I grew up on the outskirts of Melbourne as the third eldest child of ten. As a child, you would have regarded me as a tom boy, as my childhood was full of outdoor activities and I loved participating in a number of sports from cricket to netball. Given that we were such a big family and that we had to be very careful with where our money was spent, so all we grew up on a diet of fresh fruit and vegetables from Victoria Markets.
At the age of 26, as a single mother of a young boy, I decided on a whim to travel to Sydney for a holiday. I ended up staying there for a month and decided to move there as I fell in love with the outdoor life offered here and being close to the energy of the ocean.
During this time, I worked in a variety of roles around events and marketing and fell pregnant with my second child. I found motherhood to be very easy, and it was during this time that I started to ask myself the question “what did I want to do with my life?”. The answer was easy given my upbringing – I wanted to study and work in natural medicine. I had found throughout my entire life that I just had this “light bulb moment” that came on when discussing diet and its effect on health, so I thought that studying natural medicine like nutrition and botanical medicine was a perfect fit for me.
At the time I graduated from my Diploma of Nutrition, my husband went bankrupt, so I took it as an opportunity to build my own career in natural medicine. To this end, I took up teaching roles at the Australian School of Natural Therapies at the same time as taking on an internship with (which led to me eventually managing a practice for), Dr Sandra Cabot, who is renowned for her liver cleansing diet.
A few years later, I was working 6 days a week in the Eastern Suburbs in Sydney. I also had a lot of stress going on at home and made the decision to end my marriage. What I had experienced over the past few years made me evolve in another direction and my husband had said to me that he didn’t like the person I had become. For the first time in my life, I was able to look at myself and say that I actually loved the person I had become. As a consequence of the divorce, I had to navigate domestic violence, abuse and the loss of my home whilst trying to look like I had it all together in building my business and seeing my clients.
It wasn’t until 2006 when I met my current husband, Kevin, that I realized that my life was incredibly out of balance. Kevin made me realise that life was much more than work, and that there were other things that I should enjoy like travel. Unfortunately, the GFC hit in 2010 and I was nursing my sister through her breast cancer, so I made a decision to move my practice to a premises which came with its own issues, and I really burnt myself out.
In 2016, I got sick. I was diagnosed with breast cancer, which is a genetic type of cancer typically seen in non-Western woman. I remember there were days where I would sit in the bed in hospital during my chemotherapy treatment with silent tears streaming down my face because the whole concept of putting foreign substances in my body was against my total being, especially as I was a natural medicine practitioner! However, I knew that I had to do it to give myself the best chance to live, and I’m thankful for the amazing team of practitioners I had around me who encouraged me to use herbal medicine on the side to help with my immune system. I credit the herbal medicine to this day for me not getting infected with any viruses or bacteria during my chemo treatment.
During the entire time I was getting treatment, I made the decision to continue to see clients at my practice for 1-2 weeks a month. Some people might think I’m a bit crazy for doing it, but in my heart, I knew that my purpose was to do this work, and I knew that it would get me through the chemo treatment, so I did. Many clients didn’t even notice a difference in me!
So here I am now – in 2019, 3 years cancer free. As you can see from my brief story, I know for a fact that many things can affect your health (e.g. diet, exercise, stress and work), and sometimes you cannot point an ailment to one particular thing. I believe that empathy and compassion for a person’s own journey can go a very long way in their healing journey, and that there are many different ways to approach an issue to achieve the same outcome, all being dependent on where you are at that given point in time.
Thank you for taking the time to read my story and I look forward to seeing you soon.
‘We can start to make a difference by the little things that we do.’
Robyn Spillane
