When Georgie Crawford first spoke on The Ray D'Arcy Show in 2018, she had just been diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 32, only a short while after having her daughter, Pia.
In the years since, Crawford – a radio journalist turned wellness speaker – has taken her struggles and turned them into a community of followers who turn to Crawford for support and guidance.
Crawford joined The Ray D'Arcy Show and chatted about her new book Glow, as well as her story of surrogacy.
She began by saying that that diagnosis set her on a path to greater happiness in ways. "It gave me a chance, when I was diagnosed with cancer, to stop and my life was infused with time all of a sudden because I'd never had time in my life", she told Ray. "I was always juggling things."
"It was like I was waiting to start living, and I was always striving for more in my life: the promotion, the other radio station, the bigger job, what more can I give to this to take me higher? And in the process, I was suffering myself. I was definitely going around and around in circles for years, and I sacrificed my own health and happiness because I told myself, 'when I get this job, when I get to the next level, then I'll be happy."
She recalled feeling deep love for herself in the months after her diagnosis, which she said was the first time she'd truly felt it.
"The voice in my head just constantly beating myself up, telling myself I wasn't good enough, telling myself I was too stupid to get the promotion into 98FM, that a national radio station would never want me."
She said these thoughts can still resurface, "but I don't believe them as much".
Crawford said she wrote the book partly to show people that you also don't need a major life-changing reason to start making changes in your life. She noted how she encounters people who feel they want to change, but have no reason to.
"I always say 'stop waiting to start living'. You don't have to get sick to find out what you're made of, or go and live the life you want to live."
She highlighted how toxic positivity can promote an idea of radical changes being the only way forward, but she said "it's about small changes, and it's actually about your inner world".
"For so many years I was so focused on my outer world – what I looked like, who liked me, was I funny, how could I please other people? But when I stopped and went in, I had everything I needed inside of me."
Crawford uses short stories to spread her learnings in the book, and one that has particularly gripped people is one about a burnt potato.
She recalled how after her husband Jamie was diagnosed with MS, she'd make sure he got the best of everything he could, including food. This meant that if a corner of the dinner burnt slightly, she'd eat it rather than give it to him.
"I wanted him to be well, I wanted everyone else to have an amazing experience with the food. Now I can see that everyone would happily take a smaller portion so you don't have to eat the burnt food, but we have this experience, I think, as women especially where we just want everyone else to be well and thrive."
Crawford has also been outspoken about her desire to pursue surrogacy. Still on cancer medication to keep the disease at bay, she had received advice about only conceiving once she's off the drug, and had started the process to have another child by surrogacy, with the help of her surrogate mother, Elina, based in Ukraine.
However, the Ukrainian War put a stop to their plans.
After waiting to pick it up again for six months, Crawford said that Elina is safely in another country and the couple's embryo has been successfully implanted. Their baby is due at the end of September.
She recounted how the doctors taking care of their embryos had to move them during the war. "Our embryos have actually been in more countries than myself and Jamie in the last three years, which is unbelievable."
To listen back to Georgie's full chat with Ray, click above.
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