We know her best as the spunky headband-wearing contestant on Survivor: The Australian Outback and most recently as the vivacious co-host on the daytime talk show The View. Elisabeth Hasselbeck is a fighter -- whether she's duking it out to win $1 million or defending herself in front of a television audience. Remember her on-screen political feud with Rosie O'Donnell just before O'Donnell's departure from The View? Hasselbeck seems sweet and innocent. I'm sure she is, really. But she surely has the ability to stand her own ground. She owes this trait to her mom, she says.
"My senior year of high school, my mother was diagnosed with an advanced from of breast cancer," says Hasselbeck, now 30. "She was put on intensive chemotherapy and had to take time off from her job as an attorney. Suddenly, I was the grown-up: I took her to her first chemo appointment, and helped her shave her head. The experience taught me a lot about looking inside for strength."
It seems a common thread -- the fact that cancer makes us all stronger in one way or another. It's one of the silver linings, I think. Cancer can be a gift. We just have to regard it as one and look hard for its hidden treasures.
Source: Good Housekeeping, July 2007
1. I'm certainly glad that Elizabeth was able to take something positive away from her mothers bout with breast cancer, but I'm not sure that I can buy into the "gift" part.
Posted at 10:52AM on Jul 23rd 2007 by Doris