Cotesfield native returns for book signing

Author, advocate, and breast-cancer survivor Diane Simard, a Cotesfield native and graduate of Elba High School, returned to Howard County over the weekend, where she visited with family and friends as she signed copies of her books at The Resting Place, an event venue and tasting room for the Rivers Edge Winery in Elba.

The author’s visit was a part of the Resting Place’s April 5th monthly wine tasting. Wendy Johnson, a co-owner of winery and tasting room, was Simard’s peer and best friend at Elba High School “This event is a collaboration between myself and Wendy,” said Simard of the visit. “She has monthly wine tastings here. I live in the Denver, Colorado area now, and I was going to be back visiting this weekend, so we just decided to do this combination wine tasting and book signing.”

“It’s great to have Diane back and here at the Resting Place,” noted Johnson on Saturday.

The co-owner said that the River’s Edge tasting room has a fairly “steady group of regulars” who turn out to its monthly tastings, but noted the April 5th event—which saw the venue filled to capacity— had been a special one.

“We have done pop-up clothing boutiques and a few craft events, but we haven’t really done anything like this before,” she said. “I think it really turned out really well.”

In addition to stopping to see old friends, Simard had made the stop in Elba as part of a larger tour promoting her newest book, Unlikely Gifts Unwrapped, a dive into the aftereffects of her experience with stage 3C breast cancer.

After leaving Elba High School and graduating Magna Cum Laude with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from University of Nebraska at Kearney, Simard made a successful career for herself in business. Then, ten years ago, in February 2015, she got “the call.

“I was diagnosed with stage 3C breast cancer,” she noted. “I’m a tenyear survivor, thankfully.” The Cotesfield native’s experience going through treatment—including a “brutal,” aggressive regimen of chemotherapy— convinced her to dedicate herself to advocacy and support for others experiencing the disease.

“It was when I was going through treatment that I realized, kind of just accidentally, that there is a real lack of attention paid to the impact that a traumatic experience like cancer has on your mental health,” she said.

As she began the path to recovery, Simard resolved to use her experience as an “opportunity to shine a light on” and help people deal with, the mental strain that is often concomitant with serious illness.

“Cancer is a tough, tough thing and…a lot of your body’s ability to heal itself has to do with the state of your mental health,”noted Simard. “The field is called psycho-social oncology—or psycho-oncology for short—and it deals with basically anything outside the physical experience of cancer—from emotions, to finances and your support network.”

After treatment, Simard seed-funded and founded “a specialty at the University of Denver to train licensed clinical psychologists while they are still in grad school on how to work with cancer patients,” began working as an advocate, public speaker, blogger, and influencer for the cause of psycho-oncology, and used the memoirs written during her battle with cancer and her background in journalism to write her first book, The Unlikely Gift of Breast Cancer.

“The first book is written in memoir style, focused on that first year of cancer, when I went through treatment,” noted Simard. “There’s a lot of backstory about growing up in a small town, going to high school in Elba, being a Nebraska native, and how all of that impacted how I dealt with the treatment.”

Her next book, Heal Forward, is a “short, inspirational book of stories about others, besides me, who have gone through traumatic experiences and turned to ‘impact projects,’ as I call them—doing something good for someone else as an aid in personal trauma recovery.”

The book she is currently on the road to support, Unlikely Gifts Unwrapped: Unfiltered Reflections on Life After Breast Cancer, functions as something of a follow up to her first, looking back on the decade since her treatment, the longterm effects, and some of the scars left behind.

“That covers the ten years after I finished treatment,” she said. “It’s more light-hearted, and is, again, just trying to bring attention to some of the things people don’t talk about when it comes to a cancer experience.”

Simard, whose parents are the late Milton and Donna Moravec of Cotesfield, said that she and her husband, Rene, try to come back to rural Howard County as often as they can.

“My husband…really loves the culture here, and the people,” she noted. “And it really helps me personally to get back to my roots as often as I can.

“I am really appreciative of…the way people come together and support each other in small towns…It’s just something very special.”

With The Resting Place packed to standing room only, that support had been abundantly evident on Saturday.

“It’s just so great to get back to see everyone,” Simard said. “And I think what Wendy is doing here is really special.

“In the last few hours, I’ve got to see some people I haven’t seen in decades.”

One of the breast cancer survivor’s main drivers in everything she does, she concluded on Saturday, is “honor[ ing] the memories” of the many other courageous people she has met during her own treatment and throughout her time as an advocate.

“I have met plenty of other people dealing with this, many who would not survive,” she said. “And it changed me, transformed me; it made me realize how grateful I am to be able to continue living.

“I want to honor [these people’s] memories as long as I am alive, and help those who are currently struggling,” she said. “It’s becoming more acceptable to talk about [cancer], but we have a long way to go.”