How extreme loss became my greatest gift

With stress levels climbing as high as Everest, Fetola CEO Catherine Wijberg shares the silver lining from her life story.

By Catherine Wijnberg

Wherever I go these days I hear people talking about how stressed they are, how life has speeded up and that pressures are relentless.

This consistent talk intrigued me, so I went looking for evidence to see if this was fact or fiction. I found on my smart watch there is an app that measures stress levels. And there it was – a graph climbing steadily from sea level to somewhere near Everest with the evidence of how my own stress levels have risen month by month since April.

Two thoughts came into my head. The first was that ‘Stress is a killer, so this isn’t good’ and the second is that ‘stress is a choice so get your act together, girl’. My belief around stress is that we can choose to accept it like a blanket, or we can cast it off, change our attitude and find the silver lining in the difficult situation.

Twenty years ago, I faced total ruin. My ex-husband had skipped the country, leaving a trail of debt that resulted in the loss of our businesses, our home, our cars – everything the sheriff saw of value. It was a very difficult period in my life, adjusting from being able to help others to needing help from strangers. In the space of a few months, I went from being married, wealthy, having a home and being a business owner, to being a divorced mother of three with no income and no assets.

One of the things that pulled me through this dark period was the realisation that I could control my attitude. I could change the face of a day by deciding it would be good and then go out and make it so. Now, if I look back, I realise this loss was without doubt the greatest gift of my life. It heralded a personal transformation that lead me to wake up and recognise my value and it gave me the courage to live my life’s purpose.

Well, that was until COVID-19.

It seems that many of us in the same boat, wondering when and how this will end and life will return to normal, and how can we cope with the stress of it all? Work worries, money worries, health worries, national and international worries that can bring one to a fog of anxiety-driven stupidity.

My remedy is this: we can consciously change the way we approach our daily reality by deciding to see each day as a gift. We can add laughter to our day, increase our practice of daily gratitude and look for the silver lining – the blessings in the challenges that we face. We can support each other and appreciate the fundamentals of life, which are the energy of love and the tenet of kindness.

In this wonderfully rich edition we acknowledge women, poke fun at our Zoom life, showcase some fabulous entrepreneurs and provide some tips for your business.