In the early 1990s I spent a couple of years working for what was then The Bristol Cancer Help Centre and is now The Penny Brohn Centre. It was one of the first Centres to open in Great Britain offering holistic or complementary therapies to help people optimise their recovery from cancer. I had grown up in a household that veered towards alternative solutions to disease so when I was diagnosed with cancer in 1989 I actively sought natural therapies to go alongside my treatment. Going to the Centre and immersing myself in tasters of psychotherapy, healing, art therapy, group therapy, diet and more changed the way I lived my life. I was so inspired that I spent a couple of years doing outreach work for the Centre, talking about my own healing process at Cancer conferences etc. Through contact with writer/journalist, Liz Hodkinson, I explored the possibility of writing a book about the Centre. I wasn’t confident that I could write about it on my own, so we pitched a suggestion to Liz’s Agent that was partly my healing journey and partly about the Centre and what it offered. It was accepted and published by Vermilion in 1995 as: The Bristol Experience – a Personal Assessment of the Unique Life-enhancing Programme for Cancer patients and Carers. What I learned from that experience is that sometimes in the editing a book can turn from one’s initial vision to one that is entirely different. It was not a great seller and is no longer in print. But I learnt a lot from that period. Next came the beginnings of really finding my writing voice through creative workshops in the community…