Defining Moments and Healing Emplotment: "I Have Cancer; It Doesn't Have Me"

Whereas illness, sickness, and disease are dark clouds on the horizon of our lives, the complex process of healing is our sunrise. In this essay, I introduce the concept of healing emplotment, a lived process of knowingly bringing together strategies for self-awareness, the creation of hope, and the management of risk to overcome psychosocial peril. This results in a purposeful re-authoring of the self in society, personhood, in the face of life-threatening events. Rather than only bringing threats to which the stricken must respond, serious illness can also present opportunities for narrative re-authoring of our biopsychosocial self.