The Book

Graceful Woman Warrior is a gutsy, thought-provoking and deeply moving posthumous memoir about mindfully living and dying with cancer. Forced to take an honest look at her own mortality after a Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer diagnosis, Terri Luanna da Silva started a blog about her journey.

Compelled to use her diagnosis as an opportunity to grow, learn and discover who she truly was, Terri Luanna’s story offers a life perspective so rare, so powerfully transformative, so hopeful in the face of interminable darkness, it leaves a deep imprint on the hearts of each and every person who reads it.

Taken directly from her blog, Terri Luanna rides the terrifying cancer treatment roller coaster of hope to despair over and over again, struggling to balance her heart’s desire to treat her illness holistically with the brutality of traditional cancer treatment. Ultimately, she chooses to go on a spiritual pilgrimage to Europe, surrounding herself with lessons, wisdom, gratitude and spirituality in order to make life about living and not just avoiding death.

Graceful Woman Warrior is a deeply affecting story that carries you on a sacred journey between, through and beyond life and death. Fulfilling my promise to Terri Luanna to publish this blog, our story weaves the triumphant and the tragic together, creating a transformative and powerfully poignant tapestry that not only enlightens, it inspires readers to awaken to their own lives and live and love more vividly, more fully, more fearlessly and more intently.

As Terri so powerfully said, “We all have our battles to face. Our demons. Our tragedies and difficult situations with which to contend. Whether it’s cancer, homelessness, bankruptcy, divorce, unemployment, infertility… At some point, we all reach a crossroads in our life. These challenges shake us to our core. Humble us. Jolt us awake. Then we have the choice to either keep trying to return to what was, or to embrace the change and redefine ourselves and our realities. Why not seek to live a better life? What have you got to lose?”

So I invite you to open your heart to Terri Luanna’s haunting yet ultimately transcendent story with the full knowledge that in so doing, you are opening your heart to the possibility of reshaping, redefining or perhaps even rewriting the meaning of your own.

With Love,
Aunty L (Laurie O’Neil)

  • Author: Terri Luanna da Silva
  • With: Laurie O’Neil and Marisa Alegria da Silva
  • Print ISBN: 978 154 394 8851
  • Publisher: Laurie O’Neil

Who Should Read?

  • Cancer patients and their families
  • Seekers of strength, wisdom and inspiration to conquer life’s challenge
  • Alternative and Holistic Practitioners
  • People navigating grief journeys and end of life
  • Parents parenting through illness
  • Family caregivers
  • Healthcare professionals
  • Mental Health professionals
  • People with life threatening illness
  • Palliative care professionals
  • Hospice workers/volunteers

Advanced Praise for Graceful Woman Warrior

“Diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer at 37, artist Terri Luanna da Silva’s example of living and dying with grace and integrity is an inspiration—not only for the dying, but for anyone aspiring to live with greater mindfulness and authenticity.”

- Lauren Mackler, author of Solemate: Master the Art of Aloneness & Trasform Your Life

“Graceful Woman Warrior is an incredible and inspiring story about one amazing woman’s battle with cancer. As I read it, I was thinking, I would love to have met Terri Luanna and gotten to know her—until I realized that’s exactly what was happening. I was both honored and humbled to tag along on Terri’s courageous journey. And I am equally grateful for the wisdom she was generous enough to impart. I predict that Graceful Woman Warrior will impact countless souls. Be sure that you’re one of those fortunate folks who give it a read!”

- Steve Manchester, author of The Rocking Chair and Twelve Months

“The prospect of death concentrates the mind wonderfully. We listen to the words of those who know themselves to be dying, because they have a sharpened perception we won’t have until it is our time. I listened very carefully to my wife Jeanne for all our 35 years—I found it profitable—but never so closely as after she was diagnosed with cancer. The same became true of our remarkable daughter Terri Luanna when her diagnosis arrived a year later. She was born with her mother’s extraordinary wisdom, and since it was the last helping I would ever be offered, I worked hard at not missing a bite.

I believe you will find that her wisdom helps you as much as it helped me when I really needed it. I often summon up memories of her talking, so that I won’t forget the sound of her voice—and when I do, the sentence she always seems to be saying is the one she said to me so often in her last year: ‘It is what it is, Dad.’ I think she got that from her mother, who was, in addition to a dancer, author, and musician, a Soto Zen priest. If anyone can help you with mere words, Terri Luanna will.”

- Spider Robinson, co-author with Jeanne Robinson of The Stardance Trilogy

“Terri Luanna da Silva’s book put into the hands of the medical community could be a true gift to the world.”

- Jean Baird, co-author of The Heart Does Break; Canadian Writers on Grief and Mourning

“Riding the cancer treatment roller coaster of hope to despair over and over again, the lessons Terri Luanna da Silva learned as she journeyed through cancer and ultimately death, are just what ‘the doctor ordered’—to live your best possible life. Give yourself the gift of Graceful Woman Warrior.”

- Christa Johnson, MD, Hospice and Palliative Care/Mind Body Medicine, author of Lynn’s Legacy, Mind, Body and Spirit