The Truth Saves Lives

THE TRUTH SAVES LIVES

When I was seventeen my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.  She was fast-tracked to surgery in the hope that they would just need to remove the lump. I sat in the car outside the hospital on the day of the surgery. Eventually, my Dad came to the car and as I held him he sobbed and told me that they had to remove Mum’s right breast and gave her 3 months to live.

As a family, we were devastated.

My Dad refused to accept the diagnosis and took Mum to a cancer professor to seek his professional opinion.

Professor Faulkson gave my mother a 60% chance of survival.

Mum fought all forms of cancer over the next 25 years. She was constantly under the knife and having different forms of treatment.

I learned so much from what they told her to eat and the exercise they prescribed.

She spent a lot of time in hospital. I used to visit her and give her facials, body massages, manicures, and pedicures. I groomed her eyebrows and when she had hair I would wash and roll it to make her feel beautiful. It made her feel loved and gave her the strength to fight.

This was where I learned the importance of self-care.

At a WWA business networking event in early 2023, we did an exercise about our health filling out some questions. Volunteers were asked to share something about what they had written.

An attendee Giulia Jones volunteered to explain that she was feeling tired, and she concluded that she probably had to accept that this was just part of growing older and the life she had, with 6 children and a busy job, (CEO of Pain Australia). 

After Giulia spoke, other business ladies were asked to respond and I (Adele) stood up and explained very firmly that we don’t need to accept that fatigue is just a part of life for women and I created HerSmile, to assist women in regaining their health, fitness, confidence, strength, and capacity to face life and all that it throws at us!

At the time Giulia was honestly surprised by the strength of my conviction on the matter and fortunately what I said stuck with her. 

My words kept repeating in her head, and eventually, some weeks later after thinking more about her tiredness and feeling a little soreness in her breast, she booked a mammogram, just to exclude the possibility of cancer.

It turns out Giulia did have cancer. It was both fast-growing and may have been there for around 6 months. She was fast-tracked to surgery and 20 weeks of chemotherapy followed by 3 weeks of daily radiation, completed by Christmas 2023. 

Giulia is now in remission and hopeful of a long and healthy life.

In Giulia’s words:

‘I look back now, and I am very grateful to Adele, for being who she is, a fierce advocate and help to women, seeing us for what is possible, not just what we have settled for.

Thank you, Adele, and HerSmile. I am forever grateful for those firm words which probably saved my life as they made me think maybe the fatigue was not normal and I didn’t have to just live with it.

We all need a Strong Woman like Adele, a mother, to guide us on how to care for ourselves, so we can have the power we need to be women!’