126: Finding strength through life's toughest challenges: Briony Benjamin's journey after a life-altering diagnosis

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you created one of the most iconic videos.
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I think that I will laugh at.
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It's the sexiest man alive video.
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Yeah, goodness of any.
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If I'm going to leave a link to that in the show notes if no one has seen it, it's all about like men doing everyday tasks and us swooning over the fact that they're changing the toilet roll and how fabulous that is.
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I went into that appointment and I sat down and the specialist said, yeah, so the results are back and we're really sorry, it's Hodgkin's lymphoma.
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I journaled every single day through treatment but I didn't realise at the time.
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It's an incredibly therapeutic tool when you're going through a traumatic or difficult time to get the dark cloud of thoughts out of your head and put them somewhere.
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The silver lining was this real recognition of the stuff that truly mattered and the stuff that didn't matter.
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Can you talk to me about the stuff that you suddenly realized this does not matter at all?
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Most stuff really.
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Oh, hey you, and welcome to this week's episode of the no Wellness Wankery podcast.
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I'm your host, lindy Cohen, dietitian, nutritionist and lover of people, and one of those people I'm going to be interviewing today.
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Her name is Bryony Benjamin.
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She is the author of the very empowering, very wonderful book Life is Tough, but so Are you, and in this book she talks about her very life disrupting event of being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 31.
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And it inspired her to share her practical wisdom on how to navigate really tricky situations, unexpected challenges, and I find that her book offers very refreshing advice on how to deal with curveballs, whether or not it's a diagnosis, with something that you feel out of control, with whether or not it's going through a divorce, losing someone you care about.
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It's about how to deal with these things, because sometimes staying positive is not the only answer.
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So I'm so delighted to have Bryony with us today on the podcast.
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Bryony, welcome to the show.
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I'm so happy to have you here.
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Thank you so much, so pumped to be here.
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Well, we kind of go way back.
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You were Mamma Mia originally weren't you?
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I was, yeah, I was working there as executive producer of video for a time, so that's when we met, I think on a trip.
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You created one of the most iconic videos.
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Think that I will laugh at.
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It's the sexiest man alive video.
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Yeah, goodness, if any.
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If I'm going to leave a link to that in the show notes if no one has seen it.
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It's all about like men doing everyday tasks and us swooning over the fact that they're changing the toilet roll and how fabulous that is the sexiest man in the world.
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That was so, so much fun to make.
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But do you know what?
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We actually just crowdsourced it from the audience, from women.
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We were like what are the things that your partner does that you're like, oh gosh, that is sexy, slash.
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What are the things they don't do that you would love them to do?
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We just compiled a list and shot it around that and like, yeah, it went so viral because every woman ever could tag her partner, being like wow, you're so sexy.
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Or like, oh, you'd be a bit sexier if you know.
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Point ABC.
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So that was fun.
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Yeah, men, you can do better, I hope everyone goes and watches that video.
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So you had this everyday, normal life of quite a glamorous life working at Mamma Mia, and then, at 31, your life changed.
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Yeah, big time.
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So I'd been working there for about a year and I loved it Like I loved the job.
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Like, honestly, it was an office full of just the funnest, most gorgeous supportive women and I had this amazing team.
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We were just getting to make all these great videos.
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It was fun, you know, you had celebrities coming in every day and all these kind of really fun activities going on.
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But I just felt really rotten all the time and I suppose I'd been going back to the doctor over a period of a year, dragged on to 18 months, and they just kept telling me I was fine.
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It must be the stress of my job.
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And here I'm thinking this is the funnest, best job I've ever had.
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I'm not stressed in this job, but I didn't yet know how to really listen to my body and listen to my own intuition and say, actually something's really wrong here, which it turned out it was.
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What did you find out and what happened from there?
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Yeah.
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So, look, I have a very persistent mother who was on my case, kept asking me to go back to the doctors, get another blood test, get another blood test, and, funnily enough, my dad's a vet.
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And so my mum and dad together kind of diagnosed me and figured out what was wrong and they rang up my GP behind my back and said, because they didn't want to freak me out, they said we want Bryony to go and see a specialist hematologist, which is someone that specializes in blood, so they can look deeper and what's really going on here.
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And so, after 18 months, I thought they were being really, to be honest, quite over the top.
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I went and saw this specialist and it was interesting.
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As I told her what was going on, I said look, I'm waking up in pain every single night, night sweats, I've got this cough that just won't go away.
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My skin's really itchy all the time.
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What I didn't realize at the time were these were all the symptoms of blood cancer.
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But she was actually the first person.
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I remember her just looking at me and going wow, so this is actually having a really big impact on your life, and it was the first person that had really taken my pain.
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Seriously, I realized and I said, yeah, actually it is.
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I'm waking up drenched every night and exhausted, and I remember just literally every morning.
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You know what it's like when you pull yourself out of bed, when you're tired.
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But day after day it just getting worse and worse.
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And I remember I'd get into Mamma Mia.
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I used to get in an hour before and then I'd get in half an hour before and then I'd get five minutes and then I'd be like racing in the door as morning stand-up started, like with a coffee, just trying to get there.
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I was just so exhausted and so, yeah, look, basically she set off for a bunch of tests.
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I did a PET scan and these sort of things and it came back and she said look, it's showing that there are some enlarged lymph glands.
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That could be fine, it could just be a virus, but we're going to do a biopsy, come back in two weeks and get the results.
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And honestly, lindy, at this point I'd been through so many tests and so many like dead ends.
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I was not worried at all.
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I was like cool, I'm going to come back, She'll tell me I've got a virus, you'll be fine, you know.
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So it was just a normal busy Thursday morning.
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You know, I was heading into Mamma Mia.
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We had Sophie Monk coming in.
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I had to interview her.
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That's where my head was and all I was thinking about is how long is it going to take me to get the office?
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Am I going to be late?
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Blah, blah, blah.
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My beautiful mom insisted on flying down from Queensland to be with me to come to the appointment.
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And I was like mom, like oh, you're being so over the top, don't worry about it, I've just got to get straight to work.
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I'm too busy, you know, so busy and important.
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And thank God she didn't listen to me because I went into that appointment and I sat down and the specialist said, yeah, so the results are back and we're really sorry, it's Hodgkin's lymphoma.
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What that means is we need to clear your next six months immediately and we're going to start you on a course of chemotherapy.
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And as soon as I heard that word, I sort of you know you start to realize, oh so, this is quite bad, but not grasping really what lymphoma was or what that meant.
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I remember just asking am I going to lose my hair?
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And she said, yeah, you will, but it will grow back.
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And that was that real sucker punch moment where you're like oh okay, yeah, this is quite serious, just a shock that you're never expecting in your life, particularly when you're 31.
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I imagine at that point you're feeling quite scared.
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You know you don't know at this point what's kind of involved, what the process is going to look like, whether or not you're going to come out on the other side of it.
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Well, totally, you know and I was I was very fortunate that from the get go, it was a cancer with really good recovery rates.
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But of course, you're thinking, well, what if I'm in that percentage that don't make it.
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You know, people die of this every day.
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You know, like um, and so, yeah, it's an incredibly surreal and overwhelming experience, like it's very much an out of body experience.
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You know, like even talking about it now it doesn't actually feel like this happened to me.
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It doesn't feel like my life, you know, it still feels like so surreal, but I remember, just thinking in that moment, who are the most important people in my life and I wrote down all their names because I wanted to ring them and tell them before they heard it from somewhere else how much time do I have left on this planet and how do I want to spend that time?
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You know, and I I think really they are probably the three questions we should ask ourselves every day.
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It shouldn't take a crisis or a health scare, but you know, to be really thoughtful and deliberate about how we want to spend our time and who we want to spend it with, doing what.
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So, yeah, very overwhelming, but very profound at the same time.
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So it's almost like there's got to be some silver lining, and the silver lining was this real recognition of the stuff that truly mattered and the stuff that didn't matter.
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Can you talk to me about the stuff that you suddenly realized this does not matter at all?
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Most stuff really.
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We spend so much of our life, don't we, I think, in the minutiae and thinking and obsessing and stewing over things, things people have said who doesn't like us, what people think of us and I think particularly for women just picking ourselves apart, that negative self-talk.
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And I remember having I had got some headshots done for work a few weeks before I was diagnosed and I remember getting them back and like, oh, look at my hair, oh, look, how bad it looks, and oh, my eyebrow's kind of wonky on that side.
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I mean, gosh, fast forward six months later when I had no hair, no eyebrows, and I'm thinking, oh my God, I was an absolute goddess.
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What was I thinking?
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But we're so, so harsh on ourselves and actually none of this stuff matters.
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I always love that expression.
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If you're going out and you're not feeling like super confident in how you look and how you're feeling, it's like actually no one's going to remember what you're wearing, no one's going to remember how pretty you looked or not.
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They're going to remember how they felt around you.
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And it's so true, you know you.
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Just we obsess over things that are often just so unimportant to everyone else, and so, yeah, I definitely remember that experience you know you've got to go through, I think huge thing for women going through cancer, losing your hair, shaving it off.
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You know it's such a part of your look and your identity and you feel really stripped back and really you know bare bones and I remember coming to terms with that at some point.
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It was a huge shock at first, but I remember a few weeks in going, yeah, this is me and this is how I look, and this is a really interesting experience Not one I would have signed up for, let's be honest, but a really interesting experience and having a newfound appreciation for your body.
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You know, okay, yes, I might have a blood cancer, but I've got these legs that allow me to go on beautiful walks around the garden and I can see and I can hear, and I can listen to podcasts and music and I can still be a great friend and someone that can, you know, spend time with people and have them leaving me feeling better, you know.
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So, yeah, definitely a newfound appreciation for your body, for so many things that you might not have appreciated before.
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I even remember, you know, when I was through treatment, my period coming back a few months after and just bursting into tears and being so grateful for my period.
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You know it's normally the thing that you think, oh gosh, I've got my period.
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I was like, yes, I've got my period, I'm so grateful.
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So those were definitely the big silver linings that came out of a really tough experience.
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It can be so incredibly tough to be kind to ourselves.
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Did going through this really life altering event help you become kinder to yourself and did you learn any tricks and tips for being kind to yourself?
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Oh, it's a really good question From the get go.
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For me, slightly different to your question, but I know a lot of people want to go into the whole cancer's the worst and screw you cancer and I'm going to fight you cancer and take you down.
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For me, that just created a lot of tension in my own body and so I thought, you know, I love my body actually and this cancer is part of my body right now and I don't want to hate my body because that just creates conflict.
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What I'm going to think about instead is I love my body.
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I love every little cell in my body.
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It was trying to do its best job and it kind of misfired and this is going to pass through me.
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So that was kind of a gentler way to approach the whole experience.
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But I think as well, particularly when you're in recovery mode and you know, being a particular A-type, want to do a million things at once I really had to just pull back from everything and I would ask myself just two questions every day.
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I would say how am I strengthening my body today and how am I calming my mind today?
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And that might literally look like a five-minute meditation.
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It might look like a few deep breaths, whatever I felt up to today, and that might literally look like a five-minute meditation.
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It might look like a few deep breaths, whatever I felt up to really, and it might look like a gentle walk around the garden with my dog.
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It was really pulling it back and just those little wins, those little goals, being really proud of those and being content with that.
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It sounds like you went from almost kind of seeing your body as the enemy to becoming an ally with your body again.
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Through this hardship.
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Definitely Life threw you the most enormous curveball.
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How has it changed you now?
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How do you view hardship differently and tough times?
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You actually went on to write a book called Life is Tough, but so are you.
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I've read it.
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I love it.
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It feels like the hand-holding that you need.
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It doesn't feel like toxic positivity when you go through hardship.
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It also doesn't feel like that yelly kind of let's be angry together.
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It feels like a very much a practical guide of how to get through crappy, crappy times in a way that feels like almost big sister energy and I really enjoyed having it.
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And you share a lot of the things that you learned from your experience inside that book.
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Can you tell me about writing the book, about what are some of the things that you think are some of the biggest takeaways?
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Yeah, well, thank you for that lovely, lovely endorsement of the book.
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Actually, that means a lot coming from you and that's exactly what I wanted to create.
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You know, I really sat down to create the book I would have loved to have had on that very first day and I think, in a way, a lot of people don't write books from that perspective, which sounds crazy.
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Right, They've got something to say.
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What do you want to say?
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Whereas for me it was like what does someone getting the worst news of their life today?
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What do they need?
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What did I need?
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And I was given a lot of books when I first got diagnosed, but they were quite overwhelming, scary.
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They had titles like when it all falls apart, and I was like I and it was that balance.
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Right, I don't want to scare anyone, I don't want to overwhelm them, but I don't want to sugarcoat this and just be like, yeah, great, so it is a hundred percent toxic, positive, free zone, for sure, you know.
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But things early on in the experience, like acceptance, you know, some things don't have to be understood, just accepted, cause no one gets a cancer diagnosis for a reason.
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I really hate that expression.
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All things happen for a reason.
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It's like well, no, they don't.
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Yes, I'm the first to say great things can come out of really challenging times and experiences.
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But someone doesn't lose the love of their life for reasons.
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A baby doesn't get brain cancer for a reason.
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And when people say that kind of thing, it's just so unhelpful.
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And so there were so many takeaways from the experience.
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I mean I had to literally write a book to put them all down.
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But I think some of the big themes were the energy that you spend.
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You know the people and your community that you spend your time around.
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That is your life, you know.
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You know you're often here.
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You are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with.
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But it's so incredibly true and I think I'd always been pretty strict about the company I kept, but it ratcheted up a few notches.
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You know for sure.
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Life is just too short to spend time around toxic energy, toxic people, and literally I.
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Now you know, if I even get an inch of that from someone, I'm like you know that's fine, like you can be like that and that can be your life, but I'm not going to put myself around that energy.
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I think I care a lot less about things stress me out a lot less than they used to.
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In some ways, you know, you do have that barometer, that new barometer to compare everything to.
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It was really helpful.
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I think, you know it was great prep really going through COVID, like having had this ultimate preparation of like things that are completely out of your control, accepting what's going on, finding joy in the everyday where you are right now, even if the world isn't as you wish it was.
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You know, and that was a learning really early on.
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Someone shared with me a beautiful friend, jenna, who'd been through chronic fatigue, and she said, you know, you don't actually have to be healthy to be happy.
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And that was a big mind shift, you know.
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But she's like, actually the two can be separate from each other.
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You can be physically unwell but choose, you know, a different approach.
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Your mind and body don't have to be connected, because I think it is very easy, particularly when you're dealing with something chronic, to get stuck in the mindset of I'll be happy when my body's, you know, back to 1,000%.
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But it's not always possible or feasible.
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So, yeah, and I think, just as we talked about before, but just a newfound appreciation for your body, you know it is the greatest instrument you will ever be given.
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It is your vehicle for life and even if you have a you know know, a checkered past with it or a tricky relationship with it, finding the things that, even if love is too strong a word, you know, loving every part of your body that's not realistic, necessarily, but finding parts to be grateful for and appreciative of, because it really is the greatest asset any of us have, and so many of us.
00:20:03.972 --> 00:20:11.888
We're being harsh on it, we're being down on it, we're not appreciating it or looking after it in, you know, the best way that we could, and sure I'm still guilty of that.
00:20:11.888 --> 00:20:14.505
This is something I have to remind myself constantly of.
00:20:14.505 --> 00:20:23.351
It's not like you go through this experience and you're like this perfect human that appreciates every element of your body, you know, as is a daily, a daily reminder for me.
00:20:24.873 --> 00:20:25.673
I think that's spot on.
00:20:25.673 --> 00:20:35.711
I think when you live in this world, that is constantly telling you that you are not good enough, that you are not fit enough, that you are not pretty enough, that you're not enough in all respects of the word, you do need to constantly remind yourself.
00:20:35.711 --> 00:20:37.586
I wish I could say that you could do the work.
00:20:37.586 --> 00:20:38.688
You'd arrive at your destination.
00:20:38.708 --> 00:20:49.301
You'd be like no cool, I'm untouchable.
00:20:49.301 --> 00:20:49.923
Sadly, that's just not the case.
00:20:49.923 --> 00:20:52.654
I always think of body acceptance, body respect, as a practice, a bit like yoga, as opposed to somewhere where you arrive and you get to.
00:20:52.674 --> 00:20:55.124
You're going to have weeks where you hate on your body and you get to come in hard.
00:20:55.124 --> 00:20:59.144
It's just having the right phrases and the right things to say to your body when you need it.
00:20:59.144 --> 00:21:01.153
That is incredibly helpful.
00:21:01.153 --> 00:21:16.402
It's the difference between going down the road of going on a toxic diet or partying and drinking yourself silly versus kind of going no, let's write this pathway quickly and get back to being okay with ourselves as fast as we possibly can.
00:21:16.402 --> 00:21:19.609
Can I ask you, then, about wellness?
00:21:19.609 --> 00:21:25.867
How has your approach to wellbeing, wellness, how has that shifted since going into remission?
00:21:26.740 --> 00:21:42.374
Yeah, I think it's been a rollercoaster, to be honest, because for me as well, I had five years of really bad chronic fatigue after the chemo right, and traditional medicine has a very limited scope really with how it can help you with that.
00:21:42.374 --> 00:21:48.549
You know, you basically get told by your GP yeah well, if you've been tired for more than six months you've got chronic fatigue.
00:21:48.549 --> 00:21:51.367
Good luck, you might have it for the rest of your life, good luck.
00:21:51.367 --> 00:22:00.541
Off you go, which, honestly, was mentally more difficult than dealing with the cancer, because with the cancer you've got to set treatment plan.
00:22:00.541 --> 00:22:05.692
You've got your specialist, they know how to fix that cancer, you know get rid of the cancer.
00:22:05.692 --> 00:22:16.149
So you've got to schedule and you know what you're dealing with, whereas chronic fatigue is just this nebulous, possibly never-ending thing, and so I found that incredibly demoralizing.
00:22:16.259 --> 00:22:24.040
There are a number of things that really helped me, but I suppose you know I tried a lot of things is my point when I say it was a roller coaster.
00:22:24.040 --> 00:22:43.072
So I went fully meat free to begin with and then I found that made me really sick and then I, you know, tried eliminating every kind of you know gluten and dairy and sugar, you know all the things and everything was setting me off at that time and my gut health was terrible.
00:22:43.072 --> 00:22:56.346
Three things that made a really big difference for me were one a GP recommended I do hyperbaric oxygen chambers, which I'd never really heard of Whether they helped or I felt like they helped.
00:22:56.346 --> 00:22:59.252
So it got me started, helped me turn a corner.
00:22:59.252 --> 00:23:03.900
I found a really fabulous comprehensive health specialist, I suppose.
00:23:03.900 --> 00:23:11.043
So he has a scientific research background and then he applies that to all the supplements and everything like that.
00:23:11.043 --> 00:23:22.255
So because I'd been quite scared to look into supplements and all those sorts of things, having had bad experiences before, but he basically helped me rebuild my gut health and then go from there.
00:23:22.275 --> 00:23:24.365
So I found that really helpful with my energy.
00:23:24.365 --> 00:23:29.743
And then the big turning point was actually did a three-day course called the lightning process.
00:23:29.743 --> 00:23:41.263
That was all about mind body connection and through that just learned how to turn off a whole lot of thought processes that were triggering a whole lot of really negative reactions in my body.
00:23:41.263 --> 00:23:44.663
Basically, and that was game-changing for me.
00:23:44.663 --> 00:24:02.993
Like if you told me at the start of the week I would come out feeling like I didn't have chronic fatigue anymore, I would have said like you're crazy, that sounds nuts, um, but it made a huge, huge difference for me, um, really, yeah, really like can't rave about it enough, so yeah, what's I?
00:24:03.013 --> 00:24:05.063
think, the power of the mind on our body, you know.
00:24:05.724 --> 00:24:08.231
Isn't it incredible and so often underestimated?
00:24:08.231 --> 00:24:19.665
You know you're talking about cancer, going through cancer, having such a clear plan forward and then getting chronic fatigue and not having any plan and it sounds like the three things that you talk about as having a big impact.
00:24:19.665 --> 00:24:30.044
They're all centered around having a plan, about feeling like you had something you can now action and do, and not feeling like you're a victim and a float and and just in the sea of it.
00:24:30.044 --> 00:24:37.820
And I think that's a really nice learning as well, to kind of have something where you feel like I feel like I can know that I've got tools to use that I can help progress this.
00:24:38.722 --> 00:24:50.111
Completely Um, and I also fell in love at the same time, which I think honestly, that helps as well, because but it's also this thing like I want to be really well for this person, you know.
00:24:50.111 --> 00:24:57.307
So I was kind of throwing everything that I could at it because I was like I've got this real incentive now that I really want to be well for this person.
00:24:57.388 --> 00:25:02.566
So, yeah, that did help I think for anyone listening it's you know.
00:25:02.745 --> 00:25:22.127
Certainly a lot of people are going to be diagnosed with some kind of illness, whether it's cancer or whether or not it's another chronic illness, acute illness, but also if you're going through something like a divorce, if you've lost a parent, lost a child, going through a tough time financially because it is such a crisis at the moment, being made redundant.
00:25:22.127 --> 00:25:23.771
Whatever it is that's going on in your life.
00:25:23.771 --> 00:25:33.661
There are so many times that life can throw you an unexpected challenge and I think I see you very much as a guide in that space, someone who is doing really, really great work.
00:25:33.661 --> 00:25:46.854
If there is one piece of advice you'd like to leave someone with, who's currently in the thick of it, who's kind of going, I don't know a way out what could someone do to feel better?
00:25:48.320 --> 00:25:49.144
One piece of advice.
00:25:49.144 --> 00:25:55.363
Well, I'd start by saying that I'm really sorry that you're going through a really tough time right now.
00:25:55.363 --> 00:25:59.461
There's no rhyme or reason for it, it's just really sucky, crappy, bad luck.
00:25:59.461 --> 00:26:16.396
And I also want to say that there is such a wonderful, beautiful life for you on the other side of this and you might not believe that yet and you might not be able to see that or imagine what it's like, and I say it as someone who has been there and done that.
00:26:16.460 --> 00:26:20.467
On the other side of chemo, I had gone through a breakup.
00:26:20.467 --> 00:26:26.083
I was feeling absolutely physically drained and awful, you know, had no hair, no eyebrows.
00:26:26.083 --> 00:26:33.307
I could not envisage the beautiful life that I am now living, you know, having this beautiful partner.
00:26:33.307 --> 00:26:46.104
I gave birth last year to this most gorgeous little boy living in this beautiful community back in my hometown, near my parents, and that just felt completely unattainable five years ago for me.
00:26:46.104 --> 00:26:57.988
So just want to say that, firstly, like you have to believe it, even when you can't see it yet, just know that you've just got to go step by step for now, and there will be a beautiful life on the other side of this for you.
00:26:57.988 --> 00:27:03.009
It's there for you In the interim, just take it little bit by little bit.
00:27:03.190 --> 00:27:06.828
And something that I found game changing was journaling.
00:27:07.451 --> 00:27:40.889
So whether you want a video journal and just get your thoughts out, or actually the physical act of writing and it's why I actually made a journal to go with the book, because I journaled every single day through treatment, but I didn't realize at the time it's an incredibly therapeutic tool when you're going through a traumatic or difficult time, because what it does is it actually gives your brain a place to just process what's going on, to get the dark cloud of thoughts out of your head and put them somewhere that you can organize them and start to make sense of them.
00:27:41.972 --> 00:27:51.568
Yeah, I'd highly recommend it's called Morning Pages and a book called the Artist's Way and the idea is you just get up every morning brain dump three pages, just get it out of your brain.
00:27:51.568 --> 00:27:56.099
Or, if you don't have time for three pages, do a page or do half a page, whatever.
00:27:56.099 --> 00:28:00.101
But the idea is you can whinge, you can bitch, you can moan, you can.
00:28:00.101 --> 00:28:03.548
That doesn't mean you're a bad person, it doesn't mean you're negative.
00:28:03.548 --> 00:28:11.031
These are actually just thoughts and you're giving them somewhere to live in outside of your head, and that that was life-changing for me.
00:28:11.559 --> 00:28:11.900
I love that.
00:28:11.900 --> 00:28:16.432
It also feels like a very practical thing that we can do to kind of help us cope.
00:28:16.432 --> 00:28:25.139
Bryony Benjamin, thank you for your time and your skills and contributions to all of our lives.
00:28:25.139 --> 00:28:30.825
I will leave a link in the description for people to find you on Instagram to get your book.
00:28:30.825 --> 00:28:33.871
Life is Tough, but so are you, and thank you for joining us.
00:28:34.820 --> 00:28:58.942
Thank you so much for having me, lindy, and can I also just say a massive shout out to you for the beautiful work you do in the world to improve the lives of women all over the country and all over the world, and also for the help you personally gave me when I started to write my book, because you're one of the first people I spoke to and you just said just write badly and get it out and then you can edit later, and that really made the process a lot more fun and a lot faster.
00:28:58.942 --> 00:29:00.585
So thank you, oh my pleasure.
00:29:00.644 --> 00:29:03.250
My pleasure, happy to help us not be perfectionists together.
00:29:03.250 --> 00:29:04.451
Thank you for those kind words.
00:29:04.451 --> 00:29:05.232
Thank you, bryony.
00:29:05.232 --> 00:29:05.835
Thank you.