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Watch Hope on NBC's "Today Show", where she shared tips on how to best support people with cancer, in part one of a four-part series, "Confronting Cancer Today."
Lori Hope is the author of the top rated cancer-support book,
Help Me Live: 20 things people with cancer want you to know.  Hope, a cancer survivor herself, speaks and writes about hope and the importance of communicating compassionately with those rendered especially vulnerable by any disease or difficult condition. An award-winning producer of more than 20 documentaries, a professional blogger, and a former medical reporter and newspaper editor, Hope uses her skill and passion as a communicator to inspire others to find the pleasure in supporting those who are suffering.
Hope's work has appeared in Newsweek and on the Oprah show, and her commentaries have been broadcast on radio stations nationwide. Her book has been featured in media including the Wall Street Journal, Time and Redbook magazines, and she has spoken about fighting the stigma of lung cancer in media from ABC News to the AARP Bulletin. As a public speaker, Hope has worked with The American Cancer Society, Google, and numerous organizations, businesses, and institutions, including UCLA, UCSF, Tulane University School of Medicine, and the American Lung Association. Her message of hope, humor, and the importance of compassionate communication are vital to to anyone who wants to help a friend, colleague, or loved one. As David Spiegel, MD, director of the Stanford University Center on Stress and Health, and author of Living Beyond Limits and Everyone's Guide to Cancer Survivorship: A Road Map for Better Health, wrote about Help Me Live...: "If you or a loved one is struggling with cancer, don't be without Hope."
Background
Hope grew up in the St. Louis, Missouri suburbs of Clayton and Richmond Heights and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in philosophy after studying aesthetics, linguistics, literature, and anthropology. Intrigued by the German poet and writer Rainer Maria Rilke's words, "Learn to love the questions themselves" and "Ask yourself in the still hours of the night: Must I write?" Hope embarked on a career of writing and producing to plumb life's questions and themes and enlist the help of a greater community to provide the answers.
After stints as a general assignment reporter, news anchor, and medical correspondent, Hope became a staff producer at the NBC television affiliate in Portland, Oregon, making documentaries that aired mostly on weeknights, pre-empting Prime Time shows. She moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1993 and became an independent writer, producer, and media and public affairs consultant, later returning to journalism as a newspaper editor, commentator, and columnist.
She was diagnosed with lung cancer on June 20, 2002, by accident (see the Origin of Help Me Live), when her tumor was still very small. A former smoker who quit almost twenty years before her diagnosis, Lori is one of the fortunate 15% who live more than five years after hearing the words, "You have lung cancer." Hope gives back by working with several lung cancer organizations, including the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation, the Lung Cancer Alliance, the National Lung Cancer Partnership, and the Cancer League.
Hope says her mission in all of her work, including her writing, speaking, and public outreach, is to reflect the wisdom of others as well as share her own insights. As Edith Wharton wrote, "There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."
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