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[00:00:07] Susannah de Jager: Welcome to The Wobbly Middle, a podcast about women reinventing their careers with Susannah de Jager and Patsy Day.
[00:00:13] Patsy Day: Hi Susannah!
[00:00:14] Susannah de Jager: Hi Pats!
[00:00:15] Patsy Day: How's your wobbly middle?
[00:00:16] Susannah de Jager: This week has been all about perspective for me. I have a lot on. I know, I know, don't we all? But having felt like I had all my plates spinning successfully, this week has been like a Greek wedding tragedy, smashed China everywhere. I absolutely lost my shit at the kids on Tuesday morning, packed them off to school and had such guilt all day that I had primed them so negatively for their days. Then I had two conversations that gave me some real perspective. The first is with a friend who, like today's guest, has had to contend with cancer. She said to us that every day she wakes and isn't in pain, she thinks about how lucky she is. The second was with a friend who said, sure, you're busy, but isn't it all good stuff? Perspective, it's so important. We can fetishise busyness, but honestly, it's a privilege to be busy, to be able to work, and to have a full life. Absolutely, it needs to be balanced and we need boundaries, but we also need to keep reminding ourselves that life is not a burden and how about your wobbly middle Pats?
[00:01:20] Patsy Day: If you're talking big picture, I'm thinking small. It's so hard to start something, a business, the search for a new job. Something I took from the episode with Helen Wright was her saying she's a big believer in conversations. Perhaps the first place to start is a conversation with another girlfriend in the wobbly middle, chat about one thing you can do to start the ball rolling, one small step. You don't have to know the direction of the ball. Perhaps sit down together with a glass of wine and work on your CVs, you can each do a bit of research on short courses, very short courses even, and report back at the end of the week. A touch of accountability doesn't hurt and if you try this, we'd love to hear how you get on. Get in touch with us via Instagram, Substack, LinkedIn, or our email address.
[00:02:11] Susannah de Jager: Our guest today is Donna Crous. Donna is a South African who has contended with country moves, career pivots and the ever dreaded "what do you do" question at a dinner party. She started her career in banking and when motherhood intervened at the relatively young age of 25, she prioritised family and being the ultimate PTA mum. Bake sales, kitchen table charity and small business ideas with her mum friends. What she didn't realise until later was how these iterations were developing and building hard skills that would serve her when she wanted to return to working and find her new thing. We can learn so much from Donna who didn't design every stage of her path. Much of it evolved from her natural curiosity and generosity and flourished because of her attitude. Hers is a story that reminds us that we don't need to know everything before we start and that the why can just be passion.
[00:03:04] Patsy Day: Hi Donna. You've known Susannah for a long time, but we've just met. So for coming on the podcast.
[00:03:11] Donna Crous: Hi Patsy and Susannah. Thank you for having me.
[00:03:13] Patsy Day: We both grew up in South Africa in the eighties, so I'm thinking Wimpy Burgers, City Golfs and the Miss South Africa pageant being totally unmissable. What did you want to be when you grew up?
[00:03:24] Donna Crous: That's a really tough question, I jumped around a lot. I never really had a determined goal. I wanted to be a hairdresser and my mum thought that was not a good idea. I wanted to be a yoga instructor because we had Jane Fonda in her leotard in those days. Also, it didn't go down well. Yeah, but I didn't have very many big aspirations. I didn't have great marks at school, I was diagnosed with dyslexia when I was in grade two. I didn't really have a lot of big aspirations and goals. I think for me, it was just trying to get through school.
[00:03:56] Patsy Day: Susannah and I were talking about the different awareness of our children going through schools now with respect to diagnosis of neurodiversity and I wonder how were you even supported as a dyslexic kid growing up?
[00:04:09] Donna Crous: Absolutely no support whatsoever. I was diagnosed early enough, but I was literally just put in the front of the class with all the children that had sight impairments and hearing impairments. So my teachers were aware of it, but I didn't get any support for it.
[00:04:24] Patsy Day: And as an adult, have you shaped your life so that the areas you find more difficult have been minimised or have you gone back to re explore it?
[00:04:34] Donna Crous: I think I've just learned to accept it. I knew going through school that I was different and I knew I had to just persevere and I had to just work with it. I look at it now as a blessing because it definitely helps me to see the world in different colours. As a child, I really struggled because I knew I was different, I couldn't put my finger on why I was different. But it definitely taught me perseverance.
[00:04:57] Patsy Day: So you finished school and you ended up in banking?
[00:05:01] Donna Crous: Yes, I ended up in banking, totally the wrong position for me to be in, but I loved it and I think because, let's say I had the gift of the gab and I was able to get my way through life smiling and being friendly and enjoyed being around people, so I think I was fortunate enough to be able to get into a really good position. But then I fell pregnant and it was at that point that we decided that I couldn't actually serve two masters. So it was either time with Gemma, my firstborn, or going to work. We just felt that the demands of my job were too big to try and serve both being a mum and being in banking.
[00:05:38] Patsy Day: And you were relatively young, not young for our parents, when you had Gemma.
[00:05:42] Donna Crous: I was, yeah, I was 25. So yeah, very young actually in today's day.
[00:05:47] Susannah de Jager: Something that's come up a lot in feedback we've had since we launched The Wobbly Middle, has been talking not just about balance, but about how some workplaces are very hard to go back to and banking would be an example of one. It's really hard, it was even harder 20, 25 years ago to go back into that environment in a flexible way, it just didn't exist. So it was quite a binary choice for lots of people and then you went into the next phase, which was focused on family and I'd love you to talk a little bit about what you spent your time doing, obviously focused on your beautiful daughters, but also the other things you did to sort of occupy yourself and to be more engaged in your community and your surroundings, cause I think it's really beautiful the way that ties into what you've gone on to do.
[00:06:36] Donna Crous: Yeah, well, I became a stay at home mum and I really invested in my children and I was part of the school PTA, I started small businesses with a couple of friends and I hopped between baking cakes for home industries and I started a small gift hamper business so I just played around in different creative fields and I loved being able just to be creative, but at the same time, I also just felt as if I was quite narrowed in just being a stay home mum. I'd lost my identity. I'd become Jemma and Kyra's mum at school and Derek's wife outside of the office, and I suppose trying to start all these little businesses or always trying to come up with ideas of something that could keep me occupied and just give me some kind of identification there was always something I was thinking about of starting.
[00:07:31] Patsy Day: Yeah, you've also said that you worry that you wouldn't have anything to offer other than your time and that seems absurd when you think of all the things that you've done. But I think something you said before is you felt that value was placed on qualifications and paid work rather than either skills you were learning, setting up these businesses.
[00:07:50] Donna Crous: Absolutely. I used to find that I would go to corporate functions with my husband and I'd be talking to someone and they'd say, so what do you do Donna? And I would say, Oh, I'm a stay at home mum and then everything would just go awkward. It was like, okay, now what am I going to say to her? Nobody wants to talk to you about your kids. I suppose I assumed people felt that I just wasn't worthy of holding a conversation because all I would talk about were my kids.
[00:08:13] Susannah de Jager: You make this point around value and we have this idea that if you've got qualifications and you're in a particular professional line of work, your value is greater and I think it's really part of something we're trying to draw out in The Wobbly Middle is to talk about skills that maybe traditionally haven't been attributed as much value. But if you're starting a new career, if you're starting your own business, they all suddenly come to the fore and I'd love to hear a bit more about now that you look back on that period of your life, are you able to identify specific skills that you maybe didn't realise at the time you were collecting?
[00:08:55] Donna Crous: Oh my word, absolutely. Those skills were definitely foundations for the building of my career going into the photography world and it was actually pointed out to me by a friend of mine where she said, Donna, everything you've been working towards in your twenties and your thirties has got you to where you are now in your forties building this career as a photographer. So for instance, my cake baking days were giving me the skills for my cooking and my baking for my food photography. My hamper making business gave me the skills for styling the images and putting the images together and getting that creative eye to place things in the right order. So at the time they were just small little businesses but looking back now, they were 100 percent fundamental in giving me the skills to take my photography to the next level. I'm so grateful that I had those opportunities to be able to play around because they definitely developed those skills for me.
[00:09:47] Susannah de Jager: And tell us a little bit more about then the journey from this stage in your life. You moved country, you moved to the UK and you started evolving this whole other area of blogging and food.
[00:09:58] Donna Crous: Yeah, well, when we moved from South Africa to the UK, our school times are different. So my girls in South Africa would finish school at 2:30 and then it would be an afternoon of activities and rushing around and taking them places. Whereas in the UK they finish later, they finish at 4:30. So I suddenly ended up in a new country with a whole day to myself, my husband was off at work and I was just stuck at home. I didn't have a big friend group So I decided to put together a blog and this was a massive learning curve for me. I had to learn how to create a blog. I was sitting, building my own blog on WordPress, learning how to write. Again, I'm not a great writer, so I had to learn how to write and then on top of it all, I had to try and make my food blog visible. It's a food blog, it needs to hit you visibly. As you hit the website, you need to be drawn in by photos, by good images and that's where being more creative, I set about trying to learn how to photograph my food properly and it was quite a challenge because in those days it wasn't much about food photography online and I knew the images that I wanted to create, I just didn't know how to go about creating them. I just literally applied all my energy to trying to create these images, trying to get them out of my head onto a platform so that I was able to share them with everybody else. Lots of challenges along the way, I took some really shocking pictures.
[00:11:22] Susannah de Jager: And so how did it all evolve from there? Because that was the first foray in and you obviously had a lot of success, but then it set off a chain reaction of things that have led you to where you are.
[00:11:33] Donna Crous: Yeah, it definitely set off a chain unbeknownst to me what it was going to produce. I think 2017 was probably my year. when it all started to take off and it initially started with Facebook. I was in a Facebook group with other bloggers and one of the ladies was really struggling with her recipe and I had a look at the recipe and I sent her a few tips that I thought she could maybe change to make the recipe work So that morning I woke up and I didn't have anything planned to photograph.
[00:12:03] So I thought, well, I'll make this recipe and see if it actually works and then it worked really well. So I took photographs of it and I sent her through the images saying, look, this is how it's worked. I think it's really come together well, what do you think? And she came back saying, yeah, the recipe looks great, but what about the pictures? Did you take the pictures? And I said, yeah, I did. They're just to show you what the recipe looked like and she said, well, funny, this has happened, but I'm short listing photographers for a book that I'm publishing and I've just had a look at your Instagram account and I love your photography, would you mind if I put your name forward? My initial reaction was absolutely no ways, I'm not a food photographer, I'm a blogger. I'm not able to photograph a whole book and I initially instinctively just went, no, I can't go there and my husband talked me off the edge of the cliff and said, no, no, you can do this, put your name forward and let's see where it goes. Well, by the end of that evening, she was based in New York, I was based in the UK. So by 11 o'clock that night, I'd already signed my contract for the first book to photograph.
[00:13:06] Susannah de Jager: Such a cool story,I love how your generosity led to something so positive. But that thing of not seeing your own value, I think is a real worry for people in this stage of their lives, that it can be very easy to under appreciate the skills you have developed, you've honed in your case, or that you have.
[00:13:26] Patsy Day: I think I've read somewhere, say yes before you're ready. Do you think now Donna, you would say yes rather than no?
[00:13:34] Donna Crous: I have had so many massive opportunities that have come to me since then and often I get them in as emails. My initial reaction is no, no, no, no. My whole body is screaming no. But I've learned that I have to step away from it. I have to give myself time to process it and I have to actually understand what the task is that's being asked of me and I need a couple of hours, so I've learned not to respond straight away and all of the big opportunities that have come to me have been utterly terrifying, but the best decision I ever made was to say yes.
[00:14:08] Susannah de Jager: And it's such a discipline, isn't it? Because we all get asked to do things that scare you and on the whole, as you say, Pats, you're not ready, but also it's out of your comfort zone. But that's when you can grow and I think that it's something we all need to try and be disciplined and conscious of because otherwise you play small and there's a really terrifying statistic that women will only apply for roles where they think they fulfill 80 percent of the criteria and men will apply for jobs where they fulfill a much lower percentage and they will just take a bit of a punt and say, well, I think I really cover 40 percent of that base brilliantly and it's up to the person on the other side to decide whether I'm good enough for that role, but women decide for them sometimes and I think that's something we've got to be disciplined about.
[00:14:54] Donna Crous: Definitely and I also believe you need a team of cheerleaders behind you. I'm fortunate, I've got Derek who believes I'm capable of doing anything, my girls definitely believe I'm capable of doing anything and then my close friends, whenever I'm sitting on, a massive decision and I run it past them, they're my cheerleaders and I believe everyone needs a team of cheerleaders behind them.
[00:15:15] Patsy Day: Donna, another big break came when you entered the Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year competition. Can you talk us through your thinking when you came to entering that competition?
[00:15:26] Donna Crous: So I didn't consider myself a food photographer, I considered myself a food blogger and I'd signed up to the newsletter because they have really good food photography images, obviously and at that stage I was devouring anything I could in terms of what was food photography and towards the end of the submission stage, they do a countdown. So from the last two weeks, they send you a daily email saying ten days, five days, whatever and I was following this countdown and I think we got to about four days left and just, something inside of me said, just do it.
[00:16:02] So I submitted a few images, really didn't think anything of it and next thing I got an email that I'd been shortlisted and then I got an email to say that I was in the finals and I, honestly had no idea the size or the reach of the competition. I went to the award ceremony and you walk in and you see your photography in print, which is just unbelievable. As a photographer, it's just an incredible moment to see this exhibition and your photography on the wall, framed and then all the big names associated with the competition. it was a surreal evening. I was placed third in the food blogging category and from there, doors just opened. I was invited to speak at the big photography convention in Birmingham, the following year I was approached by Nikon and I was asked to speak on their stage and from there I was approached to be a Nikon ambassador and I was the first food photographer for Nikon which was really exciting because it really gave me a stage to show that food photography is not just commercial, it's not just about fake food, It's about real photography, there's real skill attached to it, there's real tricks that go into making the lighting work and making the food pop and making the food look tasty and real and that was just such an exciting opportunity for me.
[00:17:23] Patsy Day: What does the role of a Nikon ambassador entail?
[00:17:27] Donna Crous: Obviously, working for the brand, so at the time when they first approached me, I was really, again, this was a no moment for me because I didn't go to university, I didn't study photography, so I didn't have the technical skills that I felt a Nikon ambassador would need and it was made very clear to me that it wasn't about being technical, it was about inspiring people to take photographs. And I think on the food side I had a great reach in working with a lot of women because I think photography is very much a male dominant area but there were an incredible amount of women interested in food photography, particularly people who were running blogs, who were baking and wanting to share their bakes and their food on Instagram. So really this rise in female photography was what excited me and working with a lot of female photographers was really inspiring for me.
[00:18:21] It comes through your story a lot as welook at the themes that you perhaps underestimated your own skills that you were developing versus the more measurable skills and yet time and time again you were sort of pioneering in a space that's proven not to be the most important thing actually and you clearly, particularly with the food photography and at that moment in time, pre Instagram, there was a zeitgeist that was evolving at the same time as you and I think that's a lovely message to be able to convey to people that you don't have to do it in the way that it has been done for the last 10 years. There is always an evolution going on and you gave a really great example when we spoke before about going to a studio in London with a more traditional food photographer and I'd love you just to talk about that. Yeah. So right at the very beginning, I decided I wanted to really sink my teeth into food photography and my husband had bought me a package to go and meet a food photographer in London and get him to look at my photography and just have a one on one session with him, almost like a mentor and I came out of that absolutely squashed. I didn't live in London and I felt like I'd actually been pummeled because he Basically just said, well, if you don't live in London and you don't have access to a studio, you're never going to be able to do food photography. You're never going to be able to shoot with clients. You're not going to be able to offer them a place where clients can come and work with you and there's very few food photography studios in London available. So it's really going to be difficult. Plus, you know, you're going to have to bring your gear up and, I just felt really kind of annihilated by the whole conversation and I got on the train and I phoned Derek from the train and I just said, I'm done, I can't do this. I actually felt a bit embarrassed and I just felt like I was a sort of housewife trying to turn my life into a food photographer and Derek just said to me, well, just keep doing what you're doing, you love working for yourself, you love taking your own photographs and that's what you're good at.
[00:20:20] So I did. I carried on working from home, I created a little home studio for myself and that was my little happy zone and I think that was the best advice I was given because what it allowed me to do was to create my own images the way I wanted them to be. It gave me that freedom to create a unique style and a unique look, which actually knowing what I know now, that's what every photographer wants. They want somebody to stop and see the picture and know straight away that that particular picture belongs to them I was creating my own images, which is what Nikon saw and I think knowing that now that I didn't have to be doing what everybody else was doing, that actually going on my own journey and my own route was the best thing for me because I was able to create what stood out from the crowd.
[00:21:09] Patsy Day: And you've had success with some of your own recipe books now?
[00:21:13] Donna Crous: Yeah, so, I photographed, I think five or six other authors books, and then I just decided that it was time that I started to look at doing my own book. And I put myself out there to numerous publishers in the UK, and I didn't hear from anybody. Then one morning I would just wake up and think, right, I'm inspired. I'm going to go and do this and that and so I rewrote my whole brief and sent it out to a couple more publishers. I got word back from one and they were very interested and yeah, meetings began and signed a book deal and wrote my own book.
[00:21:51] Susannah de Jager: We've spoken about lots of the catalysts, having children, moving country, even circumstantial stuff that has impacted the path you've taken, like living outside London and now we come to a time where there was a completely different externality that entered your life and please, if you would, tell us a bit about what happened next for you.
[00:22:12] Donna Crous: So my manuscripts had to be handed in on the 1st of December, that was my due date for my book and I think we were in about August where I discovered I had breast cancer, primary breast cancer, discovered a lump, went to my GP and the world was literally turned upside down. In a couple of weeks, I was in for surgery, then started treatment, radiation, and everything that, that I'd worked for and everything that I'd suddenly thought were goals suddenly changed and shifted and I was fortunate because I had amazing editors and I said, look, I'm so sorry. I've just been diagnosed with breast cancer I'll try, but I don't think I'm going to be able to finish the book by the 1st of December and they came back, they were just incredible, they came back saying, just take as long as you need, we will extend it by another year, if you need us to extend it by another two years, we are happy to do that. So I was fortunate that I could actually just spend my time recovering, going through treatment, healing, recovering, getting my head back in the game. But to be fair, I don't think I was as kind on myself during that time as I probably should have been, because I just see it as a bit of a blip in my career. In my mind it was just have the surgery, have the treatment and then life will go back to normal pretty quickly after that. So from the end of 2019 to February 2020, I was under treatment and then March was supposed to be my big breakout, that was when I was supposed to get back into work obviously COVID struck then, so I think everybody's lives changed when COVID struck and we went into lockdown.
[00:23:50] Fortunately, actually for me, because I was very much a one stop shop on the photography side, I actually became busier than I expected, more work from Nikon because at that stage we were trying to inspire people to photograph around their home, find things in their fridges that they could photograph and so that was really busy stage for me. We then decided during that time to move from the UK to Jersey, which was another very big move that we undertookand then into 2021, I started to feel unwell, went to a couple of doctors, didn't really know what was going on and then mid 2021, I was re diagnosed with secondary breast cancer, which is metastatic breast cancer, the breast cancer had essentially moved to my bones and it settled in different parts of my bones. So that was again, another knockback, more goalposts moved.
[00:24:41] Patsy Day: Thank you for sharing this with us. When you got that second diagnosis, you're in a hospital room, a lot of us, our family and friends go through this but we're not in the room with them. Can you tell us a little about what happens when the words are sort of coming at you?
[00:24:58] Donna Crous: So I hadhad symptoms for quite a few months before that and I had been to numerous doctors and been told different stories for every doctor had a different reason why I was feeling sick. So I knew that something was wrong and when I finally got that diagnosis, it was absolute relief that it wasn't in my head, I wasn't imagining what was happening to me. I remember my first words to him were, so how do we fight this? What do we do? What is the game plan? Because I was ready. I didn't know about secondary breast cancer, I didn't even know what it was, I didn't know it existed. So I obviously had to learn about it. But my initial reaction was somebody has listened to me, somebody has found what's going on in my body and now what do we do to sort this out?
[00:25:46] Susannah de Jager: And Don, we spoke earlier about being backward looking in photography and that there are new things in front and cancer, you and I have spoken about, is very like that. A lot of the data and the statistics and the experiences are backward looking and you are now in a journey where you're looking forward, looking for pioneering things and having those discussions and you've got a platform where you're sharing so much of that, which is just so generous and very brave called Diary of a Booby Queen and you talk about people advocating for themselves in these spaces, which are often quite lonely, which are often quite intimidating, because we're not all suddenly experts and doctors and I'd love to hear a bit about some of the experiences you've had that you're now putting in the public domain around the importance of advocating for yourself.
[00:26:43] Donna Crous: It's so important. With my primary breast cancer, I followed everything that the doctors said. In hindsight, I probably didn't have a lot to question, for me it was a bump in the road and I just was just going to get through it and out the other side and I didn't take that care, that self care and maybe educate myself more on what I was dealing with. So, obviously, the second time around, that was more of a wake up moment where I thought, I really do need to take more initiative in myself. Having dealt with so many doctors who misdiagnosed me, I realised then that this was on me, that this was my fight. So I really started to learn as much as I possibly could about secondary breast cancer, other alternative therapies that I could take, complementary therapies that I could use, why it was happening to me, what was happening to me, alternatives that I could question my oncologist about, and really working with my oncologist, it was the two of us together against the cancer and it took a while to get him on my side. Being South African, I am quite straightforward and I think initially he thought I was questioning him and he kept on saying, you know, you're welcome to get a second diagnosis and I had to just get it across to him that I wasn't questioning him, I was maybe questioning the system, maybe questioning, a set standard that we just have, that why can't we think out the box and why can't we do other things to help along the way. But yeah, my Diary of a Booby Queen is to also educate family members, people who don't know much about cancer and that, yeah, it is a terrifying diagnosis to get, I will not take that away from anyone. But at the same time, there's so much life to be had and so much life to be enjoyed and that not every cancer patient is bald and hitched up to an IV treatment and, people have this preconceived idea of what a cancer patient looks like and that yes, I have bad days, but a lot of the time I have really good days and that there's so much more to cancer than just what we see on TV and what we see in magazines and what we picture in our minds or the horror stories that we see. So for me, it's about showing that there are really good days and amazing people that I've met. I've met the most incredible people on this journey.
[00:28:59] Susannah de Jager: This is a strange parallel that I'm going to draw, so forgive me, but we spoke earlier about having children and how you think, oh, everything will carry on after I have my baby, my life will be unperturbed by this and then by degrees, you realise, oh no, this is a watershed moment, this is a complete shift, nothing is the same again, obviously and we've spoken about this with a midwife, Nina van Schaik, who we also interviewed and I feel like this is another area where you describe thinking it was just going to be a blip and then it's been so much more and that thing of being kind to oneself, looking after yourself and balance and it's something that I draw out because a lot of people listening will be looking for lots of reasons at what they want to do in their next phases of their careers but I think it's equally important to focus on how that balance can be resolved in one's life at different times, depending on the demands.
[00:29:58] Donna Crous: Oh, for sure. You know, I look back and I think knowing what I know now, and I think one of the blessings of having cancer is you get to look at your life through a totally different lens and all those years in my thirties and my twenties where I was, so worried about what other people thought, I mean now I don't care. It's just get out there and just enjoy every day possible and when I was at school, our school motto was Carpe Diem and I think that's lost on a 15, 16, 17 year old but you know, I'm 52 now and boy, do those words mean something to me now.
[00:30:31] It really is about just making the most out of every day possible and being kind to yourself and taking days where being kind mentally and physically, telling yourself that you can do it and telling yourself, it's okay if you can't do it and tomorrow is just another day. Tomorrow you can just have another bash at it. But also, if you're not feeling physically up to it, then take some time out and rest and hydrate and eat good food and just enjoy those small moments.
[00:30:58] Susannah de Jager: Yeah, it's sort of nourishment and a career is nourishment for one part of you and what you're describing is nourishment for another part and they're both so important.
[00:31:08] Patsy Day: And this is not expecting the unwell to heal the healthy, but your friends who've coped better with your diagnosis, such that they're able to support you better, what is it that they've done for themselves to help them understand more what you're going through?
[00:31:28] Donna Crous: They've asked questions. I think it's really important and, some people are just terrified to bring up the word cancer, it's almost like a swear wordand I understand when people don't know me very well, they don't want to bring up the topic, but my close friends are not afraid to ask questions because I think educating and them understanding, it's really hard to understand the different treatments that I'm going through, and also probably where I am emotionally is really good for them to know when to bring up things and when not to, but also I think because I share so much on my Instagram account, I think they're aware of when I'm going through a bad patch and when I'm not, because I try and be totally honest on the account. So I share the good and the bad and I think that they know where I am at any given day and they're also, they're happy to message me and say, do you want to go ask, say yes or no, and I'll just go back saying no and they've given me that space to say no.
[00:32:24] Patsy Day: And what are the unhelpful responses?
[00:32:27] Donna Crous: I call it toxic positivity. It's basically on a really bad day when I'm feeling very run down when somebody walks in and says, Oh my gosh, you look amazing. you look really good today and I want to go, no I don't, I don't feel good, I don't look good, don't try and cheer me up that way. So yeah, I call it toxic positivity, that's not helpful to me.
[00:32:49] Diminishing what I'm going through, so,when I talk about this treatment that I've had this week where I've said I have a lot of bone pain and I have a lot of joint pain, when somebody will say, Oh, but you know, I'm also going through menopause and it's the same thing. So it's probably just menopause that you're going through,
[00:33:04] Susannah de Jager: I can't believe somebody would say that to you.
[00:33:07] Donna Crous: Sometimes I'll go, yeah, you're right actually, it probably is just that and then other days I'll just think, no you can't go down that road. So a lot of it is where I think where I am mentally as well as to how well received some comments are, but my friends are really good.I'm not talking about my close friends now because they really know how to manage me, I'm talking ignorance outside of my social circle and that's why I share so much is because I just think that there's ways and means that, you can go about, speaking to someone with cancer and I don't want to scare people to the point where they don't know what to say, but I just want to try and help and give them the right ways to approach someone.
[00:33:46] Patsy Day: I think that's a good place to end, but I also feel that I'm so pleased that you and Susannah know each other so well, so I can continue to hear all your news and we'll keep our listeners updated.
[00:34:00] Susannah de Jager: Donna, thank you so much. This has been wonderful as always.
[00:34:04] Donna Crous: Thank you, ladies. I really appreciate you giving me this platform to speak about all of these things. As uncomfortable as they are for some people, I really do feel thatsome things need be said.
[00:34:14] Patsy Day: And we can find your Diary of a Booby Queen on Instagram?
[00:34:18] Donna Crous: On Instagram, that's right. So I actually run two accounts. I have my Donna Crous, for my food photography account, and then my main focus at the moment is Diary of a Booby Queen, which is just advocating for secondary breast cancer.
[00:34:31] Susannah de Jager: Amazing. Thank you.
[00:34:36] Patsy Day: Susannah, Don is very close to you and I can see that you're looking pensive.
[00:34:41] there was a lot for us to think about, but Donna was very strong in the point she made about advocating for yourself in your health and the statistic she discussed with us afterwards was that 30 percent of primary breast cancer goes on to become secondary breast cancer, and that she didn't know this at the time she was unwell first time round and it took a long time for the doctors to come to her second diagnosis. So her message was about advocacy and educating yourself.
[00:35:15] Susannah de Jager: Yeah, I think if that's a message we can convey, that's really important.On a more positive note and it corresponds with what you said up the top of the podcast, that point of setting targets came through for me as well, that Don spoke about setting herself daily or weekly targets to get things done, even if she wasn't being held accountable by somebody else and I think that your idea of having a friend to do those things with and as a companion is really great and as a mechanism, it's a very good way to keep feeling like you've got momentum, even if you're not sure what you're heading for yet.
[00:35:50] Patsy Day: So to set some sort of weekly or daily seems like a stretch, but a weekly goal.
[00:35:55] Susannah de Jager: I think so for sure, just something that you can tick off and feel like I'm moving forward.
[00:36:00] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Wobbly Middle
[00:36:04] Patsy Day: If you enjoyed it, please leave a review on Apple or Spotify, it really makes a difference and if you're in the wobbly middle of your career and would like to share your story with us, please drop us a line via Substack, Instagram or Facebook. We'd love to hear what's inspiring you or, if you're out the other side of your wobbly middle, please let us know how you got there.