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Reluctant Warrior: A Memoir & Breast Cancer Emotional Survival Guide
Paperback
Biographies GeneralCancerMental Health
Publisher: Oracle Folio Books
Published: Sep 15 2026
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.76
Height: 0.54 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
They tell you you're done with cancer.
Treatment ends. Everyone exhales. You're supposed to feel grateful, relieved, and ready to get back to your life.
But what if you're not?
When psychologist Dr. Christina Hibbert was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer and the BRCA1 mutation at age forty-four, she thought treatment would be the hard part. She didn't foresee the seventeen surgeries, complications, chronic illnesses, and emotional aftermath-or how profoundly cancer would change her body, relationships, identity, faith, and understanding of herself.
She learned what no one prepared her for: surviving cancer and recovering from it are two very different things.
Part memoir, part emotional survival guide, Reluctant Warrior explores the realities of cancer that nobody schedules an appointment for: trauma, mortality, grief without a death, the loss of who you used to be, fighting to be heard in your own medical care, and the long quiet after everyone else decides you're fine.
Drawing on her expertise as a clinical psychologist and her lived experience as a patient, Christina offers honest stories, psychological insight, and a practical tool at the end of every chapter-exercises you can actually use, with free downloadable worksheets.
Inside, you'll find help for:
- Understanding cancer as trauma-and why you may still be struggling
- Grieving losses that no one else recognizes as losses
- Rebuilding your sense of self when cancer has taken it apart
- Advocating for yourself when you aren't being heard
- Navigating chronic illness that arrived after treatment ended
- Rebuilding relationships and finding support that actually holds
This book is for you if you're newly diagnosed, in the middle of treatment, years past it and still not okay-or if you love someone who is.
This isn't about fighting harder, staying positive, or becoming the perfect cancer warrior. It's about learning to name what hurts, ask for help, and make peace with a body and a life that may never be the same.
You are not broken. You are wounded. And wounds can heal.
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