Cynthia Toussaint

Co-Founder, For Grace

Cynthia Toussaint serves as spokesperson at For Grace and has had complex regional pain syndrome for 38 years. She later developed fibromylagia and other overlapping, autoimmune conditions. In 2020, she became a breast cancer survivor.

Cynthia founded For Grace in 2002 to raise awareness about CRPS and five years later expanded the organization's mission to include all women in pain. Before becoming ill, she was an accomplished ballerina and worked professionally as a dancer, actor and singer.

Since 1997, Cynthia has been a leading advocate for women in pain, raising awareness through local, national and worldwide media as well as public speaking. Toussaint championed and gave key testimony at two California Senate informational hearings. The first, in May 2001, was dedicated to CRPS awareness. The second took place in February 2004 and explored the chronic undertreatment of and gender bias toward women in pain. Both of these efforts were the first of their kind in the nation.

In 2006, Toussaint ran for the California State Assembly to bring attention to her CRPS Education Bill that Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed after she got it to his desk in its first year. Her next bill, a seven-year effort, was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown in 2015. This Step Therapy legislation reformed an unethical prescription practice used by the health insurance industry to save money in a way that increased the suffering of California pain patients.

Toussaint was the first CRPS sufferer to be featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and on the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio. She is a consultant for The Discovery Channel, ABC News, FOX News, the National Pain Report and PainPathways, the official magazine of the World Institute of Pain. Also, she is a guide and guest contributor for Maria Shriver's Architects of Change website.

Her many speaking engagements include the National Institutes of Health, Capitol Hill and the World Health Organization.

Toussaint is also the author of “Battle for Grace: A Memoir of Pain, Redemption and Impossible Love.” In addition, Toussaint is experiencing her first-ever partial CRPS remission largely due to the narrative therapy of writing this book.

She continues to be a leading advocate for healthcare reform in California. She was instrumental in changing public opinion, which sparked sweeping HMO reform legislation that was signed by Governor Gray Davis in 1999. Her focus has now shifted to creating a single-payer, universal healthcare plan in California that would provide a model for the rest of the country.

In 2019, Toussaint was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer caused by generational trauma and CRPS. Her work is now strongly reflecting her passion for the pain-cancer connection and trauma as a major driver for chronic illness.