Alysa Cummings is a certified poetry therapist who focuses her energies full-time in support of cancer survivors using writing as a tool for healing.
Archive by Author
A CancerLand Holiday Wishlist…or Please Help Me Get Through the Season
Holidays can be happy, happy, merry, merry or holidays can get on your last nerve. You know what I mean? Honestly, it’s true. And trust me, cancer may have very little to do with it. The season that starts with Thanksgiving and climaxes with New Year’s Day can drain anyone dry, even if you’re in [...]
CancerLand Bookshelf: Her Doctor Prescribes Dancing at Daybreak
I hate patient intake forms, don’t you? Here’s what bothers me: Typically, these forms are delivered to us attached to a clipboard, by a harried front desk person who is busy juggling incoming phone calls and insurance co-pays. These forms have way too many spaces to be filled in. Empty places for the basics: name, [...]
CancerLand Bookshelf: Songs from a Lead-Lined Room
Memoirs lined up on the CancerLand Bookshelf are often filled with powerful life lessons, painstakingly learned on the long journey to recovery. Last week, almost twelve years to the day after my own cancer diagnosis, I faced up to a daunting challenge that helped me finally make peace with my biggest cancer-related loss to date. [...]
In the Name of Pinkness
I’m at the neighborhood Acme, standing in the produce aisle, reaching for some shiny red MacIntosh apples, when I hear a female voice behind me: Remind all the women in your life to get a mammogram… Startled, I drop the fruit into my shopping cart, look around the store, and try to figure out where [...]

Information about risk, prevention, screening, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and support for all cancers