Freeland author celebrates cancer recovery with new book on defiant joy
Freeland’s Mia Saenz, once told she might have a year to live, marked her recovery with Cancer, the Gift and a return to walking without a cane.
Mia Saenz’s latest milestone is not just a book release. For the Freeland resident, it is the visible sign of a recovery that once looked impossible, after a terminal cancer diagnosis left her told she might have only one year to live.
Saenz is now celebrating Cancer, the Gift: A Breast Cancer Survivor’s Companion to Defiant Joy and Grace, a project she co-wrote with longtime friend Kate Houston. The book, described as a literary micro-memoir anthology, brings together Saenz, Houston and eight other women to trace the full breast-cancer journey, from diagnosis and active treatment to the long after, when survival does not automatically mean life feels whole again.
That broader frame is what Saenz says is often missing in cancer stories. Her work has long centered on self-love, healing, nervous system restoration, emotional truth and transformational authorship, and Cancer, the Gift extends that focus into a public account of what it takes to rebuild identity after treatment. The book’s pre-order date was June 9, 2026, and readers can also access a companion reflection journal.
The recovery is also physical. Saenz said she is now walking without the cane she relied on for two years, and she described a dramatic shift in her health markers that gave her the confidence to move ahead. Houston is identified on the book site as an empowerment and relationship coach, underscoring that the project is built not only around survival, but around the emotional and relational work that follows illness.
For Island County, Saenz’s story lands in a place where cancer is not abstract. Breast cancer remains the most common cancer in women in the United States, with the American Cancer Society estimating about 321,910 new invasive cases and about 42,140 deaths in 2026. The median age at diagnosis is 62, and about 4.3 million women in the United States were living with a history of breast cancer as of January 2025. Nationally, about 18.6 million Americans were cancer survivors.
That public health context matters in Washington, where the cancer registry is used for prevention and policy planning, and in Island County, where public health resources include cancer data and cancer-prevention reports. Saenz’s book turns those numbers into lived experience, showing how diagnosis, treatment, and recovery ripple into work, identity and family life long after the medical crisis passes. Even Sugar, Saenz’s dog, has its own recovery arc after nearly dying in October 2024 from intestinal burns caused by licking chemotherapy cream off a patient’s skin.
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