At 10:10, On February 4th 2017, World Cancer Day, Katherine Dolphin Griffin’s life fell apart. Her beloved father Joe, lost his 5th battle with cancer. Life as she knew it was changed forever and the grief was crippling.

Hope to Cope is essential reading for anyone on life’s journey, it is a gift to all those in the trenches and a pathway to gifting your soul a warm hug. This is not a story of seeing the good in spite of circumstances. It is a story of living through the circumstances, of accepting that sometimes coping is enough and overall one of great hope. Katherine shows us through her own life stories that in accepting what we cannot change we can look to the things that we can change, and put our focus there.

It is in her choices to constantly look for hope and ways to cope that Katherine gifts the reader the acknowledgement of deep pain and traumatic life events alongside the potential for a new perspective.

"There isn’t just one reason why I wrote this book but rather several. I primarily wanted to share my story of love and determination. I wanted to show how love really can conquer all. There are no special powers when it comes to dealing with challenges because strength will come. It comes every time. With every challenge that comes our way we learn new skills that will help us with future challenges. A type of resilience building. I am going to tell my story and share my learnings from taking a pragmatic approach to life. I hope that they will help you to find your path if you are a little off-course right now.

While this book has been painfully difficult to write, I have found great healing while doing so. I am reminded of the journey, all the achievements and grievances and of the very special people that I have in my life. I have challenged myself through facing my demons and letting go of pain. I learned many new skills along the way. There are wonderful people in the world who want to help and that has been humbling to see.

It has been quite liberating to turn a negative into a positive and to succeed over a challenge. I am trying to have a good life, to follow my dreams and to be a good role model for my children. I refuse to let challenges stop me or to hold me back from achieving that. I have never suffered from depression but having experienced the loneliness, sadness and despair that comes with grief, I can now identify with depression a little more. I have struggled at times. I think that a lot of people can identify with that feeling following the months of living with Covid.

Dealing with life’s challenges doesn’t have to be the end of the world as long as you have hope in your heart. Hope to cope.

I don’t want my dad's memory to die or with it the story of this beautiful man who was deeply driven, intelligent, charismatic, warm and strong. I learned a lot from him and I am who I am today because of him. This is his story too."
- Katherine Dolphin Griffin

Katherine, a cancer survivor herself, wanted to help make more survivors. Drawing on all she had learned, first to survive and then, in time, to thrive, Hope to Cope is a journey of love and perseverance to find strength through the most difficult times.

Launched on February 4th 2022, World Cancer Day, her dads 5th Anniversary. All the proceeds of this self-published book will go directly to The Irish Cancer Society and Marymount Hospital and Hospice, Ireland. This eBook was published on March 22nd 2022.