I have been asked a number of times to speak to groups of people and relate my story. What follows is an extract of a speech I did for a Women’s Day event:

I have a particular story, a narrative which is unique to me and my life. But so do all of you. All of us have had to overcome burdens we thought unbearable, overcome threats and fears that left us immovable, there is loss of opportunity, there is the loss of dignity when we are rejected due to prejudice and stereotypes, and there is the loss of broken relationships and broken people. And sometimes there is loss of life itself – a parent, a partner, a child.

We all carry our own story. As I like to say: Everyone has their own stuff (*actually I usually say “everyone has their own shit”, but this was polite company). And we all deal with that stuff (*ie shit) in very different ways and means. Our fears, hurts and concerns may not be unique, but our stories are and we all have a story to tell which we carry with us every day.

So tonight I would like to share my story – which is one of immense loss and heartache, of pain and sorrows I never thought possible, of challenges and despair that ate at my soul. But more importantly I would like to share with you what I learnt as I walked my path, and how my life prepared me for what was to come and for what will still come my way.

In October 2013 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Three days later I had a mastectomy, and 58 days thereafter my husband and mother were killed in a car accident, in the car that I was driving, wherein my only child was a passenger. This was all sudden and unexpected. In a matter of two months my life changed irrevocably, my life changed so profoundly in a manner no one could ever have expected. In a matter of minutes on 21 December 2013 the life I knew was over.

I had to wake my daughter and tell her that her beloved father and grandmother were forever gone. I had to lie in a hospital bed with my only child on the bed adjacent to me, unable to hold her and physically comfort her for excruciating days, as neither of us were allowed to move due to our physical injuries. I had to wait two weeks to commemorate my husband and mother. I could not go to my husband’s cremation service as my child was too distraught for me to leave her. I could not go to my mother’s service either, as my child was in no psychological state to get into a car and travel almost 500km.

I was swallowed in a deep wave of grief. I was overwhelmed by a tsunami of pain, trauma and loss. It was a wave which knocked me off my feet, made me feel disorientated and out of touch with reality – my past reality and my new reality. It was a wave which pounded the life force out of me, it filled my heart, mind and lungs – I could not think or even breathe.

At the time I held a very senior position in local government. Our daughter was nine. I had a wonderful, caring and supportive husband, who challenged me every day to be the best I could. A husband who remains the funniest, kindest, humblest and most intelligent person I have ever met. Every single day he made me think, made me question and made me re-evaluate my life and my values. And almost everyday people were bemused and amazed that we were together and had been for 15 years because we were so different – but we held the same values and that is what makes a relationship, after all.

My husband was the primary care-giver to our child, and my mother was his back-up. I was home very seldom, working late nights and early mornings, away almost every week and working many weekends.

My family would on occasions wake up to find a note that I had left the house to sort out some crisis or another in the hours before dawn. They knew I would return long after dark. I had a career which was only possible due to this support from my husband and mother – much like many of us in this room who rely on caregivers for our children, who can only do what we do because of others.

I was surrounded by a management team and staff who I could always rely upon and trust. I had a support network of colleagues and acquaintances who cared about my wellbeing and health. I had dear friends that ached for my husband, my child, my mother, myself and our family.

But it was only in the days and months after the accident and operations that I would learn so much more than I ever thought possible.

I learnt about the cruel brutality of loss, but I also learnt that when the wave of loss of life sucks you under rendering you hopeless and helpless, you can kick against the bottom, and rise up to find your surface and breathe again.

I learnt in the face of challenge you can choose joy, and find new meaning from your experience. And what I want to share with you today is about what comes next, what you can do to be more resilient, and how to find your inner power to overcome, no matter how or when it hits you.

It is about more than what you go through and what you have to overcome – but rather it is about how you survive and learn to thrive again.

So the first thing I found within myself was gratitude. How ironic that is – to lose my husband, my mother and part of myself and learn to be grateful. How much worse things could have been? Well, my daughter could have died, my husband could have lived but may have been left a quadriplegic, I may have been left wheelchair-bound, or I could have had an invasive life threatening cancer which left me with weeks or months to live. Instead I was given an illness which I could overcome and which revealed to me the reason I had chosen to marry Eric and make a life with him.

I grew to love my husband all over again in those last two months we had together and so my gratitude grew:

• I had a wonderful husband who was steadfast in his support, kindness and love,
• I had a beautiful daughter who understood mommy was sick and sad – even in her own sadness.
• I had a mother who immediately came to look after me after my mastectomy and made sure that all I needed to do was sleep, and died in a space where she was happy – with her oldest grandchild.
• I had people around me who help with the details of life – the fetching and carrying of my child, the cleaning, the house keeping.
• I have fantastic friends who cooked for us, looked after us, came from far to stay with us when I could not bear to be alone in our home, who drove me around when I could not walk, and gave us good laughs and still today reminisce about my husband and my mom.
• I had an absolutely amazing medical team: GP, mammographer, radiologist, surgeon, anaesthetist, oncologist and chemo team, orthopaedic surgeon, neurologist and therapists of all sorts.
• I have medical aid! I am not dependent upon public health services unlike a friend of mine who went through three months of hell until she was diagnosed with level 4 lung cancer and a huge tumour in her right kidney, and had to wait five months to have the kidney tumor removed in a public hospital.
• I had an amazing job which paid me well so that I could look after myself and my daughter, and gave me focus and direction and something to get up for each morning.

And this gratitude came from finding peace within myself. That was the second learning: to try and find peace with the journey I was on.

I truly believe that everything happens for a reason and we may never know what that reason is. When friends and family asked “why you” my response was always “why not me?” Breast cancer affects about 1 out of every 8 women. That means of the 350 people who are in this room, about 40 has had or will have breast cancer. I remember going grocery shopping on the Saturday after my diagnosis and looking at the women in the grocery shop, wondering which of them “had it”, which of them had been diagnosed, cut open, lost part of what makes us women, had been through chemo, were having radiation or were wearing wigs and scarves to hide the hair loss.

So why not me? I have all the support I have shared with you, and so many women do not. They have so little – rather let it be me than an impoverished rural woman, eking out a life, many kilometers to walk to the nearest clinic and hundreds of kilometers from decent oncology care. Rather me than a single unemployed mother who has no help and cannot afford decent child care and health care, who is poorly educated and every day is a struggle to simply survive for herself and her children.

Finding peace on your journey is a hard one. I had to firstly accept that my life was not as I had known it, that I had cancer, then to realise I was now a single parent who had in one go lost her safety net. I quickly realized that to question, to mull over, and to be angry was energy sapping and putting what little energy I had to negative use. Being angry gets us nowhere, rather take that energy and use it to be resilient. I chose to ensure my physical and mental well-being in order to be there for my most precious joy – my daughter.

Finding peace is about living in the now – not something I did very well in the past. I would infuriate my husband by always looking for more and wanting to do and be more , and planning, always planning for any and every eventuality. Now this is a great characteristic for a manager – but not always for a wife and mother. So I had to learn to deal with the present, to be in the present, and for a very long time it was the most I could do – to deal with what I was going through here and now. Not an hour from now, not a day from now, and certainly not a year ahead. After the accident, a dear friend who lost her husband to brain cancer some months before, told me that if an hour was too much to get through, then just breathe through the next five minutes. On many occasions it was all I could do to keep myself from falling apart completely.

The next thing I learnt was to take control over what you can. To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. I can honestly say that this was the most frightening time of my life, I had no control over what was happening to my body and ultimately to my life. Those who know me well will tell others that I was a control freak, a micro-manager of both my professional and personal lives. Here was one thing that I had not wanted, I had not sought out, I had not carefully planned and arranged, I had not ever considered for myself. Here was something that was changing my whole world as I knew it.

We need to keep things in perspective and be the best we can be within that moment and try to be as successful as possible to the best of our knowledge. After our accident I knew within days that no matter how much I loved my job; my colleagues; and my town I had to make drastic changes. I chose to leave my job to give myself and my daughter time to heal. I chose to leave the home we had built, I had to leave the friends which had engulfed us with kindness and love. My life from October 2013 was one of continual loss – of small and really big losses. But they all made me what I am today.

I am proud that I am a survivor. I have come to learn what is really important in my life.

I’ve learnt of the kindness of family, friends, colleagues and hospital workers. At times feeling so very alone…and at the same time knowing I was part of a community of people out there who truly care for and love my daughter and I.

I have learnt that the human spirit is much more resilient than I had ever imagined and that cancer and tragedy cannot take away that which you are not prepared to give up.

I have learnt that resilience is not about getting through to the other side but it is about truly living through the agony and heartache and finding a way to integrate the impact of what you experience back into your life.

As I said in my opening remarks: grief is like a wave.

After being pounded and left breathless by the towering waves of grief which overwhelmed me, over time the waves have become fewer and they have become gentler. There are still times when I hear words of a poem or song, when I taste certain foods, when I smell something faintly comforting, when I see birds and plants that my husband and my mom so enjoyed, that the raging tsunami returns. But mostly the waves now play around my ankles and calves. They are there, but they are gentler, and sometimes they even make me smile and laugh as I enjoy the memories.

I have learnt how quickly life can be taken away.

I have learned to appreciate what I have and just enjoy life and live in the moment. I appreciate just being able to enjoy my child, to love my family, to hang out with my friends and deeply appreciate all the other people around me.

I have learnt that friends appear in the most unexpected places, unasked and undemanding, just when they are needed most.

And finally, I have learnt never to take things for granted.

So reach out and find those precious women, and men, in your lives and tell them how much they mean to you – not just today, not just in Woman’s’ month, but every single day – as a minute later it may be too late.

In conclusion, I’ve coped with the devastation that loss brings to your life, when your plans are brought to a screeching halt.

I’ve known what it’s like to be sicker than I ever thought possible… and to get better; to be so fatigued that I couldn’t sit up; to be so medicated that I could not string two words together and remember what I did the day before; to be in a body so emaciated and broken that walking again seemed impossible.

So I share with you today the very worst day of my life, the very worst months of my life, and I know in my heart two things are true:

Firstly, I am deeply grateful for what I have learnt and am able to share with others: gratitude for the kindness of friends, family and colleagues, gratitude for health, a gratitude for the life of my child, gratitude for parents who taught me to always do my best and to be humble, and gratitude for the life I shared with my husband.

Secondly, I have been engulfed in fear, grief and sadness. Sadness is always with me, but I also have a resilience to overcome. I have overcome.

There is a saying: we are more vulnerable than we ever thought, but we are stronger than we ever imagined.

So my hope for you all is that you know that when the days and nights are hard, when all seems impossible and irrecoverable, that you know you have it within you the ability to push through and to get through it, that you know you have the resilience to overcome, and to know that you are not alone.

That I can promise you.