becoming a wife and a mother. It means building a life rooted in service, compassion, and hope.
Healing is not just about life after cancer.
It is about how we live, who we become, and what we choose to give back.