By Abbey Cannan
A spontaneous trip to Noosa with a dog-sitter has led to Australian-Canadian author Kat Finnerty’s best-selling memoir, Never Let a Good Disaster Go to Waste.
Kat is now back on the Sunshine Coast recording her audio-book, and ready to start a new podcast.
“I thought it’d be a good place to start the podcast, where it all began,“ she said.
She calls herself a Master of Disaster, and for good reason.
“We’re either in a disaster or between two of them in our lives, so don’t be surprised when disaster strikes,“ Kat said.
For over two and half years, she was marooned on a tiny, remote island in the south Pacific, thanks to two epic disasters, Covid and Cyclone Harold.
The region is renowned for being the most natural disaster-prone on Earth.
During her time there, Kat endured earthquakes, cyclones, exploding volcanoes and tsunamis, which inspired her to complete her book.
“Vanuatu is the land before time,“ she said.
“Covid changed the world, and we didn’t have Covid in Vanuatu, so I didn’t have that experience. I never wore a mask. It’s really interesting because the majority of the people there don’t have power, they don’t have running water, they live very simply. But the people are the happiest people on earth because they’re constantly living in the moment. I love that sense of community.“
The book had its genesis in Noosa, following a serendipitous encounter with a Dutch book publisher, who helped publish Hutton Gibson’s manifesto (father of actor Mel Gibson).
Kat ended up in Noosa after meeting a woman in Bali, who was dog-sitting in Cooroy, and helped copy-edit a book she was writing.
“At the time I was working on my self-help book, How to Get Over Betrayal in 12 Hours, when a friend of a friend, Klaas Sybranda, asked me to do some personal training with him at his house in Sunshine Beach,” Kat said, who in addition to being an author is also a yoga instructor and personal trainer.
“I helped him get fit because he was in his 70s and needed some good nutrition and fitness, and he said to me ’Don’t write a how-to book, write a book about your life. Your life is fascinating’.“
“So, I tore up the book I was writing and started a new book called, Never Let A Good Disaster Go To Waste. I spent the next year writing this book and then Klass said, come to Vanuatu, where he owned property, and we’ll put the final touches on it and publish it. And then I got stuck in Vanuatu for two and a half years in 2019, and this is the first time I’ve come back to Australia since.“
Kat’s disasters span nearly her entire life, starting with severe migraines that lasted a decade in her youth, depression and a suicide attempt at 16, a motorbike accident in Bali that resulted in her almost losing her leg and a diagnosis of MS (multiple sclerosis) in her mid-20s.
Determined not to give up, Kat spent the next 15 years battling depression, disability and disease in her search for a cure.
She studied Buddhism to retrain her brain and flip her perception, took up yoga, endured strict therapeutic diets and radical treatment regimes (she was one of the first pioneers of stem cell therapy and made headline news across Australia in 2009) and nearly died numerous times in her bid to achieve the impossible.
Along the way she somehow coped with being a mother to three kids and dealt with the collapse of her 14 year marriage thanks to a philandering husband.
But remarkably, Kat not only overcame all this adversity but managed to cure her incurable disease.
She is now one of only a handful of people (out of 3 million MS sufferers worldwide), to have put her MS into long term remission and reversed most of her symptoms.
“Sure, the medical treatments helped me battle my MS but it was my radical change in mindset and my commitment to a holistic health and wellness path that really saved me,” Kat said.
She said her most powerful ally has been 12 powerful principles which she formulated following a deep dive into Buddhism, yoga and meditation.
“When I discovered Buddhism, my teacher said to me, ’You think your life sucks and you want to die. What do you hate in life that you can change your perspective on?’ I told them I hated Vegemite. So, that week I went home and started trying to eat Vegemite. When I realised I didn’t have to hate Vegemite, I realised I could love everything that I hated about my life because everything is our perception and our perception is our reality.“
Kat said the 12 principles have been instrumental in shaping her life.
“They not only helped me overcome and transform my husband’s betrayal in 12 hours but gave me the courage, strength and conviction to carry on in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles while searching for a cure,“ she said.
“We all deal with adversity in our lives, but it’s how we perceive and react to it that determines whether we continue to suffer needlessly. Every disaster can either be seen as a terrible tragedy or as a series of unfolding life lessons. And in the end, there’s only two choices – to fight against it or radically accept these challenges and search for a way to be grateful for them.”
Kat has just returned to the Sunshine Coast after a successful book tour of Canada.
Her book, Never Let a Good Disaster Go to Waste, is currently available on Amazon, with 50 copies expected to be available in local bookstores.
Free chapters of her book as well as her 12 Principles can be found on her website, katfinnerty.com
