LINDSAY NICHOLSON: I lost my first husband to cancer, the second to

I understand why many think I am blessed. For more than 20 years I edited Good Housekeeping, one of the most successful magazines in Britain.

I’ve written a number of books, several of which have become bestsellers. I’ve married twice and had two daughters and now I dote on my two-year-old grandchild. At 69, I own my own home and am grateful to have enough money to live comfortably.

But I have had more than my share of tragedies, too. I’ve lost a husband and daughter to cancer; been made redundant from the job I love; my second husband left me for another woman; I’ve been evicted from my home and had a nervous breakdown. I’ve also been in two near-fatal car crashes.

Painfully, I learned how to rebuild my life again and again, acquiring some valuable

life lessons along the way. Here are the most important – the ones I wish I had known before it all went so wrong.

Losing your job

Twice named Editor Of The Year, credited with bringing the legendary title Good Housekeeping into the 21st century, making it the biggest-selling glossy in Britain, re-launching the world-famous Good Housekeeping Institute and taking it online. Surely my job was rock-solid secure? Apparently not!

As I discovered in 2017, you can work 60-plus hours a week, make a handsome profit for your employer, win all the awards going… and still be at risk of redundancy through no fault of your own.

Because even though I was working flat out, digital and especially social media was eating up more and more of the advertising revenue that women’s magazines traditionally relied on.

When Lindsay Nicholson lost her job at 61 years old, she had no idea how to earn a living. So she retrained as a life coach for Riding for the Disabled – her most rewarding job to date

It came as a bolt from the blue – to me, at least – when my employer restructured the businesses and, along with several other successful editors of household-name titles, I was made redundant. The fact is that in today’s world a ‘job for life’ no longer exists.

When, at 61 years old, I lost my job I had no idea how to earn a living now that the business I knew was changing out of all recognition and my face no longer fitted.

In a state of panic, I cashed in my savings, jumped on a plane and headed for California to train as a life coach.

Given that my own life had just fallen apart, why did I think I was qualified to advise anyone about how to live theirs? On the plus side, I learned a lot about what it takes to be fulfilled.

I also discovered equine therapy, the use of horses in healing. When I returned home, I signed up to train as a coach for Riding For The Disabled, which has been my most rewarding job to date.

Even if, as I did, you love being a cog in the corporate wheel, with your own coffee mug in the staff kitchen, you still have to be an entrepreneur for your own career. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) takes over roles that previously seemed secure, this is something that many, if not most of us, will face.

Life Lesson 1: Everyone needs a Plan B. However kind your employer, no one is as invested in your future as you are.

Losing your health

Having lost my husband and my child to blood cancer, I had it fixed in my mind that cancer is always fatal. So, when I was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer in 2007 (thanks to self-checking, because although I had just turned 50, I hadn’t had a routine mammogram yet), I was plunged into severe depression, believing my life was over and that my then 14-year-old daughter would be orphaned.

When she was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer in 2007, she feared her 14-year-old would be orphaned. (Pictured: Lindsay and her daughter Hope, while she was undergoing treatment)

I endured months of misery before I realised that my doctors had, all along, been confident that I had a form of the disease which, while no walk in the park, responded well to treatment.

I probably would have coped much better with the surgeries, chemo and radiotherapy had I been more positive. More than 19 years later, with no sign of disease (fingers crossed) it turns out the doctors were right and I worried unnecessarily.

Life lesson 2: Take a pragmatic approach to your health. Self-checking, following the doctors’ advice and accepting the treatments on offer is better than catastrophising about the worst possible outcome.

Losing your loved ones

Nothing can prepare you for the death of your partner while pregnant, let alone for the loss of a child. I was 36 when my first husband died in 1992 and back then was not offered any therapy or counselling.

Indeed, I went home from hospital a new widow, with a new baby and not so much as one discussion about how I might cope.

As a single parent, I had no choice but to keep working, determined to build a good life for my two girls. But not even six years later, tragedy struck again when my eldest daughter, Ellie, was diagnosed with what was probably the same type of blood cancer as her father – although it is so rare and so little is known about it (even now) that doctors were never sure.

Lindsay lost her first husband, John, to blood cancer in 1992, leaving her as a 36-year-old widow with two young children to care for. (Pictured on their wedding day in 1982)

But tragedy soon struck again when her eldest daughter Ellie was diagnosed with what was likely the same fatal disease as her father

After Ellie died, aged nine, not surprisingly I sank into the deepest depression, a time I wrote about in my first memoir, Living On The Seabed (so-called because I felt as if I was hundreds of feet below the surface where the rest of the world lived), and it was only the need to keep going for my younger daughter, Hope, that got me through.

I was constantly burned out. Doctors said it was just hormones… then I was diagnosed with cancer

Although there is far more talk about mental health nowadays, I am not sure that there is much more NHS provision than there was for me back then in 1998.

Again, I dealt with my grief by keeping busy and working too hard, coping as a single parent. But you can’t keep working for ever and when I was made redundant, not long after two serious car crashes, the PTSD I had managed to suppress flared up again along with flashbacks of agonising dashes to hospitals in the hopes of saving John and Ellie.

The death of a young person or a child is deeply traumatic and can lead to what is now known as ‘complicated grief’, where the intrusive thoughts and depression continue for years or even decades. Expert help is needed, and even though the situation is better than when I went through it, support from the NHS can still be patchy.

If you or someone you know is suffering, it’s important to try to access what is available as well as religious organisations – or specific charities such as Macmillan Cancer Support or Blood Cancer UK may be able to help.

Life lesson 3: There are some things you won’t get through alone – don’t be too proud to ask for help.

Losing your marriage

I know some couples who simply drift apart and make a civilised decision to separate. But that’s not what happened to me.

It seemed like one minute we were drinking champagne together in an outdoor Jacuzzi, the next I was suspicious, disorientated and demanding to see Mark’s phone to know who he was texting. The fact that he wouldn’t show it to me should have been all the evidence I needed.

Instead, I foolishly tried to grab his phone out of his hand, it fell on the floor and broke and, before I knew it, he was dialling 999.

Lindsay eventually remarried, but reflects: ‘What an idiot I was! No matter how many times he told me he loved me, there were things that just didn’t add up. Red flags I chose to ignore’

I spent the night in a police cell before being released without charge. What an idiot I was! I wish I had listened to my instincts because no matter how many romantic mini-breaks we had been on or times he told me he loved me, there were things that just didn’t add up; red flags I chose to ignore.

If I had been paying attention I could have (calmly) asked him to explain himself or leave when he started behaving suspiciously. Instead, the situation escalated to the point where I made things worse by begging for proof.

Life lesson 4: Trust your gut – and act accordingly.

Losing your home

After that night in the cell, I was too distraught to return to my own home. In fact, my lawyer advised me not to.

I went to stay with my mother and then, because my husband refused to move out, I rented a house for me, my dogs and my now adult daughter Hope – only to be served a no-fault eviction notice six months later at around the time I was also being made redundant.

Of all the things that happened to me, I was shocked at how much losing my home upset me. Sorting out finances for a divorce involves having a permanent address for ID and because I had moved out of the catchment area for my GP I missed out on my prescriptions.

Vital post containing bills and documents along with deliveries were misdirected. And that’s as well as worrying where you are going to lay your head to go to sleep at night.

I literally could not think straight, which I badly needed to do to resolve all my other problems. In the end, I went to court (yet more expense) and was awarded an Occupation Order forcing my soon-to-be-ex to vacate the family home.

SARAH VINE: I’m being evicted and have just weeks to find a new home… and Labour is to blame

Funnily enough – and as I write in the updated edition of my memoir – all the memories came flooding back eight years later when I sold that house, down-sizing to live nearer my daughter.

Even though my life was back on an even keel, I was painfully reminded how hard it had been when I was technically homeless, despite having plenty of family and kind friends willing to put me up.

So-called Section 21 (no-fault) evictions have now been outlawed, but, even so, many people find they need to move house for whatever reason (often financial) when they are coping with crises.

Moving house is one of the top ten stressors for a reason. If it is at all possible, avoid doing it when you are dealing with divorce, ill-health, redundancy or bereavement. Which are, of course, often the reasons people need to move in the first place.

Life lesson 5: If you need to move, try to wait at least 12 months after dealing with another major life crisis. Oh, and if you are the one cheating in your marriage, have the decency to move out!

Losing Your Mind

Looking back on 2017, when the life I had worked so hard to rebuild after the deaths of my husband and eldest daughter came apart with alarming speed, I know now I was having what used to be called a mental breakdown.

Hardly surprising. Any one of those life-changing events would have been enough to trigger it. I had been ‘running on empty’ for years, maybe decades.

Working too hard and drinking too much as a way of not facing up to my grief for John and Ellie and more recently the state of my job or my second marriage.

One terrible morning, on my way to work, I found myself on the platform of a Tube station, thinking it would be easier just to step in front of the next train.

The way back for me involved therapy, including Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing therapy or (EMDR) – designed to alleviate distress from traumatic memories and is also offered to soldiers returning from the front line – and five years on antidepressants, which included at least two years trying to come off them.

But really what allowed me to recover my equilibrium were the simple everyday routines: daily dog walks; journalling; cooking proper meals; limiting alcohol; and volunteering in the community.

While the going is good, establish regular routines of exercise as well as supportive friendship groups, says Lindsay. (Pictured: On a charity walk to raise money for breast cancer)

I am now, to my amazement, far happier and contented than I ever was when it seemed like I had it all – the prestigious job, the romantic second marriage, an architect-designed home straight out of the pages of my own magazine.

Something like one in four of us will suffer a mental health crisis at some point. It needn’t be the end of the world.

Calm and sanity usually return, even after the most dramatic storms, if you give them a chance. Talking therapy definitely helps.

I personally am less than convinced about medication because it takes so long to quit after the crisis has passed.

But living healthily with sensible routines, minimal distractions such as alcohol or other potentially addictive substances, a few good friends and purposeful work, voluntary or paid, can lead you to a place where you can even be grateful that you had that breakdown. Because life on the other side is so much better.

I know that to be true because it happened to me.

Life lesson 6: While the going is good, establish regular routines of exercise and healthy eating along with absorbing hobbies and supportive friendship groups. These are what will save you when the cold winds blow.

How To Survive Losing It All, by Lindsay Nicholson (£10.99, Mudlark), is on sale now.