Jill Miller, Charity Founder

Jill was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993 and in May that year had a mastectomy.

At the time of her diagnosis, she was aware that she needed counselling support other than the support & reassurance of her family and friends. There was no provision on the NHS for psychological support at the time and the cost of private therapy prohibitive. A friend who had counselling experience offered Jill a space each day where she could say the unsayable, explore her mortality and come to terms with her diagnosis and changed body image.

"Counselling at that time unquestionably saved my sanity. Having someone to listen to me took away a lot of the fear and enabled me to cope with the set of changed circumstances in my life."

As a direct result of being faced with a cancer diagnosis, the turbulent cancer journey and the terror that cancer evokes, Jill was determined to offer support to other women who faced the same terrifying news.

In April a year later, at the time of her diagnosis the previous year, Positive Action on Cancer was founded. In September 1994, PAC was officially launched as a telephone helpline, initially, to support women affected by breast cancer.

PAC became a registered charity in 1995. In 1999, Tricia Greenwood, a qualified counsellor who was a volunteer with the charity at the time, developed the counselling service. Since then, PAC has gone through many changes and has been able to expand the service it offers to include people affected by all cancers as well as those bereaved by losing a loved one to cancer.

In 1998 Jill co-founded The Little Gift Theatre Company whose devised play ‘Time Bomb’ is a groundbreaking play about the realities of living with breast cancer. ‘Time Bomb’ has toured throughout the UK, Ireland, Australia and Germany. Health professionals and schools identify the performance as a useful resource to complement conferences and educational programmes, often helping with communication between patients and health professionals and lessening the fear of the cancer journey.