'When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, life blew up overnight' - Women share experiences in powerful photography project Still Me

​Photographer Laura Slater has captured the experiences of women living with, through and beyond breast cancer for a powerful new exhibition. Laura Reid reports.

The doctor’s words were like a grenade for Alex Beaumont. “Life just blew up overnight,” she says. It’s 12 years ago now since the day she received her breast cancer diagnosis, but the rippling impact has been felt ever since.

“It changed a lot going forward,” the now 45-year-old reflects. “Once treatment finished, there's a lot of people telling you to get back to normal and get back to work. But that year and a bit of treatment I had, you don’t process anything.

"You're just on a conveyor belt of being told what to do, where to go. So when everybody hits this point when they're like ‘Oh, everything's over and we can go back to normal’, you're just in this state of shell shock.”

“You suddenly have this knowledge that life is short and my god it can be gone like that,” she continues, “but you can't react to that in the way that you would want to and just embrace it and love it because there's this reality of the day-to-day and paying the bills and the mortgage and it's just a push and pull for you inside.”

Alex doesn’t shy away from telling her story because she knows how much it could help others. That desire to raise awareness of life through and beyond cancer – and to normalise how difficult it can be – is part of the reason why she opted to take part in a storytelling and photography project sharing women’s experiences with breast cancer.

Still Me is the brainchild of Ilkley-based photographer Laura Slater, who wanted to highlight what breast cancer can look like for different women. Laura, who runs Lumiere Photographic and specialises in boudoir shoots, has captured portrait images of 24 people living with, through and beyond the disease and has presented them in a magazine alongside the women’s own words.

The work is being featured in an exhibition, Abreast, at Ilkley’s Tinker Gallery, owned by Joanne Tinker, who has her own experience of breast cancer. Running through October – Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the exhibition celebrates women and the female body, with work from a collection of predominantly female artists across photography, ceramics, illustration, textiles and other mediums.

For Laura’s contribution, some women have chosen to show their mastectomy scars, whilst others are fully clothed. Some talk about fear, loss and the darkest moments of treatment; others talk about body image, relationships, humour, unexpected positives and how good life can be after cancer.

“The real eye opener for me was how much there is to know and to learn about breast cancer and how little people like me who haven't had it and haven't been close to anyone that's had it actually know,” reflects 33-year-old Laura, who has been inspired by the project to launch a new female portraiture strand to her business.

“I would love everyone in the world to set eyes on these stories and just become a little bit more aware about what some people are going through on a day-to-day basis...I just want them to learn something and to take forward a little bit of compassion.”

Alex, who had previously been photographed by Laura for some corporate portraits, saw a post on social media about the Still Me project and was keen to get involved.

Having first being diagnosed with breast cancer in her early 30s, and now living with a secondary cancer diagnosis, she has been through extensive chemotherapy, a bilateral mastectomy, breast reconstruction and radiotherapy, and speaks openly about the often overlooked process of rebuilding your life and identity.

After treatment for her first diagnosis, Otley-based Alex tried to return to full-time work in a corporate environment, but says “nothing fit anymore and I didn’t have the energy”.

“You've just had this life altering thing happened to you, but nothing else and nobody else around you changes and all of a sudden it can be a really hard space to be in.”

At first, she tried to keep going but things “unravelled in a spectacular fashion” and she found herself walking away from her job. Through coaching, therapy and a lot of honest self-reflection, she then began to rebuild her life and trained as a coach herself.

But soon after celebrating a decade cancer-free two years ago, her back went into spasm and she found herself in hospital. "Now the cancer is in the bones of my spine,” she says. “And that's something that with medication we will hopefully keep at bay. But it isn't curable."

Alex is still feeling the financial ramifications of more treatment and more time away from work and is struggling with the side effects of the cancer medication. She says she’s also spoken to a counsellor about being “terrified I’m going to die”.

“All of this is going on whilst you're trying to earn money and pay the mortgage and get the kids to school and feed the dog and do the food shop,” she says.

“On a good day, I'm the most optimistic and this has taught me so much. But on a bad day, my God, you just feel as if you're fighting against something that's insurmountable and that you just can't do it.”

It’s made her appreciate the little things – what’s important, who she is and what she wants to do in life. “So we can't just look at the bad, but we do need to allow space for it too,” she says. “We can do it. We are doing it, but it it is hard and people deserve more support.”

Alex hopes her story and the stories of others involved in Still Me will resonate with those with experience of breast cancer, bringing a sense of shared understanding and togetherness. “There’s something really important in that.”