Posted on June 28, 2018

This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Julie Stafford, a best selling author who wrote “Seagulls on the Ganges”. In this interview, Julie talks about the experience of her husbands Mesothelioma diagnosis, the experiences that come alongside it, and her journey through grief and loss. 

Linda: Please tell me about yourself.

Julie: Through the ’80’s and 90’s, before reality TV turned everyday people into cooking celebrities, I gave up my career as an art-teacher to write a healthy-eating cookbook to save my husband’s life. Bruce was diagnosed with life-threatening Stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Having only just begun our love story, with 1 child, and another on the way, I wasn’t about to give up on it so easily. I researched the link between diet and disease and how a healthy diet might rebuild Bruce’s immune system. My research efforts and recipes became Australia’s biggest and fastest selling cookbook. Bruce survived his first cancer battle. In 18 years, another 21 healthy eating cookbooks followed.

Linda: What moved you to write your book “Seagulls on the Ganges”?

Julie: Bruce and I could never imagine, 23 years on from that first cancer, we would be challenged by mesothelioma. Minimal asbestos exposure, in farming activities, was enough to be lethal. We lost Bruce in 2006.

Linda: Share your process of writing your book.

Julie: I directed my energies into healing my broken heart. I travelled and wrote, determined not to let one life ending be the end of another’s life too. My journey gifted me a powerful message and I wanted to share it with others who will face loss.

Linda: What is the “Seagulls on the Ganges” about?

Julie: ‘Seagulls on the Ganges’, is an insight into my transformational travel experiences and what happens when you embrace the lessons of loss. I have chosen to write my story as fiction. Essentially a love story, with powerful messages about those meaningful coincidences that make us stop and wonder about life, I’ve also woven the message of asbestos consequences through the story to create more awareness. The more stories of the lives impacted by this product will surely bring change.

Linda: What do you hope to accomplish with the publication of your book?

Julie: To help others heal from grief in the knowledge that we are all braver than we imagine ourselves to be.  And, after discovering India is the largest dumping ground today for asbestos, and how it is expected it will face a mesothelioma epidemic the likes we’ve not yet seen, it became easy to thread an Indian philosophy into my love story so that the book might be recognized in India and be that quiet voice of awareness about the consequences of asbestos there too.  

Linda: How can the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization community help you?

Julie: I would love the ADAO community to embrace mine and Bruce’s story, in ‘Seagulls on the Ganges’ and share the links to my website for others to know the story too. The book has been screenplay adapted and I am currently working with a group in Los Angeles to attempt to bring the story to the big screen. To excite producers I need to make some sizable noise with the book. I am doing this with a dedicated Facebook and Instagram and books are for sale on my website and all Amazon platforms in book and e-book. If I can achieve the noise I am attempting to, I can bring far greater discussion about a product that should not be available anywhere in the world!  

My links are:
WEBSITE www.juliestafford.com.au 
INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/juliestaffordloveslife/
FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/JulieStaffordSeagullsontheGanges/