A Toronto mom and former ultramarathon runner has penned a memoir and self-help book about abandoning perfectionism, based on her experience living with an incurable brainstem tumour.

Susie Rinehart was with her husband on their 15th wedding anniversary when she got the devastating diagnosis that a tumour was wrapped around her brain stem and vocal cords.

She was given two options: do nothing and likely die within five months or try high-risk emergency surgery.

“I remember the neurosurgeon looking right at me and saying, ‘First you lose your voice and then you won’t be able to run or even walk and then you’ll die,” Rinehart told CTV’s Your Morning.

“My husband said to me ‘We’re all going to die, how do you want to live?’ So I just decided to go forward that I would have to choose joy over fear and brave over perfect.”

Rinehart chose surgery and endured a 36-hour operation, after which she was unable to speak for months afterwards.

She used the healing time to write her memoir and part self-help book “Fierce Joy: Choosing Brave Over Perfect to Find My True.”

“I picked up my pen and I wrote myself back to a strong voice,” she said.

“I was raised that I could be anything, but the way I internalized that was that I had to be everything and I ran myself ragged trying to be a perfect mom and a perfect leader and a perfect wife.

“What happened was that, instead of being myself, I was trying to be somebody else.”

Rinehart writes about how she had to abandon perfectionism and embraced the power of saying “no.”

“By saying no I made space to say yes to the things that I loved and I actually ended up finishing the book,” she said.

“I have an incurable disease so it’s controllable and what that means is that I have to live with the unknown and I’m making peace with that.”

Rinehart said she wrote the book to be a toolkit for herself and others facing the unknown.