From the minute the words "it's cancer" are spoken, you (and everyone close to you) begins a journey that no-one wants to take.

We learn what we didn't want to learn

We learn what we didn't want to learn. We meet challenges we didn't want to meet. We find friends in unlikely places and sometimes we lose relationships we thought would last forever.

We crumble, shatter and shift. We squirm, regroup and grow. We laugh, cry and surrender. We are sad, scared, and alone. Sometimes we survive, sometimes we leave the planet and sometimes we are left behind.

I have spent more than 30 years working with and for support groups. During that time, I have offered administrative support, written for, participated in, facilitated, and have been a guest speaker at scores of them.

Who is a survivor

In my world, a survivor is of course the person who had the surgery, chemo or radiation. But survivors are also our families, friends, caregivers, co-workers medical team and . . . anyone else who has been touched by our cancer.

Creating the environment

Peer-to-peer support offers an avenue for healing, building empathy and relating that can be created in no other way.

We tell our stories, and we heal. In reading the stories of others we relate. In relating we connect and when we connect we are no longer alone. And on the roller-coaster ride of surviving cancer – your own or someone else’s – healing, relating and connecting are vital.

Become part of the healing

Cancer survivor stories can be in the form of a written story, a video, photographs, drawings, images of sculpting or other art mediums. If you are not sure where or how to begin your story can even be told through an interview. And in case you are wondering full attribution and link reciprocity will be offered if your story is used online in the "Survivor's Diaries" once my website is released.

To submit your cancer survivor story for publication please email 1000CancerSurvivorStories@AllAboutSpirit.com. You can use that same email address to ask any questions you may have.