Mountains help to heal cancer sufferer from Ardersier near Inverness
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AN Ardersier woman who has been battling cancer is climbing hundreds of mountains to honour the memory of her mother, who died of the same disease.
Sarah Jane Douglas, from Ardersier, has climbed nearly 300 mountains in the last five years – some within days of receiving chemotherapy.
The 46-year-old mother-of-two has now written a book about discovering she had cancer 20 years after the disease claimed the life of her mother Jennifer.
She told the Courier how she felt following her mother’s diagnosis.
“I went completely off the rails,” she said.
“But I was lonely and I was trying to fill that gap. I then ended up married and it was not a happy marriage. I led a difficult and chaotic life.”
But as time went on, the mountains have given her the solace she needed to stay mentally strong.
She added: “Walking was something we had always done together. But after my mother died, the grief was so raw, I stopped doing it.
“Then I got married and that ran into difficulties quite quickly and it was the breakdown of the marriage that drove me back to the hills.
“It’s just so good for your health and for your emotional well-being.”
The self-employed gardener, who is also an artist specialising in oil on canvas, last week appeared on ITV’s Lorraine show to talk about her experience.
She said she wrote the book as a personal memoir not realising it would be published.
She added: “I hope my story helps someone.”
Her book, called Just Another Mountain, launches at Waterstones Inverness in the Eastgate Shopping Centre tomorrow at 6pm.
