Authors &
Contributors

A passionate librarian and past Library Journal “Mover and Shaker,” she has spent over two decades devoted to the transformative power of story. She knows the right book at the right moment can do what medicine cannot: It becomes a mirror. Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, whose work every librarian carries, wrote that when the lighting conditions are just right, a window becomes a mirror, and literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us. Reading becomes a means of self-affirmation. Kate had handed that mirror to other people for two decades. Then cancer handed it to her.

Her own breast cancer diagnosis brought her to the breast cancer community and to the book it needed.

A past Newbery Committee member and co-creator of Cancer, the Gift, Kate wrote this book during active reconstruction from a double mastectomy—in the particular kind of clarity that illness carves out when it strips everything unnecessary away.

She built this book for the woman who has just heard the words. For the one holding herself together through treatment. For the one standing in the unfamiliar silence of after, wondering who she is now and whether that woman is allowed to crave something new.

Kate believes she is.

She lives in the Pacific Northwest, building a life with her real, last love and her dog Bowie, writing, dancing, biking, coaching women into their own wholeness and radiance, and doing the meaningful library work that has always felt less like a career and more like a calling.

She knows what it means to move through all the way through breast cancer and emerge transformed. Her journey through illness, profound healing, and inner transformation taught her that the body is an intelligent guide and ally, and that self-love is not a concept but something lived through sensation, devotion, and grace.

That lived wisdom is the foundation of everything she does. As a spiritual psychology coach, love teacher, author, and founder of Saenz Literary Press and the Love Revolution movement, Mia creates spaces on the page and in conversation where truth can be spoken without performance and complexity is held with compassion. Her work has always centered on a single conviction: that love is the original medicine, and that when we return to it, our lives begin to heal from the inside out.

Trained in spiritual psychology and somatic awareness, she helps women move beyond illness into embodied wholeness—supporting them through life’s most tender thresholds of illness, loss, transformation, and return with presence and deep self-trust.

She built Cancer, the Gift for every breastie sister at every stop on the journey because she has been that woman—and she knows what it means to reach for a book and find it reaching back.

Christie Miller is a Conscious Change Mentor, motivational speaker, and best-selling author of The Playlist for Life. She teaches that mindset is not about controlling outcomes, but about living consciously, surrendering to what is, and choosing how to meet life with courage and joy.

In June 2022, Christie was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer that later metastasized to her brain, lungs, and bones. Rather than framing it as a fight, she experienced it as an awakening that transformed her relationship with her body and with life itself.

In August 2024, her husband of thirty six years, Mark, the love of her life and the man she fell for on an unforgettable seventy-two hour blind date, was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He was her home, her safe place, her everything. In June 2025, she had the sacred honor of holding his hand, whispering her love, and walking him home as his beautiful soul left his body.

Grief cracked her open, but it didn’t harden her. Today, even with temporary Stage 4 cancer still in her body, Christie lives with deeper joy and a fierce gratitude for the ordinary moments most people miss. Surrender did not weaken her. It freed her. And loving Mark through his final breath taught her that love does not end when a body does.

She lives in Southern California with her beloved Labrador, Winnie, choosing presence over fear and joy inside uncertainty.

In 2016, Katherine Froggatt was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. That life-altering moment set her on a path of deep healing and profound professional transformation, one that clarified her purpose and ultimately shaped everything that came after.

Today, Katherine is a certified Mental Fitness and Cancer Coach, speaker, and founder of Katherine Froggatt Health & Wellness Coaching, based in Queenstown, New Zealand. Drawing directly from her own journey, she helps individuals and organizations overcome burnout, chronic stress, and the trauma of serious illness through holistic, science-based coaching rooted in empathy and lived experience. She supports cancer survivors in regulating their nervous systems, reducing anxiety, and improving metabolic health—empowering them to feel energized, hopeful, and in control during and after recovery.

Guided by curiosity, courage, and love, her mission is to help others rise from adversity with strength, clarity, and renewed purpose.

Maria is the embodiment of resilience and hope—a true force of nature and catalyst for change. As a two-time breast cancer survivor, her personal triumphs fuel her unwavering commitment to breast cancer awareness and co-founding a nonprofit in the San Francisco Bay Area supporting research, treatment, and education. Her journey didn’t break her; it clarified her purpose and deepened her determination to help others break through self-imposed limitations and achieve new levels of excellence.

Drawing on extensive experience leading sales teams for Fortune 100 companies, Maria channels that same energy and passion into her work as a coach, three-time international best-selling author, TEDx speaker, and host of the podcast, Motivational Moments with Maria. Her motto says it best: stay focused, stay positive, and always have fun.

Marnie Clark is a breast cancer coach, breast cancer survivor, and passionate advocate for holistic healing. She weaves together her background in nutrition, herbal medicine, aromatherapy, emotional healing, meditation, and energy healing to bring a compassionate, grounded, and empowering approach to every woman she supports.

Her life’s work is devoted to helping women step back into the driver’s seat of their own healing journey, reconnect with their inner wisdom, and feel supported in healing, on a deeper level, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Melissa Severance knows what it costs to hold everything together. During breast cancer, she was the strong one until painful radiation burns left her alone in bed, unable to move. In that stillness, she learned that true strength isn’t enduring everything alone. It is the courage to be seen in your humanity and the clarity to ask for what you need.

That hard-won wisdom now drives her work. As a PCC-certified executive coach and Founder of Inspire Big Dreams LLC, she brings more than 25 years of experience across Big 4 accounting, executive HR leadership, and entrepreneurial consulting to help leaders and organizations disrupt the future of work. Melissa designs leadership experiences that build emotionally intelligent, resilient cultures where both people and performance thrive.

Patty Contenta is a professional dancer, choreographer, judge, and international dance consultant with over 30 years of experience with the prestigious Arthur Murray Dance Studios. She is the founder of Sensuality Secrets, author of the Desirable and Deserving e-book, and creator of both the Sexy in Seconds mini-series and the Body-Image Breakthrough program.

Through her signature Charisma Framework, Patty empowers women who struggle with body image to reconnect with their feminine, sensual confidence. Blending the art of body language, therapeutic movement, and mindset transformation, she guides women to feel desirable, self-assured, and fully expressed inside and out.

When Stacey received a metastatic breast cancer diagnosis in August 2024, the world as she knew it shifted instantly. What began in deep fear transformed into a powerful awakening. Today, she is more than a survivor—she is a thriver who sees life through a completely different lens.

In the quiet of her journey, Stacey found clarity. She stopped letting life happen to her and started pouring her energy into what truly matters—love, gratitude, and the people and experiences that set her soul on fire. Her diagnosis became a catalyst to live more deeply, travel more broadly, and love more fearlessly. It is now her heart’s work to walk alongside others on their healing journey.

From the center ring to a journey of profound healing, Stacy Yardley’s story is one of radical transformation. A former circus showgirl with the Greatest Show on Earth, Stacy spent decades treating her body as an enemy—fighting it, hating it, overriding its signals.

When breast cancer arrived, she made an agonizing discovery: the only way forward was the one thing she had never allowed herself, to stop fighting and start loving her body as an ally. She learned to trust its wisdom, even while sitting with betrayal, grief, and the cost of choices made before and during her diagnosis.

Today, Stacy channels that transformation into her work as a Life & Leadership Coach and Nervous System Fitness guide. Through her signature program, Regulate by Design, and her podcast, Life is a Circus, she helps women break free from cycles of stress and burnout by working with their bodies instead of against them.