Yesterday was a tough day. I work hard to keep my health stuff out of my writing but sometimes the two worlds collide. I couldn’t get motivated. I sat and stared at a blank page for hours and hours until I finally gave up, read a book, ate some Ben & Jerry’s, devoured a couple of episodes of Sons Of Anarchy. If anyone’s going to get me out of a fug, it’s Jax, right?
The weight of the whole cancer thing feels like it’s crushing me sometimes. The darkness seeps in through the cracks. It plays on my guilts, my insecurities. It tells me I’m not good enough, time and time again. Why the hell am I wasting my time writing books when I should be spending every second with my family instead?
Then I realised something... Writing IS me. It’s saved my life and my sanity in the last two years. I swear Dante is a metaphor for how I’ve rallied against all the crap that’s been thrown at me. I’d be a weaker woman without it. I’d be a lesser mum.
Thanks for sticking with me. I have a sneaky suspicion my best is yet to come... Xx💋 #authorlife #mafiaromance #livingmybestlife #livingwithcancer #authorsofinstagram #bookstagram #indieauthorsofinstagram #writersofinstagram #eroticromance #romanceauthor #romancebooks #fuckcancer #amwritingromance #wip
Six months ago I was sat in a busy coffee shop with Lisa. At the table next to us there were three women of a similar age, laughing and joking about nothing in particular. We watched them in silence for a moment and I know we were both thinking the same thing.
What if.
What if we were just a couple of 'normal' thirty-something-year-olds with four young daughters and two husbands between us? What if we hadn’t beaten the worst kind of odds and been diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer within a year of each other?
I can’t claim to have known Lisa well. I wasn’t there to share birthday parties, the christenings of her two beautiful babies and all the other wonderful events in her life. But what I saw of her, I liked and admired. She didn’t have time for self-pity or regret. This was our lot, as shit as it may be. It was up to us to make the most of it.
We first met just after she’d been diagnosed. At the time I was still writing about my cancer treatment for The Huffington Post, bleeding words to ease my own shock and trauma, and a mutual friend introduced us. We quickly established that we shared the same team at Bath RUH. She had the rubbish oncologist that all of us cancer patients avoided, and I suggested she try mine instead. Soon after, she founded Lisa’s Army and raised a staggering amount of money for her children’s future and for our local hospice, helping to put bowel cancer awareness at the forefront of everyone in our community.
She achieved amazing things in such a short amount of time, under the blackest cloud of circumstance. And she was honest. So damn honest, sometimes brutally so, about our treatment and side-effects. I remember watching a video she posted an hour after her latest chemo session with tears streaming down my face. It was the way she detailed the pain, the fatigue and the sickness. Here was someone who ‘got it’, and who wasn’t afraid to show cancer at its cruelest. There was also courage and dignity. Two qualities that I’ll remember most about Lisa. And a legacy that will continue to shine just as bright as she did for years and years to come.
Rest in peace, you beautiful soul. Next coffee is on me xxx
