The Angelina Jolie effect continued today as the glamorous actress and peace ambassador released news that, in a risk reducing operation last week, she had had her ovaries removed. And in a BRCA1 gene mutation type of way, she and I are now on a par.
Now more than 4 years since I had my pre-emptive double mastectomy and a year less since my oophorectomy, I do finally feel that that part of my life is dusted. It’s just something that happened in the past. Not because it was such a dreadful journey, but simply because that was me then and this is me now.
The whole point about a life journey is that we are constantly moving. A close friend recently lost her father. It was a hideous time for her and yet now, a few weeks on, she is moving closer towards a happier moment in her life.
Angelina and all those other risk adverse girls are brave but you too would do the same. We take what life throws at us and try to gain any control possible over our destinies. And – when we’re not journeying through troubled waters – we slip back into the daily joys, trials and tribulations of ‘normal life’.
Unfortunately though Jolie’s operation did not remain the first item on today’s news agenda. Just a few hours ago, a plane carrying 150 people crashed in the French Alps. Sixteen of the dead include children from a German school exchange trip. And so there we have it. The very worst sort of journey imaginable.
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