What do you do when rock bottom keeps finding you?
In this deeply moving episode, Pam Robertson shares her story of survival — not once, but multiple times. From the depths of addiction to losing her brother, and then a stage four lung cancer diagnosis. Pam has been through more than most people can imagine.
But here’s the thing: she’s still here. And she’s still fighting.
Pam doesn’t sugarcoat the hard parts. She talks about numbing herself with substances while still being a “responsible” addict, the moment she knew she had to get help, and the excruciating process of detox and rebuilding trust with her children.
She shares the emotional weight of grief, and what it was like to hear the words “stage four lung cancer” after everything she’d already survived.
But this episode isn’t about suffering — it’s about resilience. Pam talks about how faith, community, mindset, and surrendering control have kept her alive and hopeful through treatments, brain metastases, and the mental battle of living with cancer.
She shares practical tools for protecting your nervous system, maintaining hope when your body is at war, and why believing in your healing matters more than you think.
FAQ
Who is Pam Robertson and what is her story?
Pam Robertson is a survivor of addiction, devastating grief, and stage four lung cancer and she is still here, still fighting, and still full of hope.
She recovered from alcohol and drug addiction nearly 16 years ago, lost her brother to suicide in 2018, and was diagnosed with stage four small cell lung cancer in February 2024. Despite brain metastases and multiple rounds of radiation, Pam continues to live with faith, resilience, and a remarkable sense of peace. She shares her raw and unfiltered story on the Worthy & Rewritten podcast.
How did Pam know it was time to get help for her addiction?
It wasn’t one dramatic moment it was a single question that planted a seed. A friend asked Pam if she thought she could ever quit. That night she made the decision. The very next morning she walked into the mental health office and said she was done and needed help. She had no plan, no roadmap just a decision. She checked into residential treatment and has been sober for nearly 16 years since that morning.
What did Pam's recovery journey actually look like?
Pam’s recovery involved several layers of support, built up over time:
- Residential treatment — she checked in voluntarily after making her decision to quit
- AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) — she engaged with the community and program after leaving treatment
- Celebrate Recovery — a deeper, faith-based program she found particularly powerful, which connected her with a community of women she calls her spiritual sisters
- Faith — she describes her relationship with God as the foundation that held everything together, the place she could hand her burdens when they became too heavy to carry alone
She says she has no regrets about the past and believes she became a better person because of it.
How did Pam cope with losing her brother to suicide?
Pam’s brother died by suicide in 2018, the same year she opened her tiny home building company. She describes him as her little baby brother and says it was her first experience of losing someone that close. The woman running her marketing program at the time had also experienced sudden grief and helped Pam navigate some of what she was feeling. Pam talks about the importance of tending to grief rather than pushing through it, and credits the community around her for helping her carry it.
How does Pam maintain hope while living with stage 4 cancer?
Pam says she can sometimes forget she even has cancer, because she genuinely believes she is healed.
She uses several specific practices to protect her mindset during treatment:
- Redirecting her thoughts — she listens to podcasts for hours to pull her mind away from worst-case thinking
- Surrendering control — she describes handing her burdens over to God as the thing that removes the weight she cannot carry alone
- Taking a deliberate break — she took several months off worrying about cancer over Christmas, going on adventures and spending time with family
- Believing in her healing — she holds the belief that she is healed, and says the longer she holds it, the sooner it will be true
What does Pam say about protecting the nervous system during cancer?
One of Pam’s most practical insights: cancer affects the central nervous system, and protecting it is one of the most important things you can do during treatment.
She worked with a practitioner in the massage and physiotherapy space to help regulate her vagus nerve and keep her body in a parasympathetic calm and restful state rather than a chronic stress response. She credits this as genuinely helpful to her wellbeing throughout treatment. Research in oncology supports this: chronic stress during cancer suppresses immune function and makes healing harder, while keeping the nervous system regulated creates better conditions for the body to recover.
What treatment has Pam had for her stage 4 lung cancer?
Pam was diagnosed with stage four small cell lung cancer — adenocarcinoma with ALK positive rearrangement. Her treatment has included:
- ALK inhibitor medication — a targeted pill designed to suppress the primary tumour in her lung, which was 4.5 centimetres at diagnosis and has since shrunk
- Brain radiation (twice) — she developed up to nine brain metastases and underwent radiation to treat them, a procedure she refers to as “the ZAP”
- A second inhibitor medication — when her first medication timed out, she was moved to a new one
- Regular scans every three to four months — she describes the waiting period between scans as one of the hardest parts of the journey
Can you survive stage 4 lung cancer?
Stage 4 lung cancer is serious but it is not automatically a death sentence, and Pam’s story is living proof of that.
Survival depends heavily on the specific cancer type, biomarker results, and treatment response. Pam’s cancer ALK positive adenocarcinoma responds well to targeted inhibitor medications that can shrink tumours and brain metastases without traditional chemotherapy. If you or a loved one has received this diagnosis, one of the most important steps is asking your oncologist specifically about biomarker testing. The results determine which targeted therapies are available to you, and for some mutations like ALK positive, those therapies can be remarkably effective.
How does faith help during addiction recovery and serious illness?
For Pam, faith is not a support system it is her foundation. Across both of her major life challenges, faith served a specific function: it gave her somewhere to put the weight of what she could not control.
In recovery, she found community through Celebrate Recovery and a group of women who became her spiritual sisters. During cancer, she describes the act of handing her burdens to God as the thing that removes the load she cannot carry herself. She is not vague about it she says clearly that nothing is impossible for God, and that surrendering the outcome is how she stays at peace while waiting for scan results every few months.
What is Pam's message to someone who feels like rock bottom keeps finding them?
That is Pam’s direct answer, and it carries weight because of who is saying it. This is a woman who has survived addiction, the death of her brother by suicide, stage four lung cancer, and up to nine brain metastases. She is not offering empty reassurance. She says we cannot control the outcome, but we can surrender to it and trust that things end up okay. She talks about riding the storm rather than fighting it, and about handing the uncontrollable over to something greater than yourself. It is the message of someone who has been to the bottom — more than once — and found their way back every single time.
