How She's Staying Strong
10sthanks to Kay
By Melody Chiu
As the sun rose over her Southern California ranch on a recent warm June morning, Olivia Newton-John finished sipping a steaming cup of herbal tea brewed by her husband, John Easterling then got on with the first chore of the day: nurturing one of the newborn chicks she’s raising. Mixing mush for poultry and tending to her horses brings the 68-year-old Australian icon peace, and country living is exactly what she needs.
On May 30 the star told the world that she is feeing breast cancer for the second time after 25 years in remission and that the disease has metastasized to the sacrum, a bone in the lower back. For many people the diagnosis would be devastating But Newton John is innately optimistic, the same golden girl who came to Hollywood from Melbourne via London and became a 70s superstar singing feather-light rock and shimmying with John Travolta in Grease. We both have the same unshakable belief that she’s going to have a wonderful success story,
says Easterling 65 who plans on celebrating his ninth wedding anniversary with his wife this month.
We’re not trying to be positive. We have an absolute knowingness that we can turn this around.
While Newton John undergoes treatment, she has put her husband in charge of updating loved ones and the media. But in a statement she echoes his sunny resolve: I am feeling good and enjoying total support from my family and friends, along with a team of wellness and medical practitioners. I’m totally confident that my new journey will have a positive success story.
Eight months ago Newton-John, nicknamed Pollyanna by her sister Rona because of her tendency to see the good in everything,
told People she was feeling happier and healthier than ever. I’m just grateful for the gift of one more day,
she said last October, reflecting on losing Rona, a fellow actress, to brain cancer at 70 in 2013. I know that having had cancer, I need to keep myself balanced and healthy, and that’s mental as well as physical.
But as she toured Europe and traveled around America earlier this year promoting her inspirational album Liv On, the singer grappled with severe back pain she initially mistook for sciatica. Last month she was forced to postpone all scheduled shows, and medical tests uncovered that her cancer had returned and spread.
We knew something was going on with all the pain she was having,
says Easterling, a natural health entrepreneur. As it turns out, you’ve got a tumor growing there pressing on a nerve bundle against the pelvis bone.
The Grammy winner (who’s choosing to keep the specific details of her treatment and prognosis private for now) is undergoing a short course of photon radiation therapy supplemented with other natural wellness therapies. Since she began cancer treatment a week ago, the pain has gone from [level] 8 to about a 2,
says Easterling.
I’m encouraging her to tune out everything and focus on herself.
Before going public, Newton-John privately shared her diagnosis with those closest to her. Olivia has always been an incredible human being and an inspiration to millions of people,
says her friend John Travolta, who wooed Newton-John’s Sandy as bad boy Danny in 1978’s Grease. If we a all put our intentions for her to get through this —I know her so well— she will feel it, and it will support her. We love her and she loves us.
That kind of outcome would fit an extraordinary life. The youngest of three children born to Brinley Newton-John, an MI5 officer, and Irene Born, the daughter of Nobel Prize-winning physicist and Jewish refugee Max Born,she was raised in Cambridge, England, before her family immigrated to Australia. By the late 1960s Newton-John’s willowy good looks and breathy voice helped her break into show business; she soon found success as a pop - country singer.
But it was Grease that turned her into a superstar. A string of pop hits that included Physical
and Xanadu
followed in the 1980s. By then Newton-John was a mogul with her own chain of clothing stores, Koala Blue. Newton-John had a daughter, Chloe, now 31, with her first husband, actor Matt Lattanzi, but in 1992 learned she had breast cancer. I had all the same fears and traumas that everyone feels,
she said. But I did massage and meditation and yoga... all the things that would help heal me and keep me feeling positive.
Instead of falling into despair, she told me all of a sudden she saw what was important in life, which is the people around her that she loves,
says her Grease cast mate Didi Conn. That’s how she’s lived her life.
Her 1994 album Gaia was written about coping with cancer. Positivity also helped her cope with her 1995 divorce from Lattanzi, the mysterious disappearance of her boyfriend Patrick McDermott in a 2005 boating trip and her sister’s death. With Rona I knew what was going to happen,
Newton-John said. I had time to bring all her children together and just be with her as a family. But still, you’re never prepared for when the person actually dies.
In 2012 she lent her name and fund-raising power to Australia's Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness & Research Centre (see sidebar).
What Her Diagnosis Means
Newton-John has been diagnosed with breast cancer that has metastasized to her sacrum. This means some cancerous cells survived her breast cancer treatment in 1992 and have attached themselves to a bone in her lower back. The cancer has been asleep for 25 years, so that’s pretty good. It shows it’s not that aggressive, and maybe you can just put it back to sleep,
says Ur. Susan Love, a former surgeon and breast cancer researcher who is not treating the singer. On the other hand, why did it wake up? You don’t really live for a fairly long time—though there’s a lot of pain.
She acknowledges metastatic breast cancer is treatable but not curable, but I would not be surprised if we weren’t able to do it sometime in the near future.
All the trials in her life have helped Newton-John develop a toughness underneath her smile, says her friend Leeza Gibbons, the talk show host. She’s not naive and doesn’t get immobilized,
says Gibbons. She finds light in the darkest comers and just always has.
Olivia’s dream is to get rid of cancer in her lifetime, and she’s not done yet -LEEZA GIBBONS
One of the biggest lights in Newton-John's life is Easterling, whom she calls the love of my life.
After McDermott vanished and tabloid rumors circulated that he had faked his own death, I dated a little bit, but I wasn't expecting to fell in love,
she said. He’s incredibly compassionate and smart and says yes to life.
With her husband and Chloe (a singer who herself overcame anorexia and addiction) by her side, Newton John has an incredible amount of support,
says friend Beth Nielsen Chapman, who co-wrote Liv On with Newton-John and musician Amy Sky. The couple live a very healthy lifestyle,
adds Sky. Every time you're on the road with Olivia and something’s wrong, she’s got a bag full of John’s herbs.
After nearly a decade together, we share a complete world,
says Easterling. We can appreciate the joy in nature and the little things, because ultimately that’s all there is — the little things.
That includes finding laughter in trying times. We wake up and start each day with gratitude and arc able to maintain a sense of humor.
Most of all, Easterling is in awe of his wife’s capacity to love,
he says. It’s just something that’s so rare.
Indeed, friends say Newton-John will focus not just on trying to get well but on helping others. If all goes well, she plans on returning to the stage this summer. Then she will have a real story that will inspire so many people,
says Easterling. Adds Nielsen Chapman: If anybody can power through this with amazing determination, it’s Olivia.
Inside Her Cancer Center
Opened in 2012, the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne provides medical oncology services along with extensive wellness therapies, such as massage, meditation and acupuncture. Her partnership and bang able to mobilize support from the community made it possible to build the center,
says Dr. Jonathan Cebon, the institute’s medical director. Over Christmas Newton-John visited the hospital and personally spent time with more than 90 patients. She gives other people confidence, and that's enormously powerful,
adds Cebón. She came and sat with each one and spoke to them. The patients just respond so warmly.
With additional reporting by Janine Rubenstein, Patrick Gomez and Brianne Tracy