Guest Speaker Topic Ideas

Your Treatment Journey

  • Navigating your initial diagnosis: What do you wish you had known in the early days and weeks?

  • Second opinions: When and how did you have to advocate for better treatment?

  • Treatment decisions: How you chose between traditional and integrative approaches

  • Managing treatment side effects: Unexpected challenges and solutions that your doctor or care team didn’t tell you about

  • The gap between treatment and survivorship care: Things no one told you about that you wish you had known

  • Clinical trials: Your experience and what others should know

  • When treatments don't work as expected: Pivoting and staying hopeful

  • The importance of finding the right medical team

Mental & Emotional Wellness

  • From victim to victor: Shifting mindset during treatment

  • Managing scanxiety and fear of recurrence

  • The stages of grief nobody prepared me for

  • Finding hope when statistics seem bleak

  • Protecting your peace during treatment: Setting healing boundaries

  • The unexpected gift of vulnerability

  • Post-treatment PTSD: The emotional aftermath no one discusses

  • How cancer changed my relationship with fear and mortality

Support Systems & Relationships

  • Telling my story: When, how, and who to tell about diagnosis

  • Being a caregiver: What I learned supporting my loved one

  • Marriage/partnership through cancer: How we survived together

  • Single and diagnosed: Building support without a partner

  • Parenting through cancer: Protecting and empowering our children

  • When friends disappear: Dealing with relationship changes

  • The healing power of receiving help (for those who always give)

  • Finding your cancer mentor: Why peer support matters

Practical Life Management

  • Financial toxicity: Managing the costs no one warns you about

  • Working through treatment: Rights, decisions, and communication

  • Nutrition gaps in cancer care: What I learned on my own

  • Insurance battles and financial assistance programs that helped

  • Creating a "new normal" after treatment

  • Travel, lifestyle, and living fully during/after treatment

  • Alternative and complementary therapies that made a difference

Spiritual & Personal Growth

  • Faith through the fire: How spirituality shaped my healing

  • Finding meaning in the mess: Purpose after diagnosis

  • Radical remission stories: Beating the odds

  • The mental/emotional/spiritual factors that changed everything

  • Forgiveness as medicine: Letting go to heal

  • Post-traumatic growth: Who I became because of cancer

  • Creating joy during treatment: It's not toxic positivity

Special Perspectives Topics

  • Young adult cancer: Unique challenges and triumphs

  • Metastatic means chronic, not terminal: Living with Stage 4

  • Rare cancers: When you can't find others like you

  • Multiple diagnoses: Managing cancer plus chronic illness

  • Depression and diagnosis - fighting multiple battles

  • Cultural perspectives on cancer and healing

  • Men and cancer: Breaking the silence

  • LGBTQ+ cancer experiences: Additional layers of advocacy