A year and a half after her stunning Catholic conversion and miraculous healing from terminal cancer, Canadian podcaster Tammy Peterson’s story of faith, hope and transformation continues to inspire.

Peterson gave an emotional retelling of her powerful faith journey, from atheism and terminal cancer to healing and Catholic conversion, at Toronto’s Hawthorn School for Girls Oct. 28, wiping away tears as she told the crowd about seeing the grief in her then 25-year-old son’s eyes when she told him doctors gave her only 10 months to live. 

That was six years ago.

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Now in remission, Peterson said she chooses to speak publicly about her healing and conversion to give back to God what He has given to her and her family. A life of service to God and neighbour is one she seeks to lead, she said. 

Peterson gave two talks to students, parents, teachers and alumni at Hawthorn, an independent, Catholic-inspired, all-girls school. She delivered a message of hope from lived experience, her own and her family’s health struggles, knowing the depths of despair and hopelessness to finally, miraculously seeing the light of faith.

Peterson spoke of her childhood in a remote northern Alberta town, of growing up in the Protestant church and losing faith at the age of 12. Yet while she was atheist in practice, she was curious about Mother Mary.

“When I was a little kid, I went to Sunday school in the Protestant church, and I wondered where Mother Mary's picture was, because there was no picture of Mother Mary,” she told the crowd.

Despite an especially challenging time since Peterson’s conversion-heard-round-the-internet world — grieving the loss of her beloved father and sister, the loss of her husband’s parents, along with the health battles of her husband and newborn granddaughter, Audrey — Peterson was comfortable showing vulnerability together with strength. Her spiritual mettle shone as she spoke on spiritual resilience.

She revealed to the audience that her husband, renowned Canadian psychologist, author and public speaker Dr. Jordan Peterson, has recently gone back to the hospital. Yet her family remains hopeful he will be home in January.

Peterson spoke lovingly about her husband’s impact upon her faith journey. Listening to him deliver lectures about God on his previous book tours was an important catalyst in her curiosity about faith and God, she said.

Since her conversion, they had discussed many positive changes, culminating in a list of about 30 virtues that impressed her husband about his wife’s radical interior and spiritual transformation. Peterson shared some with the audience: more patience, less cynicism, more centred, more loving, more in the moment, deeper thinking and greater self-reflection.

This heroism of faith is once again being asked of Peterson in the latest health crises facing her family. Her husband’s health has been in the news lately as his daughter Mikhaila Fuller, in a tearful update in early October, said her father had been hospitalized for pneumonia and sepsis. He has since been diagnosed with chronic inflammatory response syndrome (CIRS), an immune system dysfunction that led to a month-long ICU hospitalization in the summer. Fuller’s daughter also had her own health crisis.

“My newborn Audrey almost died of heart failure for no reason in June, dad got sick and came to stay with us in July, then needed a hospital and the same day he went to the hospital by ambulance, my newborn turned blue (again) at home for a different reason not heart related and went a different hospital by ambulance. Within three hours of each other,” Fuller wrote on X of her family’s recent health scares.

Aside from a few YouTube appearances, Jordan Peterson has not given a public lecture since he postponed his “We Who Wrestle with God” world tour in mid-April.

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Peterson shared a recent conversation about her husband with her daughter. 

“She said, ‘I think we can have hope now. He's recovering and he's feeling better.’ And then I came up here and I met Fr. Eric Nicolai outside (today) and he said, ‘We're going to pray on hope. I'm going to bless you on hope.’  

“I have hope for him, so we're praying with hope. He's walking, he's swimming, he's lifting weights, so he's doing what he can to learn good coping skills. He lost a lot of weight, so he's fragile, and his mood is very low,” she told students.

In addition to Dr. Peterson’s physical healing, Peterson said she and her family are praying for spiritual healing.

“We're praying for his heart to accept Jesus Christ as his Saviour because we know that that is the way. That's the way, the truth and the life,” she said.

So where does this leave Peterson and her relationship with God? Is it still solid?

Peterson said she has not given up her daily practice of prayer, she continues to go to Mass, she continues to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to support friends and relatives which helps maintain her interior grounding (her father battled with alcohol), and she still manages to find the silver lining in tough circumstances.

“Gratitude and hope go together,” Peterson told the Register. “If you can find what you could be grateful for, then you can find hope in that.”

Peterson’s lesson pointing towards the quintessential Christian message of the Cross and Resurrection was “life changing” for 17-year-old student Isabella Arruda, who attended the Easter Vigil with her family when Peterson was confirmed.

“I always keep in mind Christ's sacrifice, and how little things that I do in my daily life that maybe I don't want to do or are harder for me, it's nothing compared to what He suffered for us to have eternal life,” Arruda said.

She said Peterson is also a role model in “finding that bright side, turning it into something positive and saying, ‘You know what, I'm going to grow from this. I'm going to be better coming out of this,’ those hard moments, right?”

The theme of radical conversion left a lasting impression upon Grade 12 student Maddy Cole.

“We're actually writing an editorial for our school newspaper about hope and peace, and how there has been a little bit of a Christian revival and how that's so important because in a world (where) there's war and sickness and lots of atheists, and people who don't believe, it's just so beautiful to see hope and peace and to have her talk about it, that just hits home,” Cole said.

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Kara Johnson, Hawthorn’s former director of character education, can relate to Peterson’s story because of her own cancer battle.

“I think her approach to knowing herself and being open to her journey, to hear her testify to how she hears things and makes changes accordingly, it’s really heroic,” Johnson said.