Imposter!

Self-doubt and imposter syndrome are emotional side effects that none of my medical team ever warned me about and neither did anyone else in the cancer community. When they hit, they knocked me completely sideways.

Before my diagnosis, I was carving out a career in fashion. I wanted to live like the life of Lauren Conrad, on the hit MTV show The Hills, interning for Teen Vogue and living in LA. Spoiler alert: it didn’t go quite like that.

I did land a role at a major British high street retailer’s head office, which felt like the beginning of something. But cancer had other plans. It crept in quietly at first, making me physically sick, I was throwing up every single day. Assuming the job stress was the culprit, I resigned. It was only after my diagnosis that I understood what had really been happening, and by then, my life had changed immeasurably.

My dream of making it in fashion didn’t survive the detour. When I eventually tried to return to that world, it felt unrecognisable, not because fashion had changed, but because I had. Things I’d once done effortlessly were suddenly out of reach. Cancer had affected me in more ways than I’d realised.

So I pivoted. I moved into fintech, working in office coordination, and found my footing there for a while. For the first time post-diagnosis, I thought I’d found something I was genuinely good at. Then redundancy hit, twice and with it, another blow to my confidence. I stepped back from work for a year and turned to the things that brought me joy, and I knew I was good at it, baking was among them.

Recently, I accepted a role at a global fintech company. I didn’t disclose my disability before starting, and that’s where the self-doubt lives. Starting any new job can feel overwhelming, like you’re constantly treading water but for me, that feeling had an extra weight to it, something harder to shake and impossible to ignore.

No one sees it day to day, no one tends to understand this unless you have been through it yourself.

Speaking to your friends or family is an uncomfortable conversation and one they may not understand but speaking with employers is totally different. My self doubt and imposter syndrome rages. It’s like I have promised something that I can’t deliver.

My advice is to stop and breathe. Try not to stress. It’s going to all work out in the end.