Sarah Beeny opens up on heartbreaking plea to book publishers over cancer battle
TV presenter Sarah Beeny has revealed that she asked the publishers of her memoir if she could omit details of her battle with breast cancer – as she didn't want it to be "the defining thing in my life".
The 51-year-old host of Sarah Beeny's New Country Lives has penned details of her life in a new book called The Simple Life: How I Found Home. The mum of four announced that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer last year but was given the all clear in April this year and in June, she released her documentary Sarah Beeny vs Cancer.
Sarah Beeny said she wanted to leave out details of her cancer battle in new memoirThe documentary documented her battle with the disease which included her double mastectomy. Speaking to the Mid.Point podcast with Gabby Logan she explained: "It's a funny journey and in some ways, it feels like I didn't want it to be the defining thing in my life. I didn't want to be 'Sarah Beeny had cancer'. I actually asked the publishers if I could not put it in and they said, 'no, that's not really going to work not putting it in'. I was like, 'really? Are you sure we have to put in?'."
Revealing details of how she dealt with her diagnosis, she continued: "My friends laugh about it, but they say that my coping mechanism is to pick up the carpet and sweep everything underneath and then pop it back down and then move on. I'm not saying it's how anyone else should be, it isn't; I'm sure many people would say that's terrible, and you should process it."
She added: "We all own our own edit, I always think that's kind the interesting thing in a way about life; I've been lucky enough to live on the planet 51 years and I couldn't tell you anything about my life without taking 51 years to tell you about it, so I have to edit it down. Then you choose what you want to edit in and edit out, and I kind of like to edit in the good bits. I didn't really think cancer was a good bit, so I thought I would prefer to edit out, so when I wrote the book, I intentionally kept it to one chapter which I thought that way, you could just not read that chapter if you didn't want to."
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Sarah Beeny on her documentary Sarah Beeny vs Cancer (Nicky Johnston)Sarah's mum Ann had the same type of cancer but unfortunately lost her battle to the disease aged 39 and Sarah believed that she too would suffer the same fate, at the same age. She went on to say: "When I got my diagnosis, it was something that I'd always imagined I would get in a way, and yet dreaded at the same time. So, she died when she was 39, when I got to 40, I had a little tiny bit of a crisis because I was like, 'well, what do I do now?' It wasn't like I thought I was going to die. I just couldn't picture life past 39, so I got to 40 and was like, 'God, this is really weird, now what do you do?'."
The TV personality is a mum to Billy, 18, Charlie, 16, Rafferty, 14, and Laurie, 12. The star recently revealed that she has now put herself through gene testing in a bid to find out her family's risk of developing the disease, following her own battle. Sarah was told that although she was negative for BRCA1 and BRCA2, she had in fact tested positive for PALB2, which may effect her children and potentially, future grandchildren. Sensibly, following Sarah's results some of her family members decided to undergo the gene test. She said: "I gave them the control, it's up to them what they do with it. It's a very personal decision. I like the control, others may not want to know."
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