Background

Christine Karen Clifford was born on March 13, 1954, in Saint Clair Shores, Michigan, United States, to Frank Meyer, a physician, and Mary C. Meyer. Unfortunately, her mother died of cancer at age forty-two.

Education

Clifford was educated at the University of Denver in 1975, as well as at the University of Minnesota next year.

Career

Early in her career, Clifford was a humorist, public speaker and businesswoman. When Clifford was diagnosed with breast cancer at age forty in 1994, it came as a shock but not a complete surprise. Clifford was determined not to repeat her mother’s experience. A dynamic individual, Clifford was at that time a highly successful salesperson for a Minneapolis information and merchandising services firm, with clients that included K-Mart, Procter & Gamble, Toys ‘R’ Us, and other high-profile corporations. The cancer experience changed her life, but not in a tragic way. After having surgery on December 31, 1994 and going through ten months of chemotherapy, Clifford became the founding president of a company. The Cancer Club, devoted to helping those affected by cancer—both patients and their loved ones—find healing humor in their situation. The firm markets hooks and tapes by Clifford, a quarterly newspaper with contributions from other cancer patients around the country, and such products as a coffee mug, “Attitude” pins, “guardian angel” pins, and a T-shirt. The company has been successful enough to have donated twenty thousand dollars to cancer-related charities in 1996 and 1997. As a public speaker, Clifford travels busily around the country giving inspirational, humorous talks.

The humorous approach to cancer came to Clifford in stages and does not exclude grief: she has been capable of crying at any point in the experience, she assured Joyce Terveen in the Detroit News. However, she first laughed eight days after her diagnosis, and it was a memorable experience for her. As time went on, following her surgery, she was disappointed at how uncomfortable many of her visitors seemed, how unwilling to say anything humorous. One night only six weeks after her surgery, she had what she calls a “Twilight Zone” experience: waking in the middle of the night, she drew approximately fifty humorous cartoons illustrating the comical side of her experience thus far. She sent cartoons to some of the people who had helped her during the ordeal of chemotherapy, and the response was favorable: her visitors seemed more comfortable after receiving the cartoons. Researching the market for books on cancer-related humor, she found that there was an opening for such a concept. She hired a professional illustrator, Jack Lindstrom, to redraw her cartoons, and wrote her first book Not Now ... I'm Having a No Hair Day around them.

The book was followed by Our Family Has Cancer, Too! This 1997 children’s book, which includes eighteen illustrations by Lindstrom, is written by Clifford but narrated in the voice of her elder son, Tim, who tells the reader what it was like to help their mother get through her battle with cancer. The book contains a “Questions to Ask” section that encourages the young reader to write down questions for doctors, teachers and others; it also includes a glossary of cancer-related terms that are likely to be new to children in cancer-affected families; and it is punctuated by “Stop and Discuss” points that urge parents and children to talk about what they have just read. The overall approach, as with all Clifford’s Cancer Club creations, is life-affirming and humor-affirming.

While she admits that having cancer is a very serious trial, Clifford notes that the process of treatment and recovery is at least six months long: “If you don’t find some humor during that time, you’re going to dry up,” she told. Meanwhile, Clifford’s own battle with cancer seemed to be on its way to victory as of late 1996, and she continues gathering the support, not only of a loving family, but of an increasingly large audience of readers and listeners.

Clifford became a founder of a celebrity golf tournament The Christine Clifford Celebrity Golf Invitational in 2006. The earnings of the tournament were used for breast cancer research. By 2011, Clifford donated $1,000,000 through the money collected from the tournament. Two years later Clifford was informed that she got the cancer again, for which she had a double mastectomy. During her treatment for cancer she wrote her book Laugh 'Til It Heals: Notes from the World's Funniest Cancer Mailbox.

After her second divorce, which came in 2010, Clifford established Divorcing Divas with her friend Barbara Greenburg. Next year the organization partnered with Tubman, a non-profit shelter in Minneapolis for abused women.

Clifford is the owner and administrator of Christine Clifford Enterprises, an organization under which four companies reside, offering motivational speaking and other services on sales, marketing, divorce and cancer.

As a writer, Clifford has authored eight books in general.

Achievements

• Christine K. Clifford is an award-winning author and speaker who has worked with thousands of organizations worldwide to help people cope with adversity. Her first book Not Now ... I'm Having a No Hair Day received a good reception, gathering awards or nominations within the health-book and motivational fields. Her books became the Best Health Book of 1995/1996, the Best First Book of 1996, were nominated for the Best Motivational Book of 1996. Clifford won the Midwest Independent Publishers Association Award from National Multiple Sclerosis Society in 1997. Clifford won The Order of the Delta Gamma Rose from the Delta Gamma fraternity in July 2002.

Works

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  • Cancer Has Its Privileges

    (Stories of Hope and Laughter; Christine Clifford has gath...)

    2002
  • Let's Close a Deal

    (Turn Contacts Into Paying Customers for Your Company, Pro...)

    2013
  • Our Family Has Cancer Too

    (When their mother is diagnosed with cancer, sixth grader ...)

    2002
  • The Clue Phone's Ringing... It's For You!

    (The Clue Phone’s Ringing … It’s for You! is an inspiratio...)

    2011
  • You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself

    (The insightful guide that will show you how to package an...)

    2007
  • Laugh 'til it Heals

    (Christine Clifford says, “laughter reaches a place no med...)

    2011
  • Your Guardian Angel's Gift

    (This book is the result. It recites a poem Christine wrot...)

    2017
  • Not Now I'M Having A No Hair Day 2003

Views

Quotations: "Don’t forget to laugh."

Membership

Clifford is a member of the Minnesota Speakers Association, the National Speakers Association, the American Association for Therapeutic Humor and the National Association of Breast Cancer Organizations.

Connections

Clifford was married to John Clifford, but the couple divorced. Clifford divorced her second husband, as well. She has children - Tim and Brooks.

Father:

Frank Meyer

Mother:

Mary C. Meyer

child:

Tim Clifford

child:

Brooks Clifford

1-st husband:

John Clifford