Over two decades of living with cancer, Zelda Wilson has learned so much about how to live (and die) well she now takes her ability to cope with near-death for granted, as though it’s become a natural part of her personality. If you’re struggling with life or death, how might you get to that freeing place? For Zelda, reframing how she looks at her situation has played an important part in getting to where she is today.
Zelda was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007 and was given a 50% chance of surviving another year. Making it through multiple surgeries (and a divorce), Zelda says she learned to say ‘Yes!’ to everything, even an Iron Man triathlon. “This was the beginning of understanding resilience and tenacity,” she says. “How taking one step at a time in the right direction will get you to achieve things you never thought possible.”
“I decided to change my fear to curiosity.
Zelda Wilson in Warwick Nub News
Fear paralyses you, while curiosity demands action.”
Over 10 years, Zelda completed two triathlons, marathons, cycling expeditions, pilgrimages, and wild camping. On a cycling trip in Brazil, she fell and broke her neck, yet still, Zelda didn’t stop, wanting to “feel much more pain than cancer,” she says, and to have “something else to talk about” besides the cancer that ravaged her body.
Warwick Nub News
You Can! Coaching
You Can! Coaching
In 2018, now taking care of two small children alone, Zelda found a new lump in her neck and discovered cancer had spread to her bones, including her spine and pelvis.
“My nails fell out. My hair, of course. I couldn’t afford to go too far from home and sneeze because my body could just give in at that moment. You’re just in an awful place around how your skin feels; I had sores in my mouth and ears and nose… You’re poisoning your whole body just in the hope that the cancer cells go, and then if they do, it takes a year to build up every part of your body again to something that can function. I know there will be a choice for me one day: Is the life I’m getting out of the chemo good enough, or do I, at some stage, choose the life I have? That will come.“
Zelda on THE GOBSMACKED! PODCAST 2022
In her native South Africa, “Zelda” means “warrior”, and she had yet another battle to fight in 2023 when cancer came back again; this time, in her brain. The tumour was removed in an 11-hour surgery, but Zelda lost her speech as a result. It took months of therapy to get her voice, and her identity, she says, back.
Throughout these traumas, Zelda had performance coach Patrick Marr of Leading Edge Performance to help her reframe her experiences into something positive, and you don’t have to have coaching to do it, he says.
A great reframe can just be watching somebody doing something or hearing something on a podcast that’s different to what you’ve ever thought before.
How to reframe even the most difficult situation
Taken from the podcast, Zelda, Princess Warrior: Life Hacks for Living Full and Dying Well
Episode 9: Reframing in Life with Patrick Marr
Right now, you’ll have a frame for the way you look at things, notes Patrick. You can think of it as a window frame. You’re looking through the window in one way and so you’re stuck in the frame, but what if you looked through a completely different window? Then you’d view the world in a different way.
When Zelda had to leave work to undergo cancer treatment it was a difficult transition. She was leaving behind a successful career, which felt like another loss of an identity. With the help of Patrick (and his daughter), Zelda was able to reframe this retirement as a gap year instead, which suddenly felt exciting and positive, and Zelda’s taken many gap years since then to help her to live her life to its absolute fullest.
Reframing exercise
What’s really helpful is to recognise you have a set of frames now, says Patrick, and if you’re making a transition, you’re going to need a different frame going forward.
You can picture yourself at a roundabout, he says. There are a number of exits, but you’re limited to the number of exits you can see from the ground. If you get into a helicopter instead and up in the air, you can see your destination 100 miles down the road. Then you can start to factor in where you turn at this first roundabout.
Whatever you decide for your new frame could be any number of things, says Patrick, so you’ll need to think about what’s most important to you. This makes it easier to make choices as different options and offers come up:
- Does it take you away from what you want?
- Or does it fit the new frame you’ve created?
Be careful not to be too specific, he advises ― keep it high level, but be diligent in checking what does and doesn’t fit inside your new frame.
‘Channel your inner Zelda’ says Patrick
Zelda continues to plan more gap years and, spurred on by a celebrant friend, installed a memorial bench now, in the midst of life, after a difficult conversation with her youngest son revealed he’d like a physical place to go to remember her. It sits on the Grand Union Canal in Warwick, England, opposite the Warwick Parkway train station.
“Seeing someone resting, taking a break along the canal or meeting a friend there. It reminds me of the preciousness of life and the lightness of life. I think it makes transition between life and death smoother, somehow,” says Zelda (msn.com)
Thanks for letting us sit on that bench in solidarity with you Zelda, to share your story to help others ✨
