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When Princess Catherine opened up about her cancer diagnosis in March 2024, it sparked a lot of conversation about how you speak to your kids about the unthinkable. How do you parent through cancer while maintaining a happy and fear-free home?
In a new episode of The Australian Women’s Weekly Love Stories podcast, I spoke to a royal of a very different kind about the same topic. But this time it was with the lens of how it felt to have your mum break this news and the reversal of roles from cared for to carer.
Our reigning Miss Universe Australia Lexie Brant was just 11 years old when her mum Penny, who had already survived a cervical cancer scare when her daughter was a newborn, was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“I dealt immediately with my mortality,” Penny told me of that heart-dropping moment. “What would life look like if I wasn’t going to be around? If I wasn’t going to see Lexie grow up? They are intrusive thoughts that pop into my brain – still do – but were popping into my brain at that time.”
But this fear was something she didn’t want to pass on. And so she and husband Jim, Lexie’s stepdad, sat down for a tough, but loving, conversation.
“We were direct, and we were honest,” she said of their approach to breaking the news. “She needed to see that I was serious about living. Serious about the approach that I take. That it has to be a quick approach, a smart approach and as least invasive as you can. Being 11, she hadn’t hit puberty yet, so it was a confusing time.”
“The way that mum said it to me is a moral I live my life with now,” Lexie recalled.
“It was, ‘This is what happened, and it’s really sad, but we’re doing all the things. I’m going to surgery now, I’m getting it fixed. So instead of a mourning and a sadness, what I remember mum saying to me was, ‘We’re proactive, we’re getting it fixed, nothing to worry about.
“So even to this day, I’m not going to mourn and sit in my sorrow if I’m sick or if I’m at a low point in my life. And that’s what I remember of this conversation.”
Penny is one of the lucky ones. Her cancer was caught early, and she has now been in recovery for 10 years. But that doesn’t mean her journey wasn’t gruelling. During her treatment, she would receive a double mastectomy and spend long stints in the hospital away from her family.
Throughout it all, she maintained that position of absolute honesty.
“I didn’t hide any information,” Penny recalled.
“It instils more fear if mum and Jim are whispering in the corner about what could happen or the next surgery,” Lexie reflected. “It makes you be like, ‘That must be bad if they’re not telling me.’”
Having not gone through puberty, “I was still getting my head around the female anatomy,” Lexie recalled. And so Penny was clear in answering all of her questions about what a breast removal would mean and look like. Also, how reconstruction would work – explaining all in a rational but non-fear-based way.
And as Penny recovered from her surgeries, the extended family rallied around Lexie to keep her positive and focused on her usual routine. “Jim’s mum and my mum’s mum were my biggest supports, making it a treat to go and visit mum,” she said.
“Jim’s mum was a nurse, and so she kind of cleared up a lot of things that mum couldn’t do when she came home. Like, mum can’t pour the kettle, so you’re going to have to make mum a cup of tea. It gave me a new role to be mum’s carer.”
For Penny, this role was bittersweet. While she loved seeing her daughter fearlessly step into this new stage with support, not being able to do the little things for her child was heartbreaking.
The day she was diagnosed was Lexie’s first day of Year 6. It was also the same day she was appointed as her class captain. Missing the badging ceremony left Penny “crying my eyes out”.
And then there were the small moments.
Picking up her daughter at the school gate each afternoon. Bedtime stories. Cups of tea together in the mornings.
And so they started a new daily ritual – one in which they looked forward. They planned beach days with picnics or returns to favoured locations for the moment that Penny was well enough.
“It doesn’t have to cost much. But it just means you are breaking the monotony of home,” Penny said of why this got them through the darkest days. “We started new traditions.”
Lexie Brant and her mother, Penny, were guests on The Australian Women’s Weekly Love Stories podcast.
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