'You can't go back to normal': Irish mum diagnosed with cancer six months after giving birth
This week on our Mums Who Inspire series, we chatted to Niamh Gaffney, whose experience of breast cancer led to a new career as a life coach. If you have a story that you would like to be featured, email mumswhoinspire[at]magicmum[dot]com.
“Looking back, the worst time, mentally and emotionally, was that period of time between knowing something was wrong and the actual results.
“Not knowing can be more difficult than the diagnosis itself. That’s the time when you really need to mind yourself.”
Niamh Gaffney, from Kells, Co. Meath, was finishing maternity leave with her first girl, when she discovered an odd lump.
Telling herself that it was a blocked milk duct, she went to the doctor. While there was no family history of breast cancer, and only 35-years-old, they sent her to be tested, just in case.
Two weeks later, her worst suspicions were confirmed. With a six-month-old baby at home, she got on the “roller-coaster” of cancer treatment.
“I did whatever I needed to do. I did the chemo, the radiation, the surgeries. I just got on with it.”
Coming out the other end and recovering from the rigorous cancer treatment, Niamh made a full recovery. She was ready to return to her executive level job in a well-known multi-national.
There was only one problem- there was no job there for her anymore.
“I can’t blame them really,” she says “between maternity and sick leave I was gone a while and things change.”
It was only once it was gone, did Niamh realised how important her career had been to her.
After studying Accounting and French in Scotland and France and qualifying as an accountant, she started working for Intel. Getting a dose of the “itchy feet” a few years later, she moved to Switzerland to work for a multi-national, before returning home to help set up their Dublin office.
She continued working in Dublin for ten years, rising through the ranks to executive level and studying part-time to get a degree in psychology.
“Looking back it can be easy to join the dots,” she recalls. “I was in the operations department and quite interested problem-solving and people.
“I was working with people from all over Europe and I found how people from different cultures work and communicate with each other to be fascinating.”
An abrupt end to a career that had taken over a decade of her life, combined with the aftershock of cancer treatment left Niamh feeling lost.
“Losing my job after all that, the cancer and the baby, was such a massive blow to my confidence. I had been there for so long that it had formed part of my identity.”
It was in that time, that the full weight of her illness impacted her.
“I had been in survival mode before. When you finish treatment you give yourself a massive pat on the back. You think the hard job is done.
“But there’s been such a fundamental change in your life. I kept telling myself, 'I'm alive', 'I'm one of the lucky ones', I should be happy.
“I kept telling myself that I was fine but the truth was I didn't recognise the person I was anymore.”
This sense of confusion translated into scattered hunting for a new job.
“I was actively dumbing down my CV, I kept asking myself ‘why would they hire me? How could I explain the time I was sick?’”
She “kept giving herself excuses” for not going after the jobs she was qualified for, telling herself that no-one would want to hire her if they knew she had had cancer.
“I was almost ashamed of what had happened to me. I didn't know who I was. I couldn't associate with my past, with the woman on the CV.”
Gradually, Niamh realised that she needed to change, to finally accept the trauma of surviving cancer:
“After facing a drastic change, such a job loss or illness, where our normality is challenged, we tend to protect ourselves, to stick with what we know, with what we can trust.
“But by doing that we can keep ourselves stuck, it can be too easy to hide away, and if we do it too long it becomes a way of life. That way of thinking is as impactful as it is unhealthy.”
For Niamh, moving forward with her life depended on being able to trust herself again:
“When you’re young you think you’re immortal. But when something life-changing happens, it can be difficult to trust yourself again. The very foundation of everything you were sure of before – life – was shook.
“You don’t feel in control anymore. Once you become aware of this, the solution is to rebuild that trust in yourself by looking at the things you can control – that’s why some people, after a cancer diagnosis, look to regain control by going completely healthy and green eating or working through their ‘bucket list’.”
Taking steps to change lack of control, like she did, is simple, but not easy:
“Everyone assumes you can simply ‘go back to normal’ after a life changing event. The fact is, there is no such thing as going back to normal. Too much has changed.”
Instead of hiding from her experience, she decided to turn it into a positive attribute. Use her unique experience to help others. Niamh discovered medical coaching and realised it could be a hugely effective way to help cancer patients and survivors with this part of the ‘roller-coaster’.
Accepting her ‘new normal’, she retrained as a coach and trainer. In 2016, she set up Directionality, a corporate and personal coaching practice.
“The whole idea behind Directionality is to make a deep-rooted impact, helping people get the mental and emotional fitness to deal with life’s challenges.”
Combining knowledge gleaned from years in the corporate and psychology worlds with her own personal experience of illness and mental resiliency, Niamh’s focus is now on helping organisations create environments where their people can feel a sense of belonging, of being included, of being safe to say they are not okay.
She also provides training and support to help individuals through stresses and changes.
“When you experience a big life change, whether it’s good or bad, you need ways of adapting to it,” she explains.
“After you have a traumatic experience, it’s natural to want to go back to the way it was before. But you can’t ever unknow that experience, so you get stuck in this hamster wheel of being faced with change and not wanting to deal with it.”
According to Niamh, this can apply to a wide range of experiences; such as having a new baby, a career change, or returning to work after maternity leave.
“Once you have this awareness that you cannot go ‘back to normal’ – then you can start to take back control of your life, to figure out what you want and to make those changes happen, this time on your terms.
“This is where people can achieve incredible things, creating the normality of their choice.”
Clearly, she’s doing a good job, winning the International Coaching Federation (ICF) President’s award last year for “helping humanity to flourish”.
And things are definitely looking up. Despite fears over the long term impact of breast cancer, Niamh was “blessed” with another “little miracle”, a son who’s now two-years-old.
“I definitely have someone looking out for me,” she says.
As for her best life advice? Be kind and be brave.
“Be kind to yourself. Listen to yourself and if you’re not talking to yourself like you’d talk to your best friend then you need to rethink how you speak to yourself.
"Be brave; be totally honest with yourself. Once you know what you want, be brave and take the steps to go after it. Knowledge is power, but only if you do something with it!”
If you'd like to know more about Niamh or Directionality you can find her on Facebook or by clicking here.