Behind Closed Doors

For most people, 2020 was a rubbish year. Jobs, businesses, lives and freedom have been lost and my heart goes out to everyone who has suffered. Working in the world of marketing we mostly just talk about the good stuff. We spew out a narrative of success because that’s what us marketers do. But what if we were all a little more honest? What if we showed the tough stuff to help each other and not just the good stuff? For everyone in my industry and for all the business owners I know, I want to share my story of the last 12 months in the hope you feel you can share the unedited highlights of your year too. #therealceo

June 2019

If I turned the clock back to 2019, you’d find a very different person. Everyone who knows me knows I am energetic and ambitious but that's not who I was on the 30th June, 2019. I couldn’t stop crying and I didn’t want to get out of bed. I had no idea how I was going to get through the days and weeks ahead.

The day before I had lost a baby to Patau Syndrome. It was one of the worst days of my life.

It was our 4th pregnancy and after 3 miscarriages we thought everything was going ok with this pregnancy but then a scan and subsequent tests revealed our baby boy was sick and he wasn’t going to survive. On the 29th of June 2019, we said goodbye to our little boy we named Sebastian.

The sadness was unbearable. I saw a counsellor and three weeks later I went back to work.

By day, I would have seemed ‘normal’, by night my partner described me as a shadow of my former self. I shut myself off from my networks both work and personal and I know to this day, people will have wondered where I went.

My self-esteem also took a real bashing. I couldn’t understand what was so wrong with me to not be able to do what a woman is genetically ‘supposed to do’, have a baby. I felt like a failure. Everything I have put my mind too, I have achieved and for some reason having a baby seemed insurmountable. I plodded along for a couple of months getting sadder and sadder while still being a CEO and running the agency putting a smile on my face and doing my job until I was jolted out of it by another turn of events.

October 2019

It was a Sunday evening in October, my partner Dan and I were lying in bed about to go to sleep when he asked me to check something he felt wasn’t quite right on his body. 

Immediately I knew something was wrong.

I told him he needed to ring the doctor first thing in the morning. What happened next was a whirlwind.

The doctor confirmed he needed further assessment and lucky for us our doctor Marina Arulanandam is a force to be reckoned with. Her queue of patients backed up but she didn’t care and got straight onto the phone ringing local consultants. By 12pm, Dan was seen by a consultant who said it was very likely he had a tumour. Days later test results showed it was testicular cancer.

Things moved fast and he was operated on and the tumour removed but he needed chemotherapy.

They couldn’t promise the chemotherapy would work or that the cancer wouldn’t spread but we were told he had a good chance of recovery with the treatment. Dan was extremely pragmatic and took it in his stride and even with the good prognosis, I found myself thinking the worst.

I’ll never forget sitting in Pret A Manger with Dan saying ‘you can’t die’. You can’t leave me.’ Only 4 months after losing the baby, my mental strength was, it’s fair to say, being tested. I felt 2019 had taken quite enough already.

Dan had a 6-week break between having the tumour removed and before starting chemotherapy. The knowledge that there was a high success rate for the treatment for testicular cancer got us through, although those weeks are very much a blur.

When discussing the side effects of chemotherapy, we were told it would make my partner infertile, at least for a few years, and with 4 unsuccessful pregnancies behind us, and me fast approaching 40, it was a big blow. There was so much to take in. I wasn’t sure if Dan would be ok and how bad things could get, I was grieving for the child I wouldn’t have and I felt so guilty for being upset about the potential of no child instead of solely worrying about Dan all at the same time.

As Christmas 2019 approached, Dan was in hospital receiving his chemotherapy. All the while my step-son needed looking after, taken to hobbies and I had an agency to run.

I started to feel unwell.

Understandably, I put it down to stress but after a few days I wasn’t so sure. I guess holding onto any last bit of hope, I did a pregnancy test and to our surprise I was pregnant. By some miracle we had got pregnant after the tumour was removed and before chemo started... to say I was shocked would be an understatement. Sitting by Dan’s bed, my worry increased. Was I going to have another miscarriage while Dan is fighting cancer? If the pregnancy goes ok, would Dan ever meet his child?

As the weeks passed, Dan got better and I got fatter but like everyone else, Covid threw us another curveball. Dan couldn’t come to scans with me and every scan came with anxiety. As I should have been slowing down, Covid put a stop to that and it was all hands to the pump pivoting client activity.

But fast forward to today and I couldn’t be more delighted to say:

-         Dan is in remission and doing well!

-         We have grown the team with the hire of @Jamescuff our new Associate Director

-         We had our best financial year growing revenue 41%

-         One of our team @rachelbesenyei won 30 under 30 newcomer award @PRWeek

-         We won the title of best content agency from the @Content Marketing Association for the third year in a row

-         And I couldn’t be more delighted to say we have the most amazing 4-month-old, baby boy!

Life throws all kinds of challenges at us, but things WILL always get better in the end…