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‘I’ve been growing my beard for nearly 3 years. I always trim it because you do get a lot of split ends! I started Sydney Facial Hair Club over a year ago.

‘It’s awesome to have all these people that you’d never speak to unless you had some sort of facial hair. There are plenty of people in the group without facial hair – they like the idea of it but they can’t quite grow a good beard or moustache. We even have people try that probably shouldn’t! Quite wispy teenagey looking moustaches but we encourage it. We’ve got quite a few female followers as well that are just attracted to beards. I guess more from a social point it’s good to have a different group of people to be able to go out with or talk to – to separate yourself from your normal circle.

‘This Saturday (6th September) we are celebrating World Beard Day at Young Henry’s. We’re going to attempt to beat the record for the most bearded people in a human pyramid which stands at 15 people and we hope to get 21. I’m pretty small so I’m definitely going to be in the top somewhere.’

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‘The GP said I had a 50% chance of survival when I got the prognosis. I asked her what that meant because no one survives life. Everyone’s got 100% chance of dying so what does a 50% chance mean? And she said 50% chance of surviving the next year.

‘If it wasn’t for new forms of treatment apparently I would have died. I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of advanced breast cancer four years ago and according to my oncologist I’m still in the critical phase for another year.

‘I don’t take my life for granted. I think I’ve been lucky to have been given these four years and I don’t know how much longer I have.

‘I watched a documentary once and they interviewed a funeral director. She said that regardless of the religion, a good life has had three things – compassion, love and gratitude. I wrote those three things in black texta on my mirror and I looked at it every day. The gratitude one is something that I really hold close to my heart. You try and see the good in everything.

‘What I’m grateful for is that I live more in the moment and appreciate the day. If you’ve only got a year left, you’ve really got to make the most of that year. That doesn’t make me different to anyone else. Everyone should and could live their lives that way but it’s just sort of being brought home to me more because it’s a reality.’

Val is fundraising for the Chris O’Brien Lifehouse. Please donate or share this post:
http://sy14.endcancer.org.au/site/TR/Events/Sydney2014?px=1059544&pg=personal&fr_id=1071

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‘When I was 12 years old, I stepped on stage with 140 other young people as part of the Cumberland Gang Show which was a Scout and Guide show at Parramatta Riverside Theatre. It filled me with so much joy to be making people laugh and smile by being up on stage. I couldn’t see any of their faces because they were in the dark and I was in the bright lights.

‘When I was doing a comedy sketch on stage and I was making people laugh, I was addicted to stand up from then.

‘As a creative person who doesn’t have the security of a regular income, I feel like the toughest thing for me is knowing where my next thing is going to be. Often I don’t know where that is. I pretend and people believe me sometimes and give me lots of money to do it but I just don’t know where those opportunities lie.’

If you could give one bit of advice to people, what would it be?

‘Keep it real. Be honest. Honesty is always the best policy when you’re doing comedy or when you’re doing anything.’