Headshots for Media use:
The following headshots are approved for media, and promotional use.
Author Portrait 1
Author Portrait 2
Jocelyn’s Biographies
100 word bio
Jocelyn Rasmussen is an author, inspirational speaker and singing coach. She began her career as a singer and has recorded two albums: Just Love Away and Singing Is Praying Twice. Her work as a singing coach inspired her first book Meant to be Heard. For over a decade she has been in treatment for late-stage ovarian cancer. That experience grew into her second book, This Day Won’t Come Again. Through inspirational talks Jocelyn shares her own evolving story along with wisdom and inspiration to support hope and healing for us all. She lives in Ontario Canada with her partner Doug Thompson.
Full bio
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Jocelyn Rasmussen, MMUS, LLWL, is an author, inspirational speaker and singing coach. She began her career as a singer. She studied and sang jazz and popular music as well as classical and operatic repertoire. Over 20 years of teaching voice lessons, master classes and seminars in New York City she witnessed how life experiences, whether physical, emotional, mental or spiritual, affect the voice and the ability to express oneself. The transformational capacity of the voice inspired her first book Meant to Be Heard.
For over a decade she has been in treatment for late-stage ovarian cancer, and the hope and healing she experienced during this time have grown into her second book, This Day Won’t Come Again with forward by Dr. Akira Sugimoto. She has recorded two albums of original songs: Just Love Away and Singing Is Praying Twice, an album of healing prayers inspired by her journey with ovarian cancer.
As an inspirational speaker, Jocelyn shares her own evolving story along with wisdom and inspiration to support hope and healing for us all. Since returning to Canada, she continues her work as a voice coach in Toronto and London, Ontario, where she lives with her partner, Doug Thompson.
Book images for Media use:
The following images are approved for media, and promotional use.
This Day Won’t Come Again book cover
Meant to be Heard book cover
This Day Won’t Come Again Book Details
Book Summary
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Waking to the stunning realization she had cancer, Jocelyn Rasmussen’s first thought was that she needed a miracle. Her second thought was that she didn’t want to die with any unspent love or grace inside her. Guided by this principle, she entered treatment with faith that she could accept any outcome—from a complete remission to death.
As Rasmussen underwent chemotherapy and radiation, she plunged into the mysteries and certainties of life and death. All of creation, nature and humanity, became fodder for her reflections about healing, time, hope, dreaming, and loving. The deeper she went, the more she realized she was already living the miracle she’d asked for. It was being revealed in every sacred moment of her life—she simply hadn’t always recognized it. Life, she discovered, was radiant with the light of wisdom, the strong and gentle touch of caregiving, the gratitude for another breath, and the surprise of all that was arising.
Tender and uplifting, This Day Won’t Come Again will encourage you to trust your own radiance and allow it to guide you into the unique meaning and purpose that is yours to share as you navigate treatment or caregiving for life-threatening illness.
Why it Matter
There are many wonderful books written by medical experts, therapy experts, patient chronicles, experts on death, grieving and caregiving. Many are written as self-help books with thoughtfully delivered advise for how to navigate cancer and life-threatening illness. ALL ADVICE works for someone sometimes, NONE OF IT works for everyone every time.
Cancer is never the same twice. Each of us has to find our own way through. There are lonely questions that no one can answer for us. When advice doesn’t work, we feel like more of a failure. This Day Won’t Come Again is written from the lens that not everyone can be cured BUT everyone can be healed. It matters because IT IS COMPANY (sometimes for 3:00am when it is too late or too early to reach out to someone). It shares, it questions, and it even listens between the lines (you can put it down and insert yourself into the reading). It doesn’t advise, it encourages you to follow your own questions and see where and who they take you to; it says your choosing is what you are born for and that doesn’t change just because you have cancer
It says your choices and the way you navigate cancer is your gift to the collective story and treatment of cancer; you matter, you are wanted and needed with every breath you take
It speaks to relationships: between patients and caregivers, between work and purpose, between time and aliveness (quality of days)
It speaks about healing: coming to a place of peace and congruence by preparing for all possible outcomes -- working/choosing as though we will live and living as though we may die. NO WAITING. Living fully into the day we have, not with the pressure to be grateful and joyful, but with the invitation to be unapologetically true to ourselves and our loves, to our thoughts and feelings
★★★★★ Praise
“In a relatable book about our human experience, Jocelyn exemplifies that if you love life, you have to love all of it, come what may. She has embraced this concept fully. She lives it, and graciously shares it. I have always said that Jocelyn is lit from within, and with this book she shines her light on us. Told with heartfelt flourish and clear-eyed honesty, it’s a lesson on how to live.”
—Debra McGrath, actress and comedian
“Through the discords of cancer, Jocelyn invites us to listen for the bright, tender, and vibrant notes that carry humanity through our joy and woe. With breathtaking insight, Jocelyn’s personal story, her song of life, inspires. Whatever we are going through, Jocelyn reminds us, we are not alone.”
—Jeffrey Crittenden, PhD, founding director of the Centre for Practical Theology and author of Leisure Resurrected
“Every question, thought, regret, doubt, hope, and fear aroused by a cancer diagnosis is caught, examined, and reframed in this book. What began as a series of talks about Jocelyn’s own dire experience with ovarian cancer is unflinching yet takes shape as a surprisingly practical handbook for how to embrace the many miracles—from the spiritual to the scientific—that enable living with and beyond cancer. This Day Won’t Come Again is a tonic for nurturing creativity through the life of the body even if you haven’t had or never will have cancer.”
—Dawn Morgan, cancer survivor and author of Unsettled: A Reckoning on the Great Plains
Suggested Interview Topics and Sample Questions
Why “This Day Won’t Come Again”?
Sample Response: “Trying to live longer or reconcile the past we miss the days we actually have to live —fully, radiantly, gratefully, lovingly. It’s tempting to focus solely on the immediate circumstance and to take it personally instead of seeing it as the next way we are going to contribute to life; it is an opportunity to focus on how we are connected to life through the long arc of time, the inheritance of disease, the evolution of treatment. Treatment rightfully becomes the priority, but who are we, who do we become, as we go through it? How do we interact with others? How do we trust? Who do we trust? Can we embrace a day as life, not as illness?”
How did you learn you had cancer?
Why did you decide to write this book?
What in your life prepared you to navigate life-threatening illness?
Who were your caregivers and why did you feel you needed to include their journey?
Who have you become as a result of life-threatening illness?
What has this book meant to you? What have you accomplished because of it? Who have you become because of it?
What do you hope others will take away from it?
Signature Keynotes
Time: Presence as a Turning Point
We don’t control time; we transform our relationship to it. Drawing from a lifetime in music and voice, Jocelyn shows how rhythm, breath, and attention shift us from panic and paralysis to clarity and calm.
✔ Reset your pace: from rush or drag to right‑timed action
✔ Navigate different “time zones” across teams & relationships
✔ Embrace aging as evolution—gains, losses, perspective
✔ Reframe setbacks: when time thwarts, it may also assist
✔ Build presence as the lever for habits and healing
✔ Ideal for: patients & caregivers; teams under deadline stress.
Weaving: The Fabric of Life
Life rarely looks tidy in the windshield and often looks miraculous in the rear‑view. This keynote invites audiences to “unweave and reweave” their stories—integrating new learning, compassion, and meaning.
✔ Transform regret and disappointment into insight
✔ Choose new “threads”: perception, language, and practice
✔ Honour what happened while changing how it lives in you
✔ From two‑dimensional tapestries to living, 3‑D stories
✔ Discernment in choosing—evolution isn’t always advancement
✔ Patience for unfolding—yours and others’
✔ Ideal for: survivorship programs; change‑weary teams
Trust: Your Voice Matters
One life, one vote, one drop—every contribution moves the whole. Rooted in voice work, this talk helps audiences trust their experience and speak with grounded courage.
✔ From doubt to dignity: claim your presence and agency
✔ Small acts, real ripples: direction beats volume
✔ Align passion with a simple plan, commitment, and endurance
✔ Silence as power: timing and patience in action
✔ Stories from illness, artistry, and everyday leadership
✔ Ideal for: caregiver cohorts; nonprofit & community teams