One thing this web site will not do is cure anyone of cancer. By using the word "cure", we mean a "successful medical treatment." In other words, a cure is a treatment that removes all evidence of the disease and allows the person who previously had cancer to live as long as they as the person who never had cancer. A cure is what a physician hopes to bring to the patient. Curing is an external medical process of effecting an outcome where the disease disappears.

This web site does attempt to help with healing. By healing, we mean the inner process where a person becomes whole. Healing can occur at the physical level, such as when a wound or broken bone heals. It can take place at the emotional level, as when we recover from terrible childhood traumas or from a death or divorece. It can take place at a mental level, as we learn to reframe or restructure distructive ideas about ourselves and the world we carried in the past. Healing can occur at the spiritual level, as when we move closer to God, toward a deeper connection with nature, or toward an inner piece.

Although cure and healing are different, they are deeply intertwined. For any cure to work, the physical healing power of the organism must be sufficient to enable recovery to take place. When a physician sets a bone or prescribes an antibiotic for an infection, they are doing their part for recover by offering a curative therapy. Yet when the inner healing power of the organism is not sufficiently strong, the bone will not knit or the infection will not subside. Healing is thus a necessary part of curing -- a fact with profound implications for medicine.

Healing goes beyond curing and may take place when curing is not an issue or has proved impossible. Although the capacity to heal physically is necessary to any successful cure, healing can also take place on deeper levels whether or not physical recovery occurs. In our virtual communities of people interested in cancer, we can identify individuals whose cancer has advanced to the point where a curative treatment ultimately proved impossible. Yet, even as their disease progressed, the inner healing process -- emotional, mental, and spiritual -- was astonishingly powerful in their own lives and in those of their families and friends.

This web site attempts to provide your with directions for your participation in your fight for life with cancer -- by working to enhance your own healing and recuperative powers -- whether you are the one with cancer, a caregiver, or merely interested in learning from the experiences of others -- to attain the highest quality of life possible.