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The WHOLE STORY The WHOLE STORY DASEY, ANNETTE. Sunday Magazine [Sydney, N.S.W] 23 Nov 2014: 24. THE WHOLE PANTRY AUTHOR BELLE GIBSON IS GENEROUS, GORGEOUS AND COURAGEOUS. ANNETTE DASEY MEETS THE WELLNESS WARRIOR Instagram is full of inspirational quotes, but few ring as true as those posted by @Healing_Belle's Belle Gibson. When she suggests: "Stop waiting for Friday, for summer, for someone to fall in love with you, for life. Happiness is achieved when you stop waiting for it and make the most of the moment you're in now," she really means it - and, having battled serious health issues for the last few years, she really knows what it means. No wonder she has 200,000 followers and counting. Gibson, 26, is the creator of The Whole Pantry (TWP) - it's an app and, as of this month, a swanky new cookbook, full of recipes and wellbeing tips to help you live what Gibson calls "the whole life". There are healthy meal planners, mouth- watering recipes and plenty of info about exercise, but it's the tone - consistently upbeat, inspiring and energetic - and the extraordinary story behind it that has won TWP a cult following. Since launching in August last year, the TWP app has been downloaded 300,000 times; it was voted Apple's Best Food and Drink App of 2013. And when the Apple Watch launches next year, it will reach a whole new audience as one of the device's default apps. It's hard to overstate the buzz surrounding Apple's first wearable gadget, which promises to eliminate digging around in your It bag to find your phone every time you need the internet. It even had its own party at Paris fashion week. TWP's official hook-up with the brand is a major coup, but Gibson doesn't see it that way - she's more interested in helping people become healthier and happier. "I believe that people are here to be teachers," she says. "And I know that I defed so many universal and life rules for a reason." From an early age, Gibson was shouldering huge responsibilities. As an introverted six-year-old, she teetered on a chair over a stove making dinner for an autistic younger brother and a mother who had multiple sclerosis. As a severely obese 11-year-old, she managed to stop overeating and, with her brother in tow, began sunset strolls around their Brisbane block. Aged 12 and depleted from years as her mother's carer, she moved in with a classmate, and then a family friend. "I'm just weird," she says. "My whole life has been weird. You go through everything that I have been through and that's enough to fill a lifetime." "Everything" includes not knowing her father and being estranged from her mother, who had been a foster carer to other children before she got sick, and who Gibson credits with teaching her the importance of contributing. "I was, at times, begging for her to be my mother rather than the opposite way around," says Gibson. "It was a very hard relationship, but I don't hold that against her." In typical Gibson fashion, she turns a negative into a positive - she reckons the hardships she endured as a child are part of the reason she is driven to help others today. Gibson was 20 when her current health issues began. She believes she had a reaction to the Gardasil HPV cervical cancer vaccine. "I've never really spoken about that," she says, "because it's such a big, political thing. In America, people are getting compensation [from a no-fault vaccine injury compensation program not specific to Gardasil or brain cancer]. I used to be so angry about it. [But] it's not something I really invest my energy into any more because there are so many people trying to fight for a safe vaccine." A spokeswoman for the Federal Department of Health, including the Therapeutic Goods Administration, says, "There is no evidence that HPV vaccines cause brain cancer or neurological disorders. The safety and effectiveness of the HPV vaccine has been extensively researched and considered by drug regulatory authorities all over the world." Whether the vaccine was a factor or not, Gibson experienced vision, memory and walking problems, then had a stroke. Subsequently she was diagnosed with malignant brain cancer, and given four months to live. Two months into chemotherapy and radiotherapy she passed out on a Melbourne hospital lawn and, when she awoke, she says, she had an epiphany: if she only had a few weeks left, she wasn't going to live them like that. She says her doctors thought she was mad when she gave up conventional treatment in favour of alternatives including herbalism and craniosacral therapy. But she had hope. She continued the meditation practice that she loved, and nurtured herself with wholefoods. A year after eschewing traditional medicine, Gibson, a vegetarian who doesn't eat dairy, gluten, preservatives, refined sugars or GMO foods, again confounded medical experts. Having been told she would never have children, in 2010 she gave birth to a healthy son, Olivier, now four. Two years later, she was pregnant again, but she lost the baby at five months. Her sorrow motivated her to share her health journey on social media. Enter @Healing_Belle. "I realised that I needed to create an inspirational, supportive resource," she says, both for herself, and for others. She began posting about superfoods, organic living, nourishing recipes and inspirational pictures and quotes, interspersed with news about her own journey. She might post about travelling for business or what she had for breakfast, but Gibson doesn't flinch from the hard truth about her health. This year, she told her loyal followers about her new uterus, liver, blood and spleen cancer diagnoses. And her feed, which should by rights be unbearably sad, is actually enormously positive and motivational. Writing on Instagram in late September, Gibson said, "I live in an accepted place, where I try to not hide the realness of living with cancer and pain, but also choose every day not to play a victim." Ask her to elaborate and she says, "The Whole Pantry celebrates the fact that you went for a five-minute walk - small changes have a cumulative effect that become profound changes." She lives by TWP's motto 'Your whole life starts with you' and concentrates on joy rather than sadness. Indeed she radiates happiness and talks about her disease in a matter-of-fact fashion, without a hint of self-pity. "[Cancer has] made me grow. I have a perspective on life, which I'm really grateful for. The majority of the time, I only see goodness. I'm so proud because it could have gone the opposite direction." One of Gibson's aims is to break down the stigma surrounding diseases that don't always have obvious physical signs. Her social-media posts show a healthy-looking young woman with luminous skin, but her words tell a different story about memory lapses, slurred speech and seizures. Still, her positivity remains intact. "I'm feeling really good," she says. "I was seeing an integrative doctor and never asked for a prognosis. It's just a process of trust to me." She is, however, laying the foundation for her team to take over her work. On July 29, she announced on Instagram that her cancer had spread: "I am still here reading, listening and learning with and to each of you, but need to respectfully and with great honour hand it over to TWP to carry on our legacies and collective message." A few weeks later, she flew to Silicon Valley for a month of development for TWP's Apple Watch app. Friends, family and her social-media community inspire her. Her closest friends drew up a roster to sleep beside her when she was at her most ill in mid-2014. "Belle is a fighter, lover, creator, motivator, inspirer, mother, friend and survivor," says her friend Kate Bradley, of nutrition blog kenkokitchen.com. "Belle mothers like she has no other commitments or worries." Gibson has the help of Olivier's dad - her ex and "best friend" Nathan Corbett - and her current partner, Clive Rothwell, who fathered the baby she lost. Corbett lives around the corner from Gibson's Melbourne home - until this month she ran also TWP from here (her team of 10 has just moved to a South Melbourne community workspace). Olivier, of course, knows that Mum is sick. "He sees me on days that I can't get out of bed," says Gibson. "It's just small conversations we have that are enough. It's never, 'Mummy's not going to be here for much longer'." She says, through tears, that she is not scared of death but is heartbroken about leaving Olivier. "The only thing that breaks me is [the idea of] not being able to see Oli grow. I don't feel like I'm dying, but I've acknowledged that it might happen. If that's in a year or 20 years, I don't have fear that he's not going to be OK. He's so incredible I just want to squish him all day forever. I don't want those moments to end. I'm just going to miss him." All her spare time is spent with Olivier. "Oli and I are usually awake at 5am. There's cuddles and hanging out in bed and him begging me for four breakfasts. Then we read books and do some yoga or play Lego.
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