I Am Alive

I AM ALIVE is a deeply personal work born from the experience of a stage 3 cervical cancer diagnosis, featuring 200 pages of drawings and reflections. It chronicles a 14-year journey through the challenges of radiation treatment, the depths of depression and PTSD, and the gradual, courageous process of reclaiming a fulfilling Life.

I AM ALIVE offers a message of solidarity and hope, demonstrating that healing is possible even in the darkest moments. It also shows the importance of art in the healing process and serves as an important resource for caregivers and medical professionals, shedding light on the emotional and psychological dimensions of long-term recovery that often go unrecognized in clinical settings. Through its intimate exploration of the human experience, this book reveals the enduring potential to find light, rediscover joy, and embrace a meaningful life, regardless of the adversity faced.

I AM ALIVE will be published by Schilt Publishing (Amsterdam) in AUTUMN 2025.

  • In I Am Alive, Nathalie Latham offers a compelling account of her journey through cancer, trauma, and recovery – revealing how spiritual resources and creative expression can support psychological resilience and healing.

    This book is a significant contribution to our understanding of how individuals draw on inner strength, meaning, and faith to foster long-term healing.

    – Harold G. Koenig, M.D., M.H.Sc,
    Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences
    Director, Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health, Duke University Medical Center

  • I am so deeply touched by the book, I AM ALIVE. Nathalie Latham’s words, accompanied by poignant powerful art, are breathtaking in so many dimensions — sacred, holy, the pain of uncertainty buoyed by a solid attachment to the holy within and around. It is as if Nathalie Latham were whirling in chaos, despair and darkness but always accompanied by the divine. While punctuated with many times of deep suffering, her journey is one of holiness and inner strength. 

    This book can be an incredible resource for others who are experiencing serious illness or life crisis as well as for medical students to learn how powerfully important it is to address the spiritual and existential suffering of their patients and families.  I am honored to witness the suffering Nathalie bore and moved by her capacity to move toward light and healing.


    – Christina M. Puchalski, MD, MS, OCDS, FACP, FAAHPM, Eugene Meyer Professor of Medicine; Professor, Dept of Medicine and Health Sciences; Executive Director, George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health, George Washington University School of Medicine

  • The challenges people face at every level – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual – following a diagnosis of cancer are difficult, if not impossible to convey accurately to those lucky enough to have not ‘been there’. That said, Nathalie Latham comes as close as any I have come across in her book ‘I am Alive’. By interspersing the narrative with ’stream of consciousness’ writing and an abundance of paintings reflecting the places she found herself over the course of many years, she takes the reader with her on her journey into ’the dark night of the soul’. As for so many, cancer cut right across Nathalie’s busy and exciting life in the most brutal way, utterly crushing all her future hopes and plans.

    But as the title implies, the journey eventually lead Nathalie beyond the dark realms into a sunlit time in which she finally feels not only reconnected to herself, to her own body, but connected to all of life in a way not possible before diagnosis. She is truly grateful for all the painful losses she experienced, for being free of the ‘debris’, and utterly filled with the joy of life. 

    For those in need of inspiration to endure, to persevere and to keep moving forward despite immense difficulty, 'I am Alive' should prove a valuable resource.

    – Robin Daly MBE, Founder & Chair, Yes to Life, The UK's integrative cancer care charity.

  • As a cancer survivor, I know the fear, sense of isolation and mortailty one experiences when you are told “you have cancer”. In her book “I Am Alive” Nathalie Latham reminds us that healing and the resumption of an active life is possible. She gives voice to what she experienced during her unimaginable treatment protocol through the colors used in the art she produced during that period. Her courage is inspirational, and her message to other individuals diagnosed with cancer is one of hope.

    —Stan Altman, Ph.D. Professor, formerly Dean and interim President, Baruch College/City University of NY

  • Nathalie Latham has provided a moving account of how she drew on spiritual resources, teachings, and practices, including repetition of a mantra, to find resilience, renewal, and healing in a time of enormous challenge and distress.

    — Doug Oman, Adjunct Professor of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley.

  • Natalie’s book is a raw and powerful testament to resilience. This book beautifully captures the journey through trauma and healing. Its courageous exploration of the soul offers light and hope to all others facing darkness.

    — Dr Fenella Willis, Consultant Haematologist, Chair of the Full Circle Fund Therapies Charity, UK

  • From the very beginning, I was fully engaged and couldn’t put it down until I had finished it. Beautifully written, self-revealing in ways that the reader feels the experience, even if they have not been through it. The fear, the pain, the faith, the rage, and ultimately, the surrender. What a lesson for all of us, but especially those confronting the challenge of cancer.

    —Peggy Dulany, Founder & Chair, Synergos. NYC

  • I strongly recommend this book to understand and experience the deeply moving, inner story of a woman’s trauma in coping with cervical cancer treatment. In particular, the power of a mantra—divine syllables that became a trusted and enduring thread throughout her journey—connected her to the source of life. Accompanied by the mystical and divine power of a mantra, this book includes pages upon pages of beautiful, colorful art and images that illustrate infinite expressions of a struggle to survive.

    — Jill Bormann, PhD, RN, FAAN, Research nurse scientist, San Diego, CA, USA.

  • I am left in awe of what is expressed, endured and gained from a deeply traumatic experience followed by transformation into love and immense light. I AM ALIVE is beautiful, profound and an incredibly insightful acknowledgment of power and resilience in words and images.

    —Eileen Hall, Yoga Teacher. Founder of Yoga Moves & Om House, Sydney.

  • “I am Alive” is an exquisite testament to the power of divine spirit within. Nathalie Latham has captured the painful journey of healing with sublime artistic and poetic finesse. I could not put it down! Read it!

    —Ronni Kahn, Founder of Oz Harvest

  • A remarkably raw depiction of one of life’s greatest challenges. The journey of cancer offers a universal and unfiltered reality check to human mortality, however through the journey of mortality the greatest gift is learnt which is that of faith, acceptance and serenity. I found both the words and images in this book incredibly inspiring!

    — John Frieda, Founder of John Frieda Hair Company.

  • A deep, honest portrayal of the experience of diagnosis, treatment plan, treatment, recovery, longevity and moving on with life - layered with art and held in a spiritual context. My hope is that this portrayal is a companion and source of inspiration to those many, many people who experience the hard edge of a health crisis, be it their own or a loved one. No matter if they survive it or not, it is an intense experience that offers profound spiritual insights if one can get over the brutal ugliness of the situation. Then, surrender leads us home to peace and bliss.

    —Chris Dorje Walker, Psychotherapist UK

  • Some souls enter this life carrying unimaginable battles, facing them not just for themselves but for us all. This book is a testament to the unyielding creative will of the human spirit—a blazing reminder of our power to transcend fear, pain, and adversity into greatness. It shows that when we meet life’s challenges with the fullness of our hearts, we uncover a grace that lights the way for others.

    —Jonni Pollard, Founder of 1 Giant Mind, co-founder of Ritam Studio, Byron Bay.

Introduction

The doctor clicks her pen, looks down at the worn carpet where her feet follow the swivel of the chair. She doesn’t look me in the eye, “You’ve got stage 3 cervical cancer.”

Then she tells me, in a matter-of-fact manner, “We don’t know if the cancer has spread to your lymph nodes yet, if it has, the survival rate is low.”

I can no longer feel the chair beneath me.

What else is she saying?

A roaring silence fills me.

I am free-falling through the sky.

No parachute. Nothing to hold onto. Is this it? I am 39 years old.

CHAPTER 7

BEFORE

I am alone in the radiation room the night before surgery, (very early the following morning, I have a general anaesthetic to insert the radiation rod inside me). My only companion is the strange persecutor: the silent radiation machine, cumbersome, sharing my room like an unwelcome guest. Its huge yellow & black radiation sticker on its side keeps catching my eye. I wait as the night deepens with my persecutor, alone in this torture chamber. I have to fast. I am filled with dread.

This is it. There is no turning back. I have to go through this.

I sit on my bed, with my legs dangling on the side and draw on my sennelier drawing pad with the oil pastels that I have with me. This is the first time I have ever drawn with oil pastels. I can feel the connection of the act of drawing to the deep terror wading through the flooding waters of my core.

Another hour passes by. And then another hour. I begin to address my soul and declare that, There is no way I can go through this as a physical being. This is just too horrific to be burnt alive 24 hours a day, stuck to a bed for a week. The only way I can go through this is as a spiritual being. From that moment, I decide to see everything as Divine. The tree outside the small window of the radiation room is Divine. The radiation machine is Divine. The radiation is Divine. My tumor is Divine. Anyone who comes through the door is the Divine. All is One. All is Nature. All is God. This is the only way I can go into the burning.

To my persecutor, the silent unwelcome guest, the radiation machine.

You are my greatest terror and nightmare.

Yet I have no choice but to befriend you as your radiation burning will heal me.

For the duration of the treatment, I will take you on as a spiritual being. I will see you as Divine.

It will feel like you are torturing me, every hour, 24 hours a day.

I shall not sleep.

I shall not eat.

You will burn me alive.

I will feel the insides of my body cook.

My body will wait for that dreaded « click».

The click that begins the internal burning.

It will take five years for the sense of a looming death sentence over me, to lift.

Seven years later, I will see a drawing of Sita sitting on a pyre, being burnt alive and I will confidently say that I know that very experience.

For the next 14 years, every time I return to Paris, (a city I once so loved ) will be in dread and fear because the city will be the reminder of my place of torture with you.

Yet in this room, the night before radiation begins. It is ever so quiet. Just you and I. A vigil for us both, before the reckoning.

I will need to see you as the Divine, I will need to see this all playing out as the Divine otherwise I simply won’t get through this.

My mother will tell my brother that when she visits me, my room smells of burnt flesh.

Then when the week is over, your radiation/burning will devastate me completely.

I will lose my mind, my peace, my vitality and my joy.

It will take me years to recover.

However, ultimately, you will save my life.

You will burn away this deadly tumor.

And you will also burn my entire pelvis area and the organs within.

It is because of you that I will have an extension of this life.

For a year after your radiation, I will not be able to fall asleep peacefully.

In the dark of the night, my body will feel that you are there, beside me.

I will want to run

I will be pinned down

There will be no escape

This is it.

You will be my torturer, my grace, my saviour.

We will be one. We are Divine.

I will come out of this alive.

This is my process of surrender.