shining bright cancer support

jen’s story in a nutshell

Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jennifer Badger, I go by ‘Jen’ to just about everyone who knows me. I am the founder of Shining Bright. I was born and have lived the majority of my life in UK and in 2010 I moved to Australia.

My story goes like this: for all of my life I have been around life threatening illness in one form or another. One of my earliest memories is finding my Mum collapsed unconscious in the storeroom of our family shop that my parents had, I remember running in a panic to find my Dad to come and help. My Mum had diabetes (type 1) from her childhood and back in the 1960’s treatments and knowledge were not what they are today, so it was not an uncommon event to find my Mum collapsed and have to bring my Mum back around from a “hypo”. So from a very early age I began to learn how to cope in life threatening situations.

This has been a pattern throughout my entire life. I am always the girl who is either a close friend of or I am working with a person who is in a life threatening health situation. It seems that I am always there to get them to hospital in the ‘nick of time’ or I know of a new treatment or a great way to help themselves.  The people I have helped over the years have been of all ages and with all types of illness ranging from a perforated kidney, heart attacks, diabetes, burst appendix, and numerous forms of cancer. (Just to name a few).

So as you can read, this is a pattern in my life and to be honest, I reckon I am the right girl that you want in these types of situations as I have had a lot of experience and I know exactly what to do when the pressure is on. I have supported many people/friends throughout their illnesses and helped them make the necessary life changes to regain their health.

I truly believe that supporting people with life threatening illness is my true calling in life and I was born to do this.

My working background is that I was a Holistic Therapist in the UK for 10 years from 1998-2008 mainly working with anxiety, depression and empowerment. In 2008 I decided to go on an adventure and I travelled the world for a couple of years.  I reduced and changed the way that I worked from face to face to operate sessions via skype or online.

I came to Australia to live in 2010 and I worked in the weight loss industry supporting people on their weight loss journey, as well as continuing with a small private therapy practice. As I started to establish my life in Australia and I made friends, yes you’ve got it, my closest friend became sick and needed support with her Breast cancer. (There is just no getting away from it eh!!) (As my girlfriend says “don’t get too close to Badger as you will become ill”)!! A few months later a relative of mine then got diagnosed with Bowel cancer and yet another friend got diagnosed with Prostrate Cancer!! (Bliming Eck).

Then to top it off, my partner was then diagnosed with Leukaemia. So over the last 7 years I have been supporting people with cancer. I have had to learn a huge amount about how to help someone suffering from cancer. And let me tell you there is a lot of conflicting information out there.

So to sum up, after many hours (and I do mean many) of enforced research/study of how to best help my partner friends and relatives. (The pressure was really on as my partner didn’t respond to chemo very well and we didn’t have any other options available to us at that time). It became clear to me that the people who get back to wellness and have radical remissions seem to have a common thread in what they do, and by making these simple changes to your life, you too can get back to wellness and maintain good health.

What I have learnt through my own experiences of witnessing my partner and friends get back to good health is that these simple life changes work and they work very well, and its heaps easier to make these lifestyle changes when you have someone supporting you and helping along the way.

These common threads of lifestyle changes have now been formally studied and research by Kelly A Turner PhD and her book is called Radical Remission (well worth a read).

There are also heaps of clinical studies that can be found online that back up all of what I teach. Another fantastic book that puts lots of medical studies all in one place and translates them into layman terms is “Chris Woollams” book “The Rainbow Diet”, again well worth having a look at.

So here I am to “step up” and formally help those who are suffering from or supporting/caring for someone with a cancer diagnosis, and there you have it, Shining Bright is born in Australia!!!!