Before I got diagnosed with breast cancer in autumn 2016, I was very careful with my skincare routine, my general wellbeing, my fashion and I wouldn’t miss a Pilates class for the world. Then, devastated by the diagnosis, I gave up on all of these, step by step, and let the medical team take over and be in charge of me. Surgeries, chemotherapy, radiotherapy were about to change my life. So I stopped plaiting my hair, I stopped exercising, I stopped pampering myself, stopped wearing make-up…what’s the point I was thinking. Until one day, when I looked at myself in the mirror, and didn’t recognise my reflection. I looked sad…
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Why Me?
When on 21 September 2016 I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I heard my own voice crying to the world, ‘why me!!’ and within seconds, my world, my life was changed. I felt lost, small, vulnerable, alone, scared and wanted to run far away from this horrible nightmare. Surely this doctor in a white coat couldn’t be right. She gave the wrong diagnostic, it certainly was a mistake. It couldn’t happen to me. After all, I breastfed my two children, had a healthy lifestyle most of my life and as there weren’t any breast cancer cases in my family’s medical history, this couldn’t be right….But sadly it was, and after shedding buckets…
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They often ask me why I left Paris…
Paris 1987, Champs de Mars with my best friend Today, 26 years later, I still remember the time when I resigned from my PA job in Paris to finally follow my dream to go abroad to learn a foreign language. Three years earlier I had to turn down at the last minute an au pair job in Austria but this time, in 1990, nothing apart from my own fear would stop me from going to England and this time there weren’t any reasons to be held back by fears of the unknown of a foreign country as I was going to live with my then French boyfriend who had recently settled…
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Tears, Friendships
Today, as I was seating down in my quiet living room, I started to cry. Tears and tears were trickling down my face, uncontrollably. I let them fall not wanting to control my crying. My heart was full of upset, frustrations, lonely and hurt and I finally could express my sorrow by crying alone. Why? Usually a happy person whose simple pleasures of life are enough to make me feel on top of the world, today and since a few days ago, something has been bugging me, something that I should not accept. Having a great capacity to listen to other people’s problems and also to often find the right…