Layne Beachley’s private battle every May after losing three mothers by the age of 45

By age 45, Australian surfing legend Layne Beachley had lost three mothers. To say Mother’s Day is a complicated occasion for her now would be an understatement.

“It can be quite a triggering day for a lot of people,” she tells 9honey.

“I’ve lost three [mothers] in my life and I tend to struggle with the concept of motherhood, not having children myself, so it can be a day where some people feel quite isolated or alone or heartbroken.”

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Born to Tania Gardner 10 days after Mother’s Day in 1972, Layne was put up for adoption and taken in by Neil and Valerie Beachley when she was just six weeks old.

Valerie was the only mother she knew as a child, and her sudden death when Layne was six was utterly devastating.

Two years later, Neil sat Layne down and revealed she was adopted, rocking her world with the news her biological mother was out in the world somewhere.

She didn’t meet her biological mother until she was 27, by which point her father had remarried.

In the meantime, Layne had formed a close bond with her stepmother and her breast cancer diagnosis when Layne was 30 shattered her world.

WATCH: Australia among highest rate of breast cancer diagnoses in the world

“I remember watching my stepmum going through this disease with a tremendous amount of resilience and strength, then go into remission,” she says.

“And then a year later, she was gone.”

Once again, Layne was left to pick up the pieces after losing a mother.

Like many Australians who have lost a loved one to cancer, she had no idea where to start.

It felt like every time she got her head above water, another wave of emotion threatened to pull her back under.

“When you when you have a loved one who’s diagnosed with a serious illness such as cancer, there’s a sense of hopelessness and helplessness that becomes quite overwhelming and paralysing,” she says.

Tragically, Layne would have to go through it all again a few years later.

She was 27 when she met her biological mother for the first time and their relationship was complicated but when Layne got the call that Gardner had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2017, she flew straight to her side in the US.

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“By the time they detected the ovarian cancer, they literally gave her three weeks to live. She died in three weeks and one day, I think,” Layne says.

“I got those last minutes of life before she fell asleep and never woke up again.”

When Layne’s stepmother was diagnosed with breast cancer in the early 2000s, the five-year survival rate was in the mid-80s. Today it is over 90 per cent.

But the survival rate for ovarian cancer, which claimed the life of Layne’s last surviving mother, sits at less than 50 per cent.

In advanced cases like Gardner’s, which make up more than seven in 10 diagnoses, the survival rate is less than 30 per cent.

And those figures have barely changed in the last 30 years.

Ovarian cancer kills one woman every eight hours in Australia and while women are more likely to survive breast cancer, a staggering one in seven Australian women will be diagnosed in their lifetime.

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These diseases are killing our mothers (and sisters, daughters, aunts, grandmothers) and almost a decade after the death of her biological mother, Layne is still fighting to change that.

As an ambassador for the Mother’s Day Classic’s principal partner, AIA Australia, she’s raising awareness in honour of the three mothers she’s lost and all the other mothers who stepped in to nurture her throughout her life.

An annual community event hosted on Mother’s Day to celebrate and remember those touched by breast and ovarian cancer and to raise life-saving funds for research, it’s become a bright spot on what can be a difficult day for Layne.

“If we just keep harboring the loss and and looking back into the past, then we we miss the opportunity to celebrate the present and plan for the future.

“So while we do take the time to recognise those that have unfortunately lost their lives, we need to keep doing these events.”

WATCH: New ovarian cancer test to be trialled

As well as fundraising, the event promotes education so women know the symptoms to look out for to catch breast or ovarian cancer early.

When Layne started going through menopause and experienced symptoms that echoed those of ovarian cancer, like abdominal bloating.

Instead of “sticking [her] head in the sand”, she went straight to her GP for a series of tests to make sure nothing was wrong. After all she’s lost, it’s better to be safe.

“I’m a silent sufferer and that’s a result of my upbringing where it wasn’t OK to be injured, and it wasn’t OK to be hurt,” she says.

“I have to go against every grain in my subconscious to actually put my hand up and say. ‘I’m not OK, I’m not feeling good today, and I need to do something about it.'”

Layne urges women to trust their bodies, advocate for themselves if they don’t feel their symptoms are being taken seriously, and encourage open conversations about women’s health with their friends and family.

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No one should suffer in silence and we need to keep pushing for better awareness, funding, research, treatment options and outcomes.

Because if we don’t, we will keep losing women to these diseases.

And that’s a cycle Layne wants to break, not just for herself and her mothers – adoptive, biological, step – but for every other mother and daughter in Australia.

”Mother’s Day is still a beautiful day for me. I celebrate not only the mothers that I’ve lost, but the mothers that I’ve had.”

Learn more about the Mother’s Day Classic, donate or register here.

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