About Janie Brown
Janie Brown is an author, a leader in oncology nursing, the founder and executive director of a nonprofit organization called the Callanish Society, in Vancouver, Canada, and a visionary for new global conversations about living, healing, death and dying.
After graduating with an M.A. in Psychology from St. Andrews University and her R.G.N. from the South Lothian College of Nursing and Midwifery in Edinburgh, Janie emigrated from Scotland in 1984 to work as a nurse at the B.C. Cancer Agency in Vancouver. There she learned that cancer is an undiscriminating disease, affecting a person of any age, gender, ethnicity and lifestyle. She understood that the cancer care system was necessarily oriented toward a person’s physical body, treating the disease and managing the challenging effects of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. She also observed that even when a cure was not possible, some people thrived in their radically-changed lives, and found ways to face the end of their lives with peaceful minds and hearts. When a cure was not possible, she saw how some people healed.
In 1990, she went back to university for a master’s degree in nursing in the hopes that more education would help her find new ways to foster healing. Her studies did help, but she found the way forward in 1993 while watching the Bill Moyers TV series “Healing and the Mind,” which described the Commonweal cancer retreat program in Bolinas, California, led by Rachel Naomi Remen and Michael Lerner. After meeting these two visionaries, in person, Janie was blessed to receive their mentorship to start a non-profit organization in Vancouver based on the Commonweal model, in 1997. After almost twenty-five years, and 100 retreats, the Callanish Society is a healing centre that supports families with cancer to strengthen into life, and/or into death, with grace and dignity. Janie works there full time as Executive Director and family counsellor.
Janie began writing about her work in seriousness in 2011, and when her full-length manuscript was finally completed in 2018, she was blessed to meet Jason Bartholomew of the bks Agency in London, UK. He found her book the best home Janie could have wished for at Canongate, UK, with her brilliant editor Hannah Knowles, for publication in March 2020. Soon after Canongate’s pre-emptive offer for world rights, Tim Rostron, editor at Doubleday Canada, also bought the book for publication in March 2020.