Melany knew that when she felt down, her family felt down. When she was having a good day, they had a good day.
So it was no surprise that it was not only Melany who was grateful for the opportunity to attend a Look Good Feel Better class, her whānau was too.
“When you first got the news it was cancer, your whole world just crashed down on you. You didn’t know how to tell your husband, you didn’t know how to tell your parents and your children,” Melany, a 52-year-old grandmother, said.
“I almost cancelled the class because I was feeling so flat. On the drive in no one was talking, because everyone was sad because I was sad. When I walked out of the Look Good Feel Better class smiling, I saw my husband smiling, and I saw my kids smiling.
“I understood what those words meant – Look Good Feel Better – and how they could change your life.”
The free sessions were for anyone with any cancer at any stage of treatment, and included tips and tricks to disguise the visible side effects of cancer, while helping restore a person’s confidence.
Melany had metastatic breast cancer and had already attended a class five years earlier. She decided to sign up again late the previous year, when she needed more treatment.
“I had been through a first lot of chemotherapy, and my hair dropped off, my eyebrows dropped off. You didn’t want to go out in the world, you didn’t want anyone to see you like that. I remember thinking, ‘no one could make me look good after going through this’.
“They did make me look good. And they did make me feel better about myself. It was subtle make-up, I liked the minimal look. It just enhanced you.
“And that gave me a whole new confidence to be able to face the world. When I smiled, everyone in the house started smiling. It was like a domino effect.”
It proved transformational, her 20-year-old daughter Auriyan said: “The class just gave Mum a whole new boost, it just lifted our house. When she walked back through the doors [at Look Good Feel Better], I’d never seen Mum so happy and bubbly. Before that, when I looked at Mum’s face all I saw was pain.”
Melany said the Look Good Feel Better class was the best thing she could have done. “I didn’t know that there were other ladies out there in the same position as me. Just being able to get together and have a cup of coffee and talk about our experiences, it was just eye-opening.
“You looked good, you felt good. You went out with a positivity you didn’t have before you put that mask on.”
Her bubbly personality belied that she had been too shy to ask the volunteers to repeat elements of the class while there, so she frequently used the online classes to build her skills.
“Those tutorials were so good. You could rewind and have a look, rewind and have a look. I found it really valuable. I did three classes – including an online class that was like doing one in person. I still wanted to do one on scarves and wigs.
“Look Good Feel Better gave you the confidence to face the world. And you left with the skills to recreate those looks again. It was like putting on a beautiful pair of underwear that no one could see — you were prancing around because you felt good.”
