A Safe Place: A Journal for Women with Breast Cancer

Rebecca Murdock is a lawyer with the Toronto firm Ryder Wright Blair &
Doyle.

This inspiring book both documents the author’s personal struggle with
breast cancer and invites similarly afflicted women to record their own
responses to the experience of cancer. Although Pike’s is the main
voice, we hear a good deal from other survivors, from Pike’s friends
and family members, and from medical staff and philosophers. (In a
section called “After the Diagnosis,” an oncology nurse is quoted as
saying that “[c]ancer is not some kind of death sentence at all. It
has always been a chronic challenge that you take on, but seldom THIS IS
IT.”) Readers are encouraged to join the community of voices by
writing or drawing in the blank spaces provided. In these spaces, they
are invited to record dreams, their reactions to getting cancer, their
expectations about treatment and reconstructive surgery, and
postoperative concerns about body image and sexuality. A Safe Place has
a great deal to offer both women with breast cancer and those searching
for ways to support them.