Sarah Beeny has revealed she’s “less fearful of things” following her battle with breast cancer.
The presenter announced her cancer diagnosis last August and chose to document her journey to recovery on social media in a bid to raise awareness about the disease.
She was given the all-clear eight months later after undergoing gruelling treatment, which saw her hair fall out.
In June, she released her documentary, Sarah Beeny vs. Cancer, which detailed her cancer journey including her double mastectomy, and published a book: The Simple Life: How I Found Home, also during the summer.
Since getting the all-clear, the 51-year-old said she has a new perspective on life and wants to always be “proactive”.
The Channel 4 star shared: “It’s so important to be proactive, I have a whole life to live now.
“Any of us could be dead tomorrow – I say take opportunities because you’re a long time sleeping. The whole journey has made me less fearful of things in life.
“I’m not very good at turning down opportunities for anything or anyone. If something’s even a little tempting, I’ll say yes,” she told The Mirror.
Beeny, who has sons Billy, 18, Charlie, 16, Rafferty, 14, and Laurie, 12, with husband Graham Swift, added that she doesn’t want to give her illness the power to change her.
She confessed: “I don’t want to give cancer that power. The only thing strong enough to change me is my kids – why should it be cancer? I put some ogres to bed, but it hasn’t changed me at all.
“It’s just a blip, I’d like to think it’s more irrelevant than that.”
Her attitude is no doubt in part due to her previously saying how she didn’t think she would ever live past her thirties.
The New Country Lives star was just 10 years-old when she lost her mother to breast cancer aged 39.
“My mum died when she was 39; I think I’ve always assumed that I would die at 39, so I’ve always been very impatient, trying to fit loads of stuff in,” she told The Guardian in June regarding her documentary.
“I suppose, if I’m honest, I wanted to get her records to go: ‘She had that treatment and it didn’t work. But I’m having this treatment, and therefore it will work because now it’s better.’ I wanted to prove that I was going to get better, to myself.
“I was quite shocked by how they talked about her, because we’ve come a long way. Loads of things they didn’t tell her. Misogyny, alive and kicking. The chemotherapy she had would have made her infertile, but they didn’t bother telling her.
“I wouldn’t change anything. Life has its weird ways of being what it is. If my mother hadn’t died, I probably wouldn’t have met [husband] Graham, because I’d probably have gone to a different school. I met him because my brother [Diccon] met his sister.”
