Sarah was diagnosed with incurable breast cancer in 2019 and won the award for her ‘incredible dedication to supporting people with incurable and life-limiting illnesses’
A NI woman has appeared on ITV’s Lorraine after winning the show’s ‘Woman of the Year Trailblazer Award’.
Sarah Harrison, from Strabane and lives in South Shields, won the award ‘for her incredible dedication to supporting people with incurable and life-limiting illnesses’.
The mum-of-two, who founded charity Sarah’s Star based in England, was diagnosed with incurable breast cancer in 2019. Sarah was initially diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 35 in 2016.
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The Co Tyrone woman founded the charity with the hope “to make life a little easier for people who have been given an incurable or palliative diagnosis”.
Sarah appeared on Lorraine on Monday morning for a makeover by stylist Mark Heyes ahead of the Woman of the Year Awards ceremony. Her sister Joanne, who nominated Sarah, also appeared on the show.
Speaking on the ITV show on Monday, Lorraine said: “You might remember this time last Monday, Mark surprised Sarah in her hometown of North Shields with news that she had won a Trailblazer Award.”
Sarah replied: “I didn’t have a clue… It was a massive surprise, a lovely surprise.”
On founding the charity Sarah’s Star, she added: “When I got sick, and it was incurable, I just thought, ‘What can I do?’
“I didn’t want to go down the route of, ‘I can’t do this anymore’. So I thought, ‘I’m going to channel whatever energy I’ve got into helping anybody that I can’, because I felt like I had I picked up all these little nuggets of information while I was just going through different types of treatment, and I thought, ‘If I need all these things, surely a lot of older people need them as well’.
“And I wanted the joy, I wanted the glimmers, you know, I really just wanted to have them moments where everyone’s not looking at you and thinking, ‘Oh, you’re too sick to do anything’, but instead thinking, ‘Look how much fun this is’.
Make over for Lorraine’s Woman of the Year Trailblazer Award Sarah Harrison
The charity also hosts ‘Death Cafes’ and talks ‘to normalise the conversation around palliative and end of life care – bringing comfort, connection, and peace’.
Sarah told Lorraine: “It’s terrible though, my poor family… because I decided I want to be able to talk openly about death and dying. And the Irish do that quite well anyway, but I just threw everybody into a room together and was like, ‘Death, go’.
“I see it as a power, because if you talk about what you want when you’re dying, or to prepare for a funeral… because you don’t have to be dying to decide you want to prepare your funeral… I’m just like, ‘If you talk about this. You can have whatever you want.
“And then I always laugh… My poor sister… I’m like, ‘So I’m going to leave it that you have to come dressed as a clown’.”
Later on the show, Sarah and her sister Joanne showed their makeovers ahead of the award ceremony.
Watch Lorraine weekdays from 9am on ITV1, ITVX, STV & STV Player
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