On lasting legacies and finding joy in darkness

My parents always said that the biggest gift you can give is your time. When you have kids, you get used to giving your time to their school activities like tuck shop, reading groups and sports. My son played basketball and football, so I was always volunteering and then as he grew older, I became interested in fundraising for the school and then for the wider community.

I've done so many different things, I've lost count!  It's varied from participating in the Mother's Day Walk because I was familiar with someone who had a particular illness to fundraising for different charities and organisations within the companies I’ve worked for. I guess this desire to pull initiatives together for a good cause, is something I grew up with.

What drives me now is different to what drove me when my son was going through school. Today I’m driven by the idea that I am part of a bigger community, and that I have privilege. A lot of people don't have a roof over their head or food and a warm bed at night. So, I see my privilege as a responsibility to the community.

I have stage four breast cancer. It’s really honed my understanding that I want to leave a legacy that’s about the impact I've had on other people. We impact everyone in different ways. I want my legacy to be more than financial results and the money I generated for the different companies I've worked for. The memory I want to leave behind for my son, husband, friends, relatives and work is about the positive impact I made on them and the community around me.

Knowing that my timeline is short, I need to make as much impact while I can. Stage four cancer basically means that it's a terminal illness. Some people live longer than the expected timeframe of three to five years, and some people live shorter than that. I hope to be someone who lives beyond 1700 days, but as I’m in my third year, I recognise that my life is highly likely to be much shorter than my husband and that I'll pass away before my son gets married and has kids.

With Stage 4 breast cancer, I'm on an accelerated timeline to make everyday count, and I don't want to spend all my time focusing only on my health. I want to think about the positive impact I can make with the skills that I've worked my whole career to hone. I have a fantastic business brain, a solid flare for generating money and I'm a skilled communicator.  I want to use these skills to make a difference.

Every time I think about things that are bigger than me, I know that I'll walk away feeling like I've made a difference. I didn't think about this as an everyday thing before I got cancer. But now I know that there'll be an endless list of people that need help and I'm going to die sooner than I hope.

I need to think about the impact that I can have and how every day can be as joyful possible. There are days when I feel terribly unwell yet if I think about someone else, I actually feel really good. That's what giving is. When you give something to other people who you can make a difference to, it’s good for your mind, for your heart, for your spirit. And it’s much more interesting than talking about death and cancer!

I’ve learned three things. Firstly, it's not just about money. The act of giving can be through your time, your support, your brain - there's lots of things you can do. Giving is always bigger than us as individuals, we need to be part of the community to give back to it.

The second thing is that your health is fragile, and your privilege impacts your health. There are many people who have fragile health and no privilege. So, if you’ve got privilege, treat it like an obligation to make a positive difference.

Finally, you need to be aware that we're all part of circles of influence, and that we can connect to these circles to raise awareness. Especially for women. A woman dies every 35 days in Australia from domestic violence. We need to understand that as part of the community and as part of the circles that we are in, we can make a huge difference to issues like this.

There's a fantastic Stephen Covey saying, “sphere of influence, sphere of control.” Nobody's asking people to give money they can't afford, but you can give a little bit of time and influence within your circle to create impact. It’s like throwing a stone in water, which ripples beyond you.

Because of my lived experience of cancer and the side effects of medications, I want to help people with chronic illness navigate one day at a time so they can find joy in something which is so dark. I feel that I can be impactful by giving my time and experience to people who live with chronic pain.

However, my career journey taught me a lot about resilience and the importance of bringing your whole self to work and being independent and capable enough to stick up for yourself. I want to advocate this for more women. We hold up half the sky, yet we earn less money and are treated with less respect. Women need equity. And when we have equity, we shine a light on the needs of families and our communities.

Something that I want to shine a light on is disability. We have a hidden workforce, both in Australia and around the world because people with disability tend to get overlooked for jobs but also in the policies and decisions that affect them.  I am deeply passionate about this topic because we’re overlooking an entire population within our community.