20/08/2025
It is with much sadness that I share the news that this morning, at 5am, Sandra Dubs passed away in her home with a paliative care nurse by her side.
When I first met Sandy at the Byron Writers Festival in 2022, I had little idea of just what a life changing event that would be.
What began as Sandy asking me to mentor her memoir writing would soon catapult me into becoming her ghostwriter after the return of her cancer... a role I'd never imagined for myself when I launched into writing and started my author services business.
Her incredible faith in my ability to do something I'd not attempted before has been a truly transformative experience.
And can I tell you? It was intense.
Trawling through every intimate detail of someone's life, being trusted with information that's never before been shared with anyone... not with family, close friends or lovers... is an incredibly humbling experience.
The first year was largely spent trying to collate the experiences of a lifetime and arranging them into a coherent timeline.
As the process unfolded, I found myself realising how much in common there is between memoir and fiction writing. It requires placing yourself in that person's shoes and trying to feel their experiences then put it into the words they'd use. And that process of trying to visualise myself going through all her life experiences left me awestruck by what an amazing and vibrant life she led.
Over the course of writing the 105k words that were Sandy's life story we also developed a close friendship, forged over the many weeklong trips made to her Elsternwick home.
A strong willed person, Sandy refused to let the cancer, that first entered her life when she was just twenty, prevent her from living a full life.
Her immune system compromised from the treatment, she refused to heed the doctors'warnings about travelling through Asia.
She embraced good nutrition and healthy food preperation as her primary medicine and then devoted her life to sharing the immense knowledge she'd developed over several decades of research that took her around the globe and had her mixing with leading figures in the natural health community. She shared this with as many people as she could reach... something she'll continue to do into the future through her memoir and wholefood cookbook.
Throughout the course of the memoir journey I was also privileged to meet and interview many of the people who had been pivotal in Sandy's life, each of whom is a truly inspirational person in themselves.
So it's with great sadness that I now say goodbye to the woman who came into my life as a prospective client and left it just on three years later as a dear and cherished friend.
My heartfelt condolences to her friends and family.
May all who knew her live a long life.
Graham Davidson
20/08/2025
