CHRISTEN  E.  CIVILETTO

I’ve heard this saying more times than I care to count. “You Can’t Fight City Hall.” Essentially, people are saying that it’s foolish to fight a battle you’ll inevitably lose. You’ll get tangled in a bureaucratic nightmare from which you’ll never emerge unscathed. You can’t, so you shouldn’t even try. I think that’s ridiculous. Let’s be clear: When you’re standing against wrong things, you can fight City Hall. And win. Let’s start with having the right frame of mind. Thinking

Living in Niagara Falls, New York, means that you hear a lot about cancer. It’s a fact of life in this corner of New York State. Your grandparents or parents may have had it. More likely, your cousins, friends, or aunts and uncles were diagnosed with it. Maybe even you. All normal. Or so I thought. In my early twenties, I moved away from the Falls to attend law school and start my career as an attorney. I lived in Nashville, Tennessee, and then Atlanta, Georgia. I developed