You can eat well, live carefully, do all the 'right' things and still be handed something you didn’t choose

She's faced some tough challenges in the past and Sarie Taylor uses her own experience of anxiety to help others through her psychotherapy sessions.

But what she wasn't prepared for towards the end of last year was a stage three breast cancer diagnosis at the age of just 46.

With a teenage daughter and a toddler to care for, as well as running her own Perfectly Imperfect Mind Mentor business, she says it immediately altered her priorities and has given her a greater insight on life, which will not only benefit her, but those people she works with.

Here, Sarie, from Sale, Trafford, gives a detailed account of her experience and how it's changed the way she lives.

"A cancer diagnosis is one of those things most of us quietly hope will never have our name attached to it. It’s the word that makes conversations pause, that rearranges priorities before you’ve even finished saying it out loud. I, like many people, felt cancer lived in the category of things that happen to other people until, suddenly, it didn’t.

Having trained as a psychotherapist, and now coaching people all over the world, I found myself in a situation I had spoken about and supported with clients with and yet never foreseen, I was unexpectedly diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. There was no dramatic lead-up, no clear sense that life was about to turn upside down, no warning symptoms, just a lump I believed would just be hormonal and nothing to worry about.

Hearing that word ‘cancer’ creates a sudden sense of disconnect from the world you thought you knew, and I found myself suddenly seeing everything in slow motion. I then went from fear, overwhelm to a sense of determination and calm, and back and forth over and over. I had a number of insights along the way into how I see life and how I will live my life going forward.

Some of the insights I had that have forever changed the way I see life

Life is short. We say this and intellectually we know this, and yet we continue to run ourselves into the ground ‘waiting’ until we have earned our down time, joy or pleasing ourselves instead of everyone else. This is a huge contradiction in us saying life is short as we can waste so much of it pushing or trying to better ourselves, chasing things, or in some ways wanting a ‘better’ life than the one we currently have. One of the strangest things about a cancer diagnosis is how quickly this changes and how much easier it is to let go of the constant pressure to be heading somewhere, achieving, progressing, improving and forgetting how phenomenal we already are and being able to appreciate the simpler things in life and the importance of our health. I used to constantly complain that there wasn’t enough hours in the day to find time for me or what I really wanted and yet adding a whole regime of treatment to my calendar, still being a mum and running my business (with a lot of help) I was still able to find time, my priorities just changed.

Strength, redefined

Cancer also changed the way I saw strength and resilience in any human being.

We tend to think of strength as positivity, bravery or 'staying strong', but serious illness introduces a quieter version. Strength becomes asking for help without apologising and being honest about hard days and letting yourself be seen when you don’t feel like your best or most capable self, seeing that resilience isn’t putting on a brave face but actually accepting and being OK with who you are and where you are at, not resisting. People were continuously telling me how strong I was and to me it was the opposite of how most people see it. I wasn’t fighting cancer, I was giving in and surrendering to what is, this is not the same as giving up but working with your body and the treatment available and giving your mind and body the best chance to do its thing and naturally reset. As someone trained as a psychotherapist, I had already spent years learning how to sit with uncertainty, uncomfortable emotions and life transitions but you can't ever prepare for how you will feel when faced with some of life’s most difficult challenges BUT you will surprise yourself, I saw even more than ever that we are made to weather the storm, as humans we are phenomenal.

A different version of myself

Now, a year on, I am navigating a different chapter: life after treatment. For many people, this is when things are supposed to 'go back to normal'. Yet in reality, bodies are often permanently altered and the way you see things will definitely never be the same, but this is not all bad. It's different, but not better or worse. Often people are navigating not only bodily changes from active treatment but also the differences that often ongoing medications can also make such as medically induced menopause. Now I am not here to say this is easy or pretty, but again the more accepting we are of making adjustments, listening to our bodies and what they need, the easier it all is to navigate on a daily basis. When we resist what is we cause stress and overwhelm and this also has a physiological impact on the body too often creating a vicious cycle. As simple as it may sound I have found taking everything one small step at a time, allowing myself to read the ebbs and flows of how I feel physically and mentally and have overall been able to still enjoy life, experience connection and joy with friends and family and still ‘live’ instead of putting everything on hold ‘until’.

This phase post diagnosis and treatment brings its own challenges, maybe not as intense as chemo or radiotherapy necessarily, but certainly persistent and certainly a reminder that some challenges don’t come with a clear finish line. This has reinforced something I now see clearly in both my personal life and professional work: resilience isn’t about bouncing back. It’s about learning how to live well inside ongoing change.

The illusion of control

Perhaps one of the most confronting, and actually liberating things cancer reveals is how little control we ever really had. The only guarantee any of us have about anything is ‘right now’. Anything beyond right now is an illusion, a prediction of what we ‘think’ might happen.

You can eat well, live carefully, do all the 'right' things and still be handed something you didn’t choose. Obviously we want to do right by our mind and body and live the best way we can, but balance is also crucial as the minute we try to live by extremes, we can start to overthink, and worry about the ‘what ifs’ and this is never ever useful. There is never a time when worry serves us in any way, not even with a serious health diagnosis.

Future-proofing mental health

I work with entrepreneurs and business owners, helping them future-proof their mental health not against cancer specifically, but against life’s inevitabilities.

Because if cancer revealed anything, it was a reminder that life isn’t a project, the body isn’t a machine, and resilience isn’t about powering through at all costs.

I discovered something quietly important: not answers, but a more honest relationship with how life actually works and how to meet it when it changes as well as seeing the unwavering resilience that every human being has full access to whether we know it or not.

Remember

Life is short. That doesn’t mean we need to be fearful or achieve everything we think right now is important, but to see that whilst we are still here right now living and breathing we have an opportunity to play and live life.

You are way more resilient than you ‘think’ you are. This is not something you have to learn to be, it's in you innately and acceptance of what is and trusting your body and your gut will carry you through further than you imagine.

Worry is NEVER useful. You may think worrying about health or anything else is a necessity so you are prepared for what life brings your way. I can tell you now, even having had a stage 3 cancer diagnosis, that I still do not believe that worry is helpful in any way."

Now 47, and with her girls Maia and Aria aged 18 and three, Sarie has responded well to her treatment so far and remains on chemotherapy medication for two years and Tamoxifen for 10 years and will be closely monitored.

"It's just a case of each year the risk going down now, but the first two years are most crucial," she said. "But my attitude is none of us knows what's around the corner anyway, so you've just got to live."

For more from Sarie, visit Perfectly Imperfect Mind Mentor on Facebook, or follow her on Instagram here.