Author

From The Heart

The Ripple Effect of the Comfort Heart...written with Deanna Jones.

Since the Comfort Heart Initiative launched in 1996, over 260,000 individuals from all over the world have become Holders of the Heart. As the hearts have been ordered and reordered, the ripple effect of the Comfort Heart has surfaced.

Over the years, Carol Ann Cole has received countless letters that speak to good times and bad, sickness and health, the very young, and the young at heart. The letters she shares with you in From the Heart are filled with hope and comfort.

Carol Ann is a two-time breast cancer survivor. Net proceeds from the sale of From the Heart go to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.

Carol Ann Cole, C.M. is a motivational speaker and a bestselling author. Her first three books, Comfort Heart — A Personal Memoir (with Anjali Kapoor), Lessons Learned Upside the Head and If I Knew Then What I Know Now were written while the idea for From the Heart was percolating in the back of her mind.

Carol Ann is a member of the Order of Canada and has received numerous other awards for her volunteer work. She is currently working on her first novel, Paradise.

If I Knew Then What I Know Now

The Clarity that Comes With Cancer and Age

Carol Ann Cole offers her incredible journey of the path she has walked from ages sixteen to sixty. She writes of the clarity that comes with age and, in her case, a recurrence of breast cancer sixteen years after her initial diagnosis. In 1992 Carol Ann and her mother both battled cancer at the same time. In 2008, Carol Ann continued to learn from her mother as she faced this killer disease without her mother by her side.

In intimate and sometimes heartbreaking detail, Carol Ann provides insight into a woman's emotions and fears following a routine mammogram and ultimately a clean bill of health. Not taking herself too seriously, she shares the lighter side of her breast cancer recurrence and finds a way to lift your heart as you read her story. You will never view a mammography machine or an operating room the same way again.

The author speaks of her Comfort Heart Initiative fundraiser that is alive and well many years after being launched in 1996. There are now over 228,000 Comfort Hearts in the hands of people in Canada and around the world, and some of their stories are collected here. Carol Ann also includes stories from others who have opened their hearts to share their challenges of retirement, cancer and mental illness. The author writes of her own battle with depression and how she reached out for help.

If I Knew Then What I Know Now includes Carol Ann's passion for family, honesty, helping others, the bond of friendship, battling and beating cancer one more time and much more. If you are looking for that special book that will give you hope and courage, this is the book for you.

Lessons Learned Upside the Head

Lessons Learned Upside the Head is a book with the potential to help you make positive changes in your life and the lives you touch each day - if you are willing to listen to your heart and are open to change. Carol Ann Cole draws on her life's experiences laced with examples of how the simplest tasks in life can bring you the most happiness and success. Having learned to communicate, celebrate, lighten up, share, care, and dare to go it alone, Carol Ann will guide you as you revisit your own personal skills.

The author writes compellingly about her work and personal life as she takes you through lessons learned from her small-town upbringing in Wilmot, Nova Scotia, to the boardrooms of Bell Canada during her heady executive days. Less than two years following her own experience with cancer, Carol Ann walked away from her executive career and boldly walked through the doorways that cancer blew wide open. In telling her story from the heart, she serves up the opportunity for the reader to take a fresh look at one's own life. Carol Ann refocused her energies on what is really important: family, friends and finding a way to contribute while leading a more meaningful life. Her story includes leaving home at eighteen to make her mark in a man's world and her life as a single parent after marriage, motherhood and divorce, all in her early twenties. This book follows her climbing (and sometimes stumbling on) the slippery corporate ladder, battling breast cancer while watching it take her mother's life at the same time and ultimately learning to become a new and better person as the result of sickness and hardship.

Carol Ann Cole is an accomplished motivational speaker, an author, a recognized business professional in corporate Canada and the founder of the Comfort Heart Initiative, which has raised over $1 million for cancer research. A member of the Order of Canada, she started out in the business world as a typist and went on to be one of the first female vice presidents at Bell Canada. In 1992, when she and her mother were both diagnosed with breast cancer, she decided there was more to life than climbing the corporate ladder. She walked away from her job at Bell and began what was to be the greatest adventure of her life.

Comfort Heart

By Carol Ann Cole with Anjali Kapoor

The story of the founder of the Comfort Heart Initiative is as inspiring as the power of the Comfort Hearts themselves. Carol Ann Cole was born in Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, and at the age of 18 left to find a career in the "big city" of North Bay, eventually landing a job at Bell Canada. As she began to climb the ranks of the company in the early 1970s, she realized the obstacles that woman faced in the corporate world, especially a single mother. She continued to persevere and became one of the first female vice presidents of one of the country's biggest corporations.

And then her world came crashing down.

Within days both Carol Ann and her mother were diagnosed with breast cancer. While Carol Ann was able to beat it, the loss of her mother later that year had a monumental impact on her life. When she walked into a pewter store and discovered the Worry Hearts, small hearts that you would rub in times of stress, she knew she'd found the way to give back to the cancer community. By altering the design and renaming them Comfort Hearts, Carol Ann created the Comfort Heart Initiative and to date has raised over one million dollars for cancer research. That little piece of pewter has become a talisman for over 208,000 Canadians and their families.

This is a story of determination and courage, and how you can accomplish all your goals if you put your mind — and heart — to it.

To order your copy of Comfort Heart - A Personal Memoir please

- visit your favourite book store  or

- go to Chapters on-line at www.chapters-indigo.ca

Paradise 548 

Private investigator Paradise d’Entremont Rhodes is reunited with Thomas and with Hope, the daughter she has longed to find since the day she gave her life and then gave her up. They’re a family of three, and everything should be perfect. Yet, something is wrong. Thomas reveals a secret, a long-term relationship with a local woman named Wikolia. Five years in the convent didn’t give Paradise the understanding of personal relationships that she now needs. Reuniting with her brother was one of the main reasons Paradise left the convent. Wilmot is still missing and, with no leads at all, she feels guilty.

Trying to add to her PI experience, coming to grips with Thomas’ past, and struggling to adapt to her new life in Hawaii, Paradise is unsettled. Her daughter is the only bright light in her day and she finds herself being pulled back to the tiny village of Cape St Mary in Nova Scotia and in particular 548 Cape St Mary Road. Overwhelmed with so many concerns Paradise makes a decision that could change her life and the lives of Thomas and Hope forever. Sometimes, hard choices have to be made.