How Counselling Enables Me to Live My Life
By Anne Clarke, Life Coach
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I’m a 73 year old woman living with incurable, but treatable, secondary breast cancer. This is my second encounter with this insidious disease. I was first diagnosed in 2007 and following treatment, enjoyed 15 years in remission. The return of the disease was discovered by accident in 2022. 
I’m a qualified life coach, I practise mindfulness and meditate, I keep myself active and have a great support network of loving family and friends. Even with all these positive life skills, I was stunned by the news. I just couldn’t access any of the tools and strategies at my disposal, I was stuck in a frightening place.
I’m a ‘can do’ person – a problem solver and a finder of solutions but immediately following my diagnosis, I fell into a sort of inertia. For a while, every day was focussed on treatment, procedures and medical decisions. There was no space for me to process what was happening to me as a person.
This is when counselling came to the rescue. Counselling, which I had engaged with over the years since my first diagnosis, created that space; physical and mental. A safe place that enabled me to explore the impact of my diagnosis and how I could learn to live with it. It also enabled me to protect my family from the worst of my emotions. This was my journey, not theirs, although I knew they would always support me, whatever happened.
In the beginning, to access my natural resilience, I believed that the journey needed a strategy and I needed to understand my role in implementing it. Counselling has enabled me to do that.
More than two years since the diagnosis, I continue to see my counsellor regularly. I have faced a number of challenges on this journey, challenges that I know I have the strength and resilience to meet. Counselling enables me to access that strength and supports me as I work through the emotional and physical impacts.
I’m grateful that I have a safe place that enables me to find solutions.
Long may it continue.
Written for Iron Mill by Anne Clarke, Life Coach
Written November 2024
