People sometimes ask me why I choose to share something as private as our family's brain cancer journey so openly. It is a fair question. Nic's Glioblastoma diagnosis belongs to our family first, and there are days when I want to hold it close and tell no one. Yet again and again I return to sharing, because I have seen what honesty can do. This is why I, Julie Crawshay, keep telling our story out loud.

Because Someone Out There Feels Alone

Julie Crawshay with fellow brain cancer carers at the Tour de Cure gala dinner in Sydney, Australia
Julie Crawshay with fellow brain cancer carers at the Tour de Cure gala dinner in Sydney, Australia

In the earliest, loneliest weeks after diagnosis, I searched desperately for other voices, real people who understood the particular fear of loving someone with GBM. When I found caregivers writing honestly about their days, something in me unclenched. I was not the only one. Their words were a hand in the dark.

I share now so that another frightened person, scrolling at 2am here in Sydney or on the other side of the world, might feel that same hand reaching back. If our story tells even one caregiver that they are not alone, that their fear is normal, and that tenderness is still possible, then the vulnerability is worth it.

Because Brain Cancer Needs More Voices

Glioblastoma is not a common headline. Compared with more visible illnesses, it receives less attention, less funding, and far less public understanding. Every time a family like ours speaks up, we help lift brain cancer a little higher in the public conversation, and that matters for research, awareness, and the people who will be diagnosed after us.

Sharing our journey has quietly become a form of advocacy I never planned. I did not set out to be an advocate; I set out to survive. But telling the truth about caregiving, the exhaustion and the grace of it, has connected me with a remarkable Sydney community of fellow carers, and together our voices carry further than any of us could alone.

There is a cost, of course. Being open means being seen on hard days as well as good ones. I have had to learn where my boundaries are, which parts of our lives stay just for us, and how to protect my family's dignity while still telling the truth. Sharing does not mean surrendering every private moment. It means choosing, carefully, what might help.

I also share for Nic. His courage deserves witnesses. The way he faces each day with humour and grace is, to me, quietly heroic, and I want the world to know the man behind the diagnosis, not just the disease.

So I keep writing, keep speaking, keep showing up honestly. If our story reaches you in the middle of your own hard season, please know this: you are seen, you are not alone, and your love is doing more than you can measure.

— Julie Crawshay, Sydney