Healing With Words by Diana M. Raab

In Healing with Words the author not only takes you along with her on her journey as she battles cancer, but also helps you to see the value of journaling your own road to recovery. You'll find Diana's story from beginning to end in this book of Healing with Words. She shares her own personal journal entries plus poems that she's written along the way. She starts at the very beginning with Mammograms and more to surgery, follow-up and emotional reflections. In her Epilogue she gives you a tale of Two cancers and tells you where she's at today. In her appendix you'll find:

• Tips on Writing for wellness - Starter ideas to get you started in journaling your recovery
• healing pages
• glossary of terms
• Resources for cancer support organizations and information

The author feels strongly about using words to help in your healing process and journaling your way back to health. This book is not only a reading book, but as you read through it the author provides pages for you to journal your own experiences right in the book. It's like a reading/journal combination. Though not many the author does use some choice words that I must warn about. It is more than my three strikes rule so I must put it in here (Read more about my word choices here) She tells you flat out how she felt going through the cancer treatment process in no uncertain terms. Would I recommend this book to others? Yes, but I will have to caution them about some words used. Matter in fact, I'm going to pass this book on to my mom who has gone through a mastectomy and treatments a few years back.






Healing With Words: A Writer’s Cancer Journey is a compassionate and wry self-help memoir written by an award-winning prolific author, nurse and poet, who at the age of forty-seven found her life shattered first by a DCIS (early breast cancer) diagnosis and five years later by another, seemingly unrelated and incurable multiple myeloma. This book includes the author’s experiences, reflections, poetry and journal entries, in addition to writing prompts for readers to express their own personal story.
Raab’s journals have provided a safe haven and platform to validate and express her feelings. Raab views journaling to be like a daily vitamin – in that it heals, detoxifies and is essential for optimal health.
Readers will learn to;
Understand the importance of early cancer detection and how to take control of their health
Discover the power of writing to release bottled-up emotions
Learn how the process of journaling can facilitate healing
See how a cancer diagnosis can be a riveting event which can renew and change a person in a unique way.
For more information, please visit her website: http://www.dianaraab.com
and blog: http://www.dianaraab.com/blog








Diana M. Raab is an essayist, memoirist, poet and author blogger who teaches in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and at various conferences around the country.
She’s editor of the anthology, Writers and Their Notebooks (University of South Carolina Press, January 2010).
Her memoir, Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal (Beaufort Books, 2007) won the 2008 National Indie Excellence Award for Memoir and the 2009 Mom’s Choice Award for Adult Nonfiction.
She has three poetry collections, My Muse Undresses Me (2007), Dear Anaïs: My Life in Poems for You (2008), winner of The Reader Views Award and Allbooks Review Editor’s Choice, and The Guilt Gene (2009).
She’s the recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Book Award for best health and wellness book for Getting Pregnant and Staying Pregnant: Overcoming Infertility and High Risk Pregnancy which has been translated into French and Spanish. In 2009 the book was released in its 20th anniversary edition, under the title, Your High Risk Pregnancy: A Practical and Supportive Guide updated in collaboration with Dr. Errol Norwitz of Yale School of Medicine.


A copy of this book was provided for this review by Virtual Book tours
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