Love of Life
Translation from German:
A story about love and life. Enjoying the present instead of hoping for the future: Since Olivia Newton-John survived a breast cancer diagnosis, she has a different view of the world – and the world sees her differently.
People magazine lists her among the 50 most beautiful people, and US television talk shows feature her. Her new album, “Back with a Heart,” is selling like hotcakes, and she’s a sought-after model. However, she doesn’t advertise clothing or lingerie, but rather the Ford Foundation and its breast cancer prevention program. Pop singer Olivia Newton-John is more popular today than she has been since “Grease,” and she’s a woman who has something to say, one who is listened to.
Olivia Newton-John is a multi-talented artist, actress, singer, environmentalist, businesswoman, mother. She turned 50 in September. She lives in a picture-perfect setting on the beach in Malibu, near Hollywood: a white villa overlooking the humpback whales in the Pacific. She was born in England, the daughter of a professor and a writer. Her maternal grandfather was the German physicist and Nobel laureate Max Born. With more than 60 million records sold, she became a household name in the world of music.
Olivia, who grew up in Australia, has become one of the most successful pop singers of our time. Her greatest international success was her role as Sandy in the musical “Grease,” which celebrated its 20th anniversary this month and promptly drew millions of viewers worldwide to cinemas. She still looks the same as she did at the Grease premiere 20 years ago, actually even better.
“I may age genetically more slowly than some other people. My mother is 84 and still looks fantastic. The most important thing is probably that I always try to be happy and content, no matter what happens. I firmly believe that a positive outlook on life is reflected in one’s face and body language.”
This wasn’t always the case. In July 1992, Olivia Newton-John experienced a drastic standstill. “One day I discovered this lump in my breast. You have to follow your instincts, because I knew deep down, I knew immediately that this was something serious. I’d had small lumps before, but this one had a different feeling. A bad feeling. My doctor sent me for a mammogram, but it came back negative. Despite that, I followed my gut feeling and insisted on a biopsy, which confirmed my fears: I had breast cancer.”
How did she cope with this news? “Can you even be prepared for something like that? I hardly think so. One of my best friends had been diagnosed with breast cancer just three months earlier, and our circle of friends was completely terrified: Oh God, she has cancer! The word itself sounds like a death sentence. And when I got it too, it took me quite a while to realize that it didn’t automatically mean the end. What made the whole thing particularly dramatic for me was the fact that my father died of cancer on the same day I received my final diagnosis!”
She remains silent for a long time. Then she says: “But I think we can compartmentalize certain feelings and focus on things where we need to act immediately. For a while at least. I had practically no time to grieve. I had surgery very quickly, and then the chemotherapy began.”
But she didn’t stop there. “You have to heal physically and spiritually, so you have to work on it from within. So, in addition to the treatments, I learned to meditate, practiced yoga every day, took homeopathic remedies, and exercised. I ate healthily and built up my strength from within as best I could. Whenever bad thoughts or moods arose, I immediately pushed them aside. Sometimes something as simple as watching a funny movie with a friend helped. The main thing was to think positively. The operation itself was quite radical. However, I immediately had my breast reconstructed with plastic surgery.”
Olivia Newton-John underwent treatment for a year. Then the nightmare was over. Now, as a spokesperson for various cancer organizations in the USA, she is a public figure.
“I am so extremely private and reserved, and that’s why I never thought I would ever talk so publicly about my breasts. But I feel I have to do this to help other women. So that they don’t immediately freak out at the word ‘cancer,’ but rather see their chances. Cancer, detected early, is absolutely curable. But it is vital to examine yourself and go to the doctor regularly. I hope that I can help some women with my personal story.”
From the pool you can hear splashing in the water. Daughter Chloe, 12 years old, is doing her daily laps. How has she coped with the cancer issue? “She was still very young at the time, and I kept it a secret from her. I had a good reason for that, because her best friend Colette had just been diagnosed with a very rare form of [disease] at the age of five died of cancer, which devastated my daughter. Even when I was undergoing chemotherapy, I kept it a secret from her. Only a year later did someone tell her what I had gone through. Chloe was extremely upset because she couldn’t understand why I had kept something so incredibly important a secret. But I still believe I did the right thing.”
Olivia Newton-John has now been cancer-free for five years. And that’s how it will stay.” I won’t accept anything else — I firmly believe that I have driven the cancer out of my body. Sometimes I even imagine my four dogs roaming through my body, eating away the cancer cells.”
So that the dogs don’t have to do all the work alone, Olivia has completely restructured her life around wellness. She runs about five kilometers on the beach every day, often hikes with Chloe and the dogs in the Malibu hills, and plays tennis several times a week. She also continues to meditate daily and regularly practices Kundalini yoga (see box below right).
“And my diet is quite healthy: no wheat or dairy products, lots of tofu, vegetables, and rice. But if I feel like it, I occasionally treat myself to a hamburger. I was a vegetarian for years, but I gradually became weaker. The strict vegetarian diet obviously wasn’t right for me. Today I eat meat and feel much better. You just have to listen to your body.”
“The best medicine for me, though, is this house. Every morning when I wake up, I hear the sound of the ocean and go down to the beach, where I sit quietly in the sand for a while and enjoy the morning.”
Her garden and her house are everything to her. The wood used to build the house, which defines its character, comes exclusively from ecologically controlled cultivation; it’s insulated with chemical-free seagrass; and it’s painted with water-based paints because oil paints contain toxins and pollutants. The wastewater is recycled and used to irrigate the plants. There’s a compost heap in the garden.
This begs the question: how can a woman who lives such an extremely healthy life still get cancer? “That came as just as much of a surprise to me. But I believe that there’s a much stronger connection between cancer and environmental pollution than many people still want to admit. Toxins and pollutants that we breathe in every day in the city, for example. We don’t even know what they’re really doing. Much more research needs to be done!”
That’s why she recently founded the Children’s Health Environmental Coalition (CHEC), an organization dedicated to protecting children from environmental pollution. “We are trying to achieve a drastic tightening of environmental laws through petitions and events. The limits for environmental toxins that our government deems acceptable are tested and readily accepted on adults. These levels are therefore far too high for children, and as a result, the number of children with cancer is rising rapidly. We urgently need to change this, and I will dedicate myself fully to making it happen. Ultimately, it’s about our children’s future.”
Sometimes you need a scare to wake you up.
Future. a word that has taken on a completely new meaning for Olivia after her victory over cancer. She stands thoughtfully by the floor-to-ceiling living room window, clearly searching for the right words to describe her feelings. Finally, she speaks, and her teenage voice suddenly sounds much more mature:
“Breast cancer was the best thing that could have happened to me. It sounds strange, but it’s true. Sometimes you need a wake-up call to see what’s really there. When I had overcome cancer, a Buddhist friend who also had cancer said to me, ‘Congratulations, now you’re going to grow!’ At first, that seemed a bit bizarre to me. But today I understand that you can only truly develop through pain. Before my fight against cancer, I was afraid of many little things. Not anymore.”
“I’ve experienced first hand what one can truly fear. I used to be afraid of ageing, but now I’m grateful for it. I’ll be grateful for the gift of life, something we so easily take for granted. I’ve also learned to live in the present. Career and wealth are completely relative when it comes to substance. When you go through something like this, the present suddenly becomes extremely important. Your desires change, and your priorities shift completely.”
“For example, after my recovery I divorced my husband amicably after ten years of marriage because for the first time, I could clearly see that we simply weren’t compatible anymore and had completely different expectations of life. It just wasn’t fair to either of us anymore. I also realized that I want to fully concentrate on my daughter and give her everything. Now I’m able to enjoy the present, instead of making demands on the future.”
“Just like other people, I have a calendar in my daily life. But I no longer look at it days in advance to know what’s going to happen tomorrow and the day after. I’d rather fully enjoy today. And get through it.”
Interview by Christoph Stopka
Photo captions: Ambassador in the fight against breast cancer: Together with other affected women like Betty Ford (top left) and Shirley Temple (right), Olivia Newton-John (above) promotes cancer prevention on the cover of "People" magazine and writes about her own experiences with the disease to encourage other women.
Sally Field (left) and other celebrities, for example Diane Keaton, at the "War on Cancer" conference in Los Angeles in May 1997. Patients from all over America had been invited by the Senate to discuss the topic with each other and with experts. "Before my diagnosis, it would have been unimaginable for me to talk about something so intimate," Olivia Newton-John said there.
This is how Kundalini Yoga works:
Olivia Newton-John strengthened her body’s own immune system with Kundalini Yoga. According to the teachings of Indian medical practitioners, the body’s energy centers (chakras) can be specifically stimulated in this way. The chakras are said to supply the body with energy and are connected to all glands and organs. Kundalini (translated as “serpent power”) is a spiritual energy located at the base of the spine (root chakra). When awakened through breathing and physical exercises as well as visualizations, it travels up the spine through six chakras to the seventh, which is located at the crown of the head (crown chakra).
Books on Kundalini Yoga: Swami S. Rhada: Kundalini Practice, Hermann Bauer Verlag, 29.80 DM. 5. Sivananda Sarasvati: Kundalini Yoga, Goldmann Verlag: 12.90 DM.
Information about Kundalini Yoga: 3H Organisation Deutschland e.V., Breitenfelder Strasse 8, 20251 Hamburg, Germany. Telephone: +49 40 47 90 99.