Angie’s Story

Cancer Support New Zealand is now the home of Look Good Feel Better

Disappointment, it seems like an understatement when someone is talking about their cancer. Yet that is the word Angie Gibson often uses.

“I have had to manage my disappointment constantly,” the xx-year-old single mum confesses.

“Cancer takes away everything for a season, and you lose yourself. You end up just needing to survive, really.

“I’ve always been an extrovert. I love going out. I love being around people. I really enjoyed spending time with my three children. But cancer took all of that away. It’s an awful thing to go through. It takes away your dignity, it takes away your strength.”

It forced Angie to spend “hundreds of hours on the couch” and say no to things that she really wanted to do but couldn’t.

Feeling lonely and isolated, she found an unexpected support network in the cancer charity Look Good Feel Better. It started with a free session aimed at helping her manage the side effects of her treatment, and became a community – and a lifeline.

“Eyebrows frame your face – so it was such a hard thing to lose. I felt like I needed my hair to be me. The second I walked into the Look Good Feel Better session, I felt comfortable – all these other beautiful women with head scarves or no hats on. Lots of us had no eyebrows.

“My anxiety disappeared. I really enjoyed it, I felt special. It created a bit more space to get to know other women going through similar things. We all ended up laughing; there was definitely joy in the room. When we left, I did feel a bounce in my step.”

It inspired Angie to explore the other sessions Look Good Feel Better offers – including mindfulness, breathwork, managing hairloss and regrowth, chair yoga and podcasts.

“It’s not just about looks, it’s also there to help you internally and mentally, because it’s hard on you emotionally, mentally and physically – everything is forced to stop. It’s been really hard for me as a mum. It’s been hard on my friendships, my entire life is different, and I wouldn’t wish this on anybody.

“With Look Good Feel Better, I could go online and find a podcast or a video on demand when I didn’t have the energy to go to an event, and it would help me feel better, and I’d feel lit up. Some of the videos are only five or 10 minutes, and sometimes that’s all the energy that you have.”

It has been a rollercoaster for more than two years for the Aucklander. She felt something was wrong – a foreboding that was proven in a mammogram. At the same appointment, she had an ultrasound and biopsy, a diagnosis and a mastectomy followed quickly.

“When you go through cancer, you’re so physically sick,” she says, candidly. “Now I am on long-term preventative hormone treatment put me into menopause and is pulling the oestrogen out of my bones. So I will need bone infusions for three years. That can take you to quite a depressed state.

“Through all that, you don’t feel beautiful. You feel awful. You feel so stripped back to almost nothing. But then when you look at other women who are going through the same thing, they look beautiful. So it’s that reminder I am still beautiful. Look Good Feel Better helped me realise that I’m still me, which I found really important. Finding a community has been vital to my journey.”

Cancer means you feel like a patient, not a person: “The goal is to heal, but you are your hospital number. Look Good Feel Better makes you feel like a person, you feel seen, you feel heard.

“Look Good Feel Better has really created spaces where you can get glimpses of who you are, and that’s really exciting, because even to this day, there are so many things that I no longer can do.  I know that the Ange is still in there. I feel like the sparkle is coming back. It’s exciting to know that even at this part of my journey, Look Good Feel Better is still there. I’m really grateful for it.  It really does make people with cancer’s lives better.”