Profile
usan Wener was thirty-six years old when a colon cancer diagnosis arrived with the kind of finality that reorganizes everything. She was a mother of three daughters, a student of healing, a woman who had spent years attending to the emotional and physical wellbeing of others.
The diagnosis did not end that work. It deepened it.
She ran away with her three daughters to the country while waiting for results. "The cancer won't find you in the country," she told herself, "because it doesn't know the address."
What followed was a years-long confrontation with mortality that most people encounter only in abstraction. Wener did not treat it abstractly. She treated it as information — painful, clarifying information about the relationship between suppressed emotion and physical illness, between self-abandonment and the body's eventual refusal to accommodate it.
She survived both colon cancer and lung cancer. In doing so, she became one of the most compelling voices in Montreal on the subject of resilience — not as a motivational concept, but as a practice: specific, demanding, and available to anyone willing to do the interior work it requires.
There was a moment at the country house that changed everything. She told everyone to leave. Her husband. The workers. Everyone. She went outside and pounded the ground. She cried. She fell into a deep sleep on the grass. When she woke up, she said: "I'm alive." She put on her running shoes and never took them off.
Her book, Resilience, chronicles this journey without sentimentality. It is not a story of triumph over illness. It is a record of the internal architecture that made survival possible — the mindset shifts, the reconstituted relationship with faith, the decision to feel emotions rather than suppress them.
Her conversation on The Montreal Entrepreneur Podcast is unlike any other in the archive. It does not follow the grammar of business. It follows the grammar of survival.
It makes the argument — quietly, precisely — that survival, done properly, is one of the most demanding forms of human enterprise there is.
The cancer won't find you in the country. It doesn't know the address.
— Susan Wener
Key Takeaways
Resilience is a practice, not a personality trait — the specific tools Wener developed (reframing, emotional release, walking meditation) are transferable to anyone navigating illness, loss, or transition.
Suppressed emotions have physical consequences — the relationship between unprocessed grief, fear, and anger and the body's response is central to Wener's healing philosophy and her own survival.
Faith is self-defined — Wener's concept of God and spirituality is personal and non-denominational; the conversation expands what faith can mean for people who have abandoned conventional religion.
Self-care is not selfishness — the 'sweet little girl who died so a strong woman could live' represents the necessary death of people-pleasing and self-erasure that precedes genuine healing.
The last human freedom is the choice of response — not to circumstances, but to how we interpret and integrate them. This is the foundation of every tool Wener teaches.
A thought is just a thought. It has no power over you until you give it one.
— Susan Wener
The sweet little girl died so a strong woman could live.
— Susan Wener
About Susan Wener
Susan Wener is the author of Resilience, a book chronicling her survival of two cancer diagnoses — colon cancer at 36 and lung cancer years later — and the mindset practices, faith, and emotional work that made both possible. A natural health consultant and speaker based in Montreal, she has spent years helping individuals navigate illness, grief, and life transition through a practice that bridges conventional medicine and energy healing. She holds expertise in neurolinguistic programming, hypnotherapy, and energy medicine. She is a TedX speaker, a mother of three daughters, and a grandmother of eight.
The Vault Dispatch
A monthly record of Montreal’s most consequential founders.
SubscribeOnce a month. No fluff.
More from The Vault
The Vault Dispatch
A monthly record of Montreal’s most consequential founders.
SubscribeOnce a month. No fluff.