An inspirational Pink Ribbon breakfast was held in Sydney last week in association with the National Breast Cancer Foundation to raise awareness of women’s breast cancer. The guest speaker was Virginia Lloyd who recently wrote
The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement, a memoir of renovating her home as a response to the death of her husband, John from cancer.
What makes Lloyd’s story so compelling is that she met John at 32, married him at 33 and was widowed by 34. This turn of events changed her life. She moved to New York in 2006, wrote her book, worked in the philanthropic sector and studied at New York University’s Centre for Philanthropy and Fundraising.
Kathryn Everett, Partner, Litigation opened the proceedings, letting the audience know that Lloyd had worked at Freehills. ‘Virginia helped us develop the community program, which has subsequently become part of the Freehills Foundation.’
Virginia Lloyd’s speech was inspiring. ‘If anyone had told me when I started working at Freehills in 1999 that I’d be standing here in 2008 as a guest speaker at the annual Pink Ribbon breakfast to talk about my experiences as a widow of a wonderful man who died in his forties after a long battle with cancer, and about the book I then wrote about my life with and without him, I would never have believed them,’ said Lloyd. ‘I certainly would not have wanted to believe them either.
‘I never thought I’d be a wife, let alone a widow, and let alone someone who’d moved to the other side of the world to write a book about some extremely personal experiences for total strangers to read,’ continued Lloyd. ‘But cancer changes our lives directly and indirectly in ways that we sometimes understand and then sometimes we only see in retrospect. Cancer waves its wand that diagnoses and says “I’m coming, whether you’re ready or not.” Life as you knew it no longer exists and for all the planning and control that we like to feel we exert on our own lives, cancer is one of those immovable objects that simply says “I’m here, adapt or give up”.'
Lloyd has adapted and today she works in the philanthropic sector. Her ambition is to increase the philanthropic pie’s funds across society. ‘This is a very long and slow ambition to achieve, but we can do it and we certainly have,’ said Lloyd. ‘Aside from recent market fluctuations, we do have the level of individual wealth in Australia to improve our giving culture. I feel very strongly that these days, whether it’s in cancer research or in any other field, we need to work collaboratively.’
Freehills also held Pink Ribbon events in association with the National Breast Cancer Foundation in its Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth offices. Guest speakers included Justice Linda Dessau in Melbourne, AnneMarie White, sports journalist and cancer survivor in Brisbane and Shelagh Magadza, Artistic Director of the Perth Arts Festival.
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