In 2015, at the age of 36, Cody was diagnosed with breast cancer. With dreams of being a lawyer, she moved to the UK from Zimbabwe to study. Hours before her university interview, she received the news about her diagnosis. Despite the news, Cody was offered her place on the course and she begun her journey into law.
However, sometimes life takes you down and different path and three months in, she had to leave the course. At the time, Cody was juggling raising her young family, working full-time, her part-time studies and going through cancer treatment. Something had to give, but giving up her dream took its toll on Cody’s mental health.
Cody knew something had to change, for the sake of her health and her children, so she made the decision to get up, get showered and get dressed everyday. It was her ‘lipstick and heels’ routine, and it worked. Taking back that one little bit of control helped her feel better.
As she started chemotherapy, Cody, like many others, began to lose not just her hair, but her eyebrows and eyelashes too. Hair loss can be an extremely difficult side effect of cancer treatment to deal with and she soon realised the lack of options she had when it came to beauty products.
Cancer may have halted her ambitions to study law, but it didn’t stop her entrepreneurial streak and she soon set about filling a gap in the market designing the eyelashes she wished she’d been able to find – fake eyelashes that looked good and were specifically designed for people who had lost their own lashes. ‘C-Lash’ was born and she teamed up with eyelash brand Eyelure. The lashes are now stock in retailers globally including the UK, US, Australia and UEA.
Products designed with cancer patients in mind are always welcome to us at War On Cancer and Cody’s very kindly given us two sets of C-Lashes to give away! Head to the community to find out more!
You can hear more about Cody’s experience in her TEDx talk.
