The Writing Circle
You survived.
Now write your way home.
An intimate 8-week micro-memoir experience for breast cancer survivors who are ready to meet who they've become — and put her into words.
No writing experience required. Just your story.
From the authors of
Cancer, the Gift:
A Breast Cancer Survivor's Companion
to Defiant Joy and Grace
Eight women's micro-memoirs anchor Part II of the book. This program gives the next circle of women the same experience — guided by Kate and Mia, who have been through it themselves.
This is for you
She knows treatment is over.
She's still figuring out what's next.
You've been through something that changed you at the cellular level. Not metaphorically — literally. Treatment ended. Everyone around you exhaled. And you're standing at the edge of your "after," wondering why it doesn't feel the way you thought it would.
You believe there's hope. Love. Life. After. You've felt it in flashes, in quiet moments, in the way ordinary Tuesday mornings look different now. You just haven't found the words for what happened to you. For who you are on the other side of it.
This program is for that woman.
About the process
This is not journaling.
This is not therapy.
This is art.
A micro-memoir is a short, precisely crafted piece of literary writing — your story, told with intention, scene, and voice. Think: a thousand words that hold the full weight of something true.
Over eight intimate weeks, guided by two women who have been through breast cancer themselves, you will write your own micro-memoir. Not a timeline of events. Not a list of lessons learned. A living piece of writing that captures who you were, what cracked open, and who you have become.
"Empowering and soul nourishing — cathartic but gentle and nurturing — allowing me the space to feel safe, held, and confident to write something deeply entrenched in my life that I wasn't able to share with the world. But now I am so ready."
You will receive personal editorial feedback. You will be guided through the craft: how to find the scene that holds your truth, how to write from inside the body, how to let the reader live your experience beside you. You will finish with something complete and polished.
Up to twelve women per cohort. Ten stories already exist inside Cancer, the Gift. The next one is yours.
What women walk away with
Not what you expected.
More than you imagined.
Here is what the women who have already done this tell us they gained — in their own words, distilled into four truths.
Your narrative, reclaimed
You stop being "a breast cancer patient" and start being yourself — the full, complicated, becoming human being who went through it. Your story, told in your voice, on your terms.
Healing you didn't know you needed
The writing goes places talk therapy doesn't always reach. Into the body. Into the tissue. Into what has been held quietly for years — or only weeks. Women discover layers of healing they didn't know were waiting.
Something finished, and yours
You leave with a complete, polished micro-memoir. A shareable story asset. Something to keep in a drawer or carry into the world. You will have written something you are genuinely proud of.
Permission to be in process
No forced redemption arc. No bypassing the hard parts. This process holds the grief and the gold at the same time — and helps you trust that both belong in your story.
From the women who've done it
Eight women wrote their stories.
Here is what happened.
These are the words of the contributors to Cancer, the Gift — the first cohort — sharing what the writing process gave them.
"I thought I had gotten to a place in year four of my healing where I had 'healed' and moved past it all. However, I realized that telling my story, going back into that place of trauma, and giving it a voice helped me heal parts that were still stuffed deep inside my tissues, holding on. After I had submitted my final draft, some emotions were suddenly released — and I just let the tears flow. It was absolutely beautiful. It was as if the writing truly helped bring me to that place."
"Writing this micro-memoir changed my relationship with my cancer story in a powerful way: it helped me stop carrying it only as something I survived and start holding it as something I've integrated. My cancer story doesn't define me, but it does deepen me. Now I can honor it, own it, and choose how I share it — on my terms, with purpose."
"It softened my relationship with my cancer story. Instead of something I was trying to figure out or fix, it became something I could meet with more honesty and compassion. Writing it helped me make peace with what happened and showed me a level of inner strength I hadn't fully seen while I was in it."
"This experience — though short — is incredibly empowering and soul nourishing. Cathartic but gentle and nurturing, allowing me the space to feel safe, held, and confident to write something deeply entrenched in my life that I wasn't able to share with the world. But now I am so ready — because my experience matters to someone else who hasn't found her voice yet."
"I felt that my story actually mattered — even though it was 22 years ago. I felt seen and heard. I will never forget this experience."
Why Kate & Mia
Precision and presence.
The two things your story needs.
Being a breast cancer survivor gives them the credibility to hold this space. But it is who they each are — and how they work together — that makes this process unlike anything else available to you.
Kate spent more than two decades as a credentialed librarian — a Library Journal Mover and Shaker, past member of the Newbery Award Committee, and past Chair of the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award Committee, which selects the most outstanding nonfiction and memoir writing for young readers. She knows, at a cellular level, what makes nonfiction sing. What makes a reader stay. What separates a story that is merely told from one that is lived in.
For the past eight years she has worked as an Empowerment and Relationship Coach for women 40+, bringing that same analytical precision to the interior lives of real women navigating real transformation. She will see exactly what your story is reaching for — and hold you to it.
Mia is the founder of Saenz Literary Press and longtime publisher of the Love Revolution book series — a body of work rooted in self-love, transformation, and the radical act of telling the truth about your own life. She is a Spiritual Psychology Coach and Love Teacher whose personal breast cancer journey, including recurrence, is the origin point of Cancer, the Gift itself.
Mia does not rush you toward a takeaway. She does not ask you to package your emotions into something presentable. She creates the space where the messy, tender, unresolved parts of your story are not just permitted — they are welcomed as the most important material on the page.
Between them, Kate and Mia have supported hundreds of women through transformation — and they built the editorial process behind this program from the ground up, specifically for breast cancer survivors. It is proprietary, it is precise, and it works for women at any stage of writing experience. What it demands is not skill. It demands willingness.
The result is a container that is simultaneously rigorous and tender. Kate holds the craft standard. Mia holds the emotional truth. Neither lets the other collapse — and neither lets you stay on the surface of your own story.
Cancer, the Gift
per Writing Circle cohort
through transformation
The structure
Eight weeks. Twelve women maximum.
One story — yours.
The program is intimate by design. Small enough that your voice is known. Long enough to do the work. Short enough to actually finish.
Finding your story
Together we discover the specific moment at the heart of your experience — the scene that holds everything. You learn the craft of micro-memoir: premise, scene, and voice.
First draft
You write. You get it on the page. No perfectionism permitted. This is the raw, true draft that tells us what you actually need to say.
Editorial feedback
You receive personalized editorial guidance from Kate and Mia — specific, craft-based, and deeply attentive to your voice. You go deeper. The piece comes alive.
Final draft and completion
You revise. You finish. You leave with a complete, polished micro-memoir that is entirely, undeniably yours.
Format: Small group sessions held via Zoom, with personal written editorial feedback delivered between sessions. Never more than twelve women per cohort. No writing experience required — only a willingness to tell the truth.
Your guides
Led by two women who have been there.
Kate and Mia are not outside witnesses to the breast cancer experience. They are members of the same club you never asked to join.
Kate is a breast cancer survivor, an empowerment and relationship coach for women 40+, and a credentialed librarian with over two decades of experience. She is a Library Journal Mover and Shaker and past member of the Newbery Committee. She brings literary rigor, editorial precision, and deep personal understanding to every piece of writing she touches.
Mia is a breast cancer survivor, founder of Saenz Literary Press, and a Spiritual Psychology Coach and Love Teacher. Her personal breast cancer journey — including recurrence — is at the heart of Cancer, the Gift. She creates the space that allows other women to stop performing their strength and start telling their truth.
Your story is already inside you.
You've just been waiting for the right container.
The waitlist is open. When the next cohort forms, you'll be the first to know — dates, details, and a conversation with Kate and Mia to see if it's the right fit.
No obligation. No pressure. Just your name and your readiness.