Radnor-bred author, cancer survivor and YouTube phenomenon Kelly Corrigan changed thousands of lives with her poignant memoir, The Middle Place. She took time out from fame and mommy-hood to share a few life lessons—ones she learned the hard way.

Kelly Corrigan may not have set out to be a provocateur. But she plays the role admirably.
Cancer is “a beautiful experience,” she tells me over the phone, not far into our interview at 7 a.m., one of the only scraps of free time in her overbrimming life as a celebrated author, speaker, screenwriter, photographer, mother of two, wife and cancer survivorship icon.

“It was an amazing experience. I would not give it up. If someone said, ‘You could go back in time and erase the whole thing,’ I would not. No, thank you. It sounds audacious, but my husband feels the same way.”
It’s that kind of talk that has elevated Corrigan—whose book The Middle Place came out in paperback this year near the top of The New York Times best-seller list—from mere author to symbol for a movement.

The Main Line native and Silicon Valley resident laid her life bare in that memoir, covering her upbringing in Radnor, her father’s battle with cancer and her own dreaded diagnosis. But even she was surprised by the resonance her story found with a generation of moms, wives and survivors. An equal mix of poignancy and humor, self-effacement and enlightenment, The Middle Place’s navigation of that territory between the comfortable security of childhood and the fragile power of parenthood turned the former nonprofit worker into an adored storyteller. Her femme-bonding video, Transcending, attracted a million YouTube viewers within its first week and more than 4 million views to date.

These days, 40-something Corrigan is cancer free and feeling the love of a generation. With columns in O Magazine and Good Housekeeping, frequent speaking engagements and both a screenplay and a second memoir in the works, she’s keeping busy. But MAINLINE caught up with her one very early California morning to chat about her health, her quest for spirituality, and why she refuses to believe the hype.

Your video Transcending was an overnight YouTube phenomenon. What’s the backstory on that?
I gave about 100 readings last year around the country, and I was getting asked to do a lot of stuff in October, which is breast cancer awareness month. There was no way that I would be able to go to all these things, so I thought that maybe I would just send them something. I had been reading this newspaper column that I wrote at some events, and it got a really strong reaction—it actually was the first standing ovation that I’ve ever got, and people were hugging me after, and it was really intense to know that people were responding that it. I was totally overwhelmed by this reaction. So one day last year I was in Philly doing a reading at my friend Eileen’s house in Rosemont, ending with that speech. I asked this guy to come videotape it. So for $300 he filmed it, the next day I went to Janis Productions and had some still photos slipped in there, and that is how Transcending was created.

Your publishers asked you to post the video to coincide with the paperback release. What happened then?
I put it on my blog, which has about 5,000 subscribers, and I think that’s where it started. The publishers and I originally estimated that we would have between 10,000 and 80,000 hits a month. Within a week it was a million, and a month later it was almost 3 million.

What was your reaction?
I was getting tons of emails from people who had their own special group of friends, and it made me happy to know that other people have the same kind of connection with people that I do. … There were some emails that were really specific. People who had lost touch with girlfriends because of past rifts said they used the video as a way to reconnect. And then I was hearing even more amazing things. Like there was a guy in Chicago whose wife had passed away after a long battle with cancer, and he used the video to tell people. He sent an email to her friends far and wide, telling them she finally passed, and, if she could have, this is what she would have said to them. Transcending was read at her funeral. It’s incredibly, hugely satisfying to me. It’s been really useful to people and that feels good.

You’ve called it the ultimate greeting card. In what sense?
I think that people are using it to talk to one another. And I think that there are things that people want to say to each other, but it’s hard to put your finger on it and find the words when you have deep feelings. Like, “I’m not just saying thank you, I’m saying really, really thank you.” And so I think it serves that purpose. … I’ve had people in my life that I’ve so adored, and until I got cancer I never had a reason to tell them. When I got sick I just ran around telling people I loved them for a year. And now it just rolls off my tongue.

Has the video changed the trajectory of your career?
The video changed everything. Short of being on television, there is nothing that anyone can do to bring a book to the attention of 4 million people. I think the Today show has an audience of 6 million, so 4 million people is a huge number. It completely changed the trajectory of the book.

Does your success ever astonish you?
I don’t think I’ve internalized it yet. It’s very abstract. … Day to day everything is exactly the same.

But of course your life has changed on some levels.
It’s amazingly ephemeral; it just hasn’t changed my life. I think it would surprise anyone from the other side, because I’m a reader too and I go to all these lectures and I always thought the authors were so cool. But really I’m just pulling on my sweatpants, running the girls down to school, flying back to bed with my laptop, forgetting to go do my art volunteering. Nothing has changed. The one material thing that has changed is that I’m in touch with many more people than I had been. A lot of people have found me, people from summer camp, people from Sunday school, from Martin’s Dam. … And as soon as I got sick people found me. They found me because they found out I was sick, not because I had published a book.

What about that? How are you feeling?
Everything is great. It’ll be five years on Jan. 10 of next year. To celebrate I’m going to have a really nice dinner party for the eight friends that were in our house the day I got diagnosed.

Beyond the physical, how has being a cancer survivor affected you? Do you ever dwell on your mortality?
I think about it a lot in the shower. And I am forced to think about it when I’m doing readings because there a lot of people in the room who are cancer survivors, and not just  breast cancer. But it’s not something I want to shove out of my mind. It serves me well to be aware of my mortality. It helps me to not put things off. There are a lot of things that I want to do and this gives me a lot of courage.

What kind of support did you have?
My support was really kind of spotty. There were some really obvious people that were absent, who later came forward and said, “I’m really sorry. I was just shell-shocked. I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t want to make it worse somehow.”

Did you forgive them?
Totally. But I feel sorry for them. They missed this beautiful experience, and it’s really a good thing to have gone though, the way that people love each other through stuff, it’s really powerful, and I wish they knew that. I wish they had that experience where you were able to be useful to someone else because it’s pretty enlarging.
Cancer was a beautiful experience?
Yeah, it was an amazing experience. I would not give it up. If someone said, “You could go back in time and erase the whole thing,” I would not. No, thank you. It sounds audacious, but my husband feels the same way.

Even though it could come back?
Knowing that it turned out as it did, it was an incredible experience. Many people I know would say that it’s the best/worst year of your life. Now I feel lucky to have experienced it.

You chronicled your recovery in photos. What’s it like now looking back?
It’s totally surreal. I have to look and look at the photos until I really remember what it felt like to be the person in the picture. Photography is to me a very distancing thing. It’s the way to make a two-dimensional image out of an emotional experience. And so it puts a lot of space between how it felt to be going through it and this little piece of paper in your hand.

Do people create book clubs just to host you?
Last year, before this kind of explosion, people would just host parties in their houses like trunk shows, and they would gather up the women from their kids’ schools. I would do a reading and we would sell books; it was like a Tupperware party. Now, everything is so much more official and the scale is really different. Where it used to be 50 to 70 people, now it’s 300 to 500.

What about the Web site you started, circusofcancer.org? What was your impetus for starting it?
I knew, as everyone who goes through any kind of crisis knows, that forever after they will be associated with that crisis and that people will come to them for advice when they are having a similar crisis. What I went through is something that 200,000 women a year go through. It’s so common, and yet so many people are tongue-tied when they hear about a diagnosis. So all I wanted to do was to make sure that other people got good support when they are sick. I wanted to help all the people around the patient understand what it’s like, what it looks like, and what to do during the different stages of treatment. So the focus is very narrow; it’s just for friends and family who want to learn to love someone through cancer treatment.

What are you working on now?
I’m working on a screenplay that’s a comedy. It’s a story I made up about a place near my house here in Oakland. It’s an old-time theme park with a puppet theater. It got me wondering how such a thing can exist in the middle of the urban blight that is Oakland and how it survived all these years, and who runs it, and why it’s important. I also have five other completed screenplays.

Through your writing, what’s the most important thing you want to tell women? What would you say to your daughters?
That’s sort of what the second book is: If I would say one thing, or encourage people to do one thing, what would it be? So, I don’t think I can summarize it in a sentence or two, and that’s the question I ask myself. Here I am with this unbelievable opportunity to speak to a lot of people at once, what do you want to say to them? What do you want to encourage them to do?

What does celebrating Mother’s and Father’s day mean to you? What would be an ideal day?
We’re still celebrating up, which means its more my mother’s and father’s day than mine or my husband’s. If I were in Philly for Mother’s Day we would go to church, then probably go get an early lunch at a place that wasn’t too loud. My mom would get a nice glass of chardonnay with ice cubes on the side and then maybe a manicure. Father’s day? Lacrosse, lacrosse, lacrosse. We would go to church and then drive around from one lacrosse game to another, and we would just gladhand people. That would be a dream day for him.

What do you miss most about the Main Line?
I miss the people. Some of my favorite people on the planet live on the Main Line. And I’m really lucky because I have so many relationships that are still going strong because I get back there so often. In 16 years, I averaged four visits a year to the Main Line, and this past couple years it’s been more like six.

Would you ever move back here?
Yeah, I would. But I wouldn’t do it today; I wouldn’t upset this applecart right now. Our kids are in a great school and my husband works in Silicone Valley and he likes that. There’s the food, which is outrageous. And the weather. And we don’t have mosquitoes. No humidity—my hair looks better out here.