Kellie Finlayson shares the highs and lows in her new book
It’s no secret that Kellie Finlayson’s life has had many ups and downs in the last few years but she opens up about a moment that changed her life forever.
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Walking through Melbourne Airport on her whirlwind book tour, Kellie Finlayson’s three-year-old daughter suddenly tugged on her arm and screamed out “Mummy!”.
There, on a bookstore shelf, was a picture of them together running happily on the cover of the Adelaide mum’s debut book, There Must Be More.
It was a “wild” moment for the new author, who invites readers into her four-year tumult of surgeries, treatments, heartbreaks and defying the cancer odds in her achingly raw and honest memoir.
“Sophia noticed herself on a board in one of those WH Smiths in the airport. She was so excited and she was like, ‘Mummy’. I said ‘Yeah, it is you, baby!’,” says Finlayson, a podcaster and advocate who is married to Port Adelaide footballer Jeremy.
“That was crazy, completely wild. Every time I see the book, I sign the copy and put a little ‘signed by author’ sticker on it, which is really cool.”
There Must Be More – which traces Finlayson’s emotional rollercoaster, from growing up in Port Lincoln to travelling the world, meeting her husband and then the devastating discovery of stage four bowel cancer shortly after giving birth at the age of 25 – has raced to the top of the book charts since its release at the end of April.
It peaked at No. 9 for all titles, including Matthew McConaughey’s best-selling memoir Greenlights, and No. 1 for the categories of women’s biographies and medical journals.
“And I was just above Bluey, too, so it was pretty wild to see that,” says the 29-year-old, who describes sharing her story in the 252-page memoir – penned with acclaimed biographer and journalist Alley Pascoe – as “incredibly cathartic”. “It’s almost like free therapy,” she says of the intense writing process, which saw her travel to Pascoe’s home town of Darwin last year for brainstorming sessions.
“There were things that I had forgotten already. I guess going over those memories again was obviously never going to be an easy process, writing a book about what I’ve been through, but it made me start to realise what had happened and where I am now.
“I have been very protective in the past, particularly of people that I love and care about. But being honest and sharing … the ugly parts of it as well, or more than what I have originally … has definitely had a snowball effect of good.”
Finlayson opens her heart in There Must Be More, sharing the confronting brutality of her treatments, which left her on the edge of death and robbed her of special family moments with Sophia and Jeremy. The devoted mum, who dreamed of having at least three children before chemotherapy left her infertile, invites readers into the deeply personal trauma of seven failed attempts for another baby with a surrogate.
The book is an homage to Finlayson’s family and friends, including best mates Sam Powell-Pepper and his partner, Brya, and Carlton footballer Zac Williams and his wife, Rachel, who wrapped their arms around her and carried her through the darkest times.
Jeremy’s Port Adelaide teammates – led by Travis Boak – even joined together to buy Finlayson’s dream ring for her impromptu wedding in March 2023, when it looked like hefty medical bills would put its $10,000 price tag out of their range.
The ceremony was rushed forward to an intimate affair at Tennyson Beach just weeks after Finlayson discovered that her bowel cancer had spread to her lungs and other parts of her body and she was living on “borrowed time”.
In her memoir, Finlayson – who had been nervous about wearing a wedding dress that exposed a port inserted near her chest bone for chemotherapy treatment – says she was desperate to keep the wedding private.
Today, she is much more candid about sharing her emotional story. She knows it helps others to be more aware about cancer and recognise any warning signs. But there’s a dark side to that. Finlayson has copped cruel taunts from faceless trolls on social media. During this interview, Finlayson is alerted to a comment on an Instagram post she made about being infertile. It’s from a shamelessly rude 16-year-old girl, who barks: “You should be grateful for the daughter you have. At least you were able to have one baby, some women aren’t so lucky.”
“I can guarantee no one would ever say that to my face,” says a philosophical Finlayson.
“That 16-year-old probably comes up and asks me for a photo at the footy. It’s the people that are so nice to your face that are so rotten behind the screen. I get this, day in, day out.”
Finlayson is in the grip of a fast-paced book tour. It started just eight weeks after her latest surgery to remove a metastasised cancerous lump from her lungs – she woke up in intensive care on March 5, her second wedding anniversary. The surgery has left her feeling breathless at times. She is also easily fatigued, which means she has to factor in daily rests to help her cope.
She is also having oral doses of chemotherapy every day, two weeks on, one week off, and a three-weekly infusion to keep her stage four cancer stable. Its side effects include little ulcer-like burns on her tongue and what she calls “chemo brain”.
“I’ve lost the ability to filter what I’m thinking, which is hilarious, but also really bloody scary when you’re on live TV. I feel like I just am so black and white now, the emotions have kind of been taken out of my experience,” says Finlayson, who counts herself “lucky” that treatments she has taken over the years have worked to shrink or eliminate her cancers.
“If I feel a certain way, I’ll speak what I feel and it could get me in trouble, I’m not going to lie, but at the same time I feel like it’s probably a good reality check. Someone would empathise with me having to be on chemotherapy, but I’d be like, ‘I was meant to be dead two years ago, at least chemo works.’ And obviously in the moment that’s how I feel, but the person hearing that is like ‘holy shit, how do I react to this?’.
“If someone’s annoyed me or if someone says something I don’t agree with, I’ll tell them instead of just letting them say it. It’s a really wild side of it that I obviously didn’t expect but I’d prefer that than my memory to be gone.”
Sophia thinks chemotherapy is the “world’s best medicine because it makes mummy better” – and she suggests it to anyone who’s feeling under the weather.
“If someone’s got a headache, Sophia will offer them mummy’s chemo. She thinks that it’s obviously this medicine that’s making mummy better – she doesn’t know yet that it actually makes me feel worse, that’s a story for when she’s older,” Finlayson says.
“But she’s also just so empathetic. One of my friend’s daughters had surgery to remove her tonsils and Sophia was consoling her about how doctors are really clever, they always come home and she’ll feel better in a week’s time.
“The amount of resilience that this girl has as a three-year-old, it blows my mind.”
Toxic chemotherapy means Finlayson has to avoid physical intimacy. She cannot kiss on the lips or share drink bottles with her family. Bodily fluids are “no-go zones”. “(Jeremy and I) are used to it, it’s all we really know,” says Finlayson, who has to flush the toilet twice after using it and wash down her shower.
“He’s not selfish enough to ever question it and if a man did question it, I would really consider whether he loves you for who you are or not. We’ve got Sophia and I guess she’s a reminder of what we had, she’s been the rock in everyone’s lives without even knowing it.”
The Finlaysons sold their first home last year and moved to her “happy place” near the ocean at Henley Beach. It harks back to Finlayson’s outdoors-loving childhood in Port Lincoln, where she loved being in and on the water.
She says being within walking distance of Adelaide’s coastline has “changed our lives”.
“It’s so good for me in every way, I’m definitely a beach girl,” she says. “My husband is absolutely terrified of the beach … he’ll sit on the sand with his socks on, he won’t even go ankle deep because he’s scared a stingray is going to get him. But Sophia loves the beach and that’s all that matters.”
Finlayson’s work is also bringing meaning to her life. She co-hosts a podcast, Sh!t Talkers, and is also an ambassador for the Jodi Lee Foundation, which advocates for early detection and prevention of bowel cancer, and spearheaded its Trust Your Gut campaign.
That brings “so many” strangers into her sphere who credit her advocacy and public presence for their survival. “It’s so incredibly powerful and it’s wild to me that just speaking … that’s all I’m doing here is speaking and it is changing or saving so many lives,” she says.
“It took me a really, really, really long time to admit that that’s what I was doing because to me it sounds very arrogant when I say it out loud, but I guess I’ve had a mirror held up to me. It’s incredible.”
Finlayson’s own saviour is her little girl. She says without Sophia, “I wouldn’t be alive”.
“Having Sophia meant I had to get out of bed, I had to fight to get home, I had to get better to be there for her,” she says. “Don’t get me wrong, some days I play the cancer card on Jeremy when I can’t be screwed doing something. I’ll be, ‘I’m too fatigued.’ But when it’s Sophia asking, I would never play that card.”
Today, Finlayson drives herself forward but has “no idea” what her future holds. She says living with a terminal diagnosis means she has a team of medical specialists who watch her closely, checking for any signs of change, and that brings a kind of comfort.
She relates to the attitude – shared by a person just diagnosed with brain cancer – of having a “gift of being able to make the most of time they do have left”.
“They’re able to spend time with the people that they love, tell (them) that they loved them,” she says. “Some people can have a heart attack and die instantly. It is a gift that we’ve been given, a horrible gift that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone but I am so grateful that I have been given borrowed time, essentially, statistically.
“The type of cancer I have, 14 per cent make it to five years but with the aggressive nature of mine, I shouldn’t have made it past 18 months, which is a long time ago now.”
The new author is already planning her next page, with “things in the works” and a mission in her mind.
“I want as much physical legacy for Sophia,” she says. “The more that she’s got to be able to be, like, ‘This was my mum.’”
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