“Why Not Me?”

Mariat Jibril was diagnosed with cancer twice. She spent two years unable to walk. And at her lowest point, she caught herself asking the question almost everyone asks in that situation: why me? “Then my brain — because I’ve been working on myself — said: why not me?” she told Port Moody Pulse. “Why can’t I just be who I am and enjoy my life? What’s going to stop me?”

She kept her wheelchair and lived anyway. Every day in the hospital, she gave her leg a little more effort than the day before. “I couldn’t move it, but I was giving little effort every day, every day, every day. Six months in hospital, and I got discharged, and I continued.” Today, she doesn’t need the wheelchair.

That instinct — choosing better, deliberately, again and again — is where Better Not Bitter Society gets its name. The organization was born from more than the cancer. Mariat has also survived gender-based violence, serious financial hardship, and a divorce that led her to move across an ocean alone, choosing Canada for a fresh start. Better Not Bitter runs almost entirely free programming, has reached over 6,000 people, and maintains a newsletter list topping 7,000.

In November 2025, the City of Vancouver proclaimed November 7th “Choose Better Day.” Mariat lives and works in Port Moody, and Better Not Bitter keeps an office here alongside its Vancouver location. The organization’s third annual Summit, BNB26, runs November 6th at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre. Learn more at betternotbitter.ca.