Words of hope from someone who had lost everything

"When you are someone like me you realise that life is everything and you grab it with both hands and embrace it.

If there is something that you feel needs to be done, go and do it, and do it wholeheartedly because life is short.

People ask me how I can still be so happy with all this on my plate. But I have lived my life as a spark. I don't want to live a life where I am living until I am 100 and just flat boring.

I have always lived my life with compassion and passion. I have never been one to keep my silence about anything I have felt passionate about. ''

Melanoma is no joke. And I will keep championing this cause till the day I take my last breath."
The words of a girl who's life was destroyed at such a young age. You're probably heard by now that Clare Oliver passed away yesterday morning 4 years into her battle with cancer.

Someone who lived everyday like it was her last, she really had no choice. This gorgeous girl who had just finished her communications degree and had been just 3 weeks into her job at SBS. My heart goes out to her family and friends who have had to be living everyday in hell. Watching her slowly fade away.

And all because of those death machines they call 'solarium's'. I know SO many people who can't go two weeks without getting in touch with their bohemian side and hitting up the local tanning salon.

I really hope everyone learns from Clare's mistake and counts their days as a trophy. Solarium's should be burn't at the stake. Literally.

Take care all and remember to slip, slop, slap. Even when the sun isn't that hot you can still get burn't.

Gilr Next Door xx

P.S If you do have to be tanned (and let's face it we all love to look brown) then invest in a good faux tan. Something that's organic preferably and not going to be saoking into your skin with deadly chemicals. Basically if you can't eat what you're putting on your skin, then it ain't good for you. Spray tans better than baking in the sun too, but kept to a minimum, as they are generally very chemical based.