Sophie's mum died of ovarian cancer - don't tell her it's taboo

Sophie Fawns remembers her 18th birthday vividly, but not so fondly.

What springs to mind is her mother, Maureen, encouraging her to go out, drink a shot, party with her friends, and forget about looming exams.

Such a message was not typical of Maureen. It was "really nice, but weird", Sophie says.

Sophie grew up as one of four sisters from the city of Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, Australia.

She is 22 now, plays professional netball for Manchester Thunder, and is an old head on young shoulders. "I've always been quite mature for my age," she says.

The 18th birthday and her mother's words are intertwined in her memory.

'Tomorrow will look after itself' was the gist of her mother's message.

On the day after Sophie's landmark birthday, Maureen was taken to hospital. She died the next day, aged 52.

Maureen hadn't told Sophie and her sisters the ovarian cancer she had been treated for was terminal.

It's an utterly heartbreaking story. But Sophie doesn't want death to be its final chapter.

She wants to talk about ovarian cancer. She wants to talk about Maureen. She'd like you to listen. Above all, she'd like to help save lives.

Ovarian cancer is often diagnosed late - too late. Symptoms are not always obvious. It takes the lives of about 4,000 women each year in the UK.

The ovaries are egg-producing glands in the pelvis, a primary part of the female reproductive system. Without them, the human race doesn't exist.

Not everyone wants to hear about gynaecological matters.

But Sophie's experience tells her that looking the other way makes no sense.

"People are so quick to shut down the conversation and think of it as quite taboo and they don't want to talk about it, and I'm not quite sure why," she tells BBC Sport.

Maureen Fawns had a cyst on her ovaries that she delayed having removed. When it burst, doctors made a discovery.

"We were sitting there having brunch," Sophie remembers. "Mum kind of said, 'I just wanted to tell you girls that I went to the doctors and they found out I've got like a singular cancer cell'.

"When you hear the word cancer, your initial thought is like, they're not going to live. So for us, it was really scary."

Maureen told the girls not to worry, to be "really positive".

"Honestly, I'm even before stage one," she told them, as Sophie remembers.

Chemotherapy was "just to be on the safe side".

Her girls resolved to be supportive. Yet the support was always two ways.

Maureen would take Sophie to netball training, even after decamping to Sydney for treatment as the cancer progressed.

Sophie's netball career took off in her late teens.

She progressed to Australia's junior sides, then became a training partner for the NSW Swifts, giants of Suncorp Super Netball.

This meant regularly travelling to Sydney for training.

"And I got a lot of one-on-one time with my mum... those highway trips together," Sophie says, remembering the 300-mile drives between Wagga Wagga and Sydney.

Talk would turn to Maureen's illness.

"She was always very like, 'I don't want anyone to treat me differently. So I don't want to tell anyone.'"

At one point, Sophie spoke words that would tug the heartstrings of any parent.

"I just said, 'I don't think I could do it without you. You're my biggest supporter. I honestly don't want to play netball if you're not here.'

"She was kind of like, 'You're being silly.' She always knew what to say."

Reflecting on that 18th birthday in November 2021, Sophie suspects Maureen realised the end was close.

"She was kind of like, 'I really want to keep doing this, but I just feel really fatigued'.

"I think a lot of people didn't know she was ill. It was something that was super sudden for a lot of people. I remember her funeral, there wasn't enough seats."

Sophie moved to Sydney in 2022, balancing neuroscience studies at university with life as a Swifts first-teamer.

Maureen was never far from her thoughts, nor was the killer disease that took her.

Only one in three women live for more than 10 years with ovarian cancer, according to UK charity Ovarian Cancer Action, which highlights primary symptoms, external as: persistent bloating, difficulty eating or feeling more full than usual, a need to urinate more frequently or urgently, and pain around the stomach to the top of the thighs.

The NHS says the cancer mostly affects women over the age of 50 but can affect anyone with ovaries. Crucially, an early diagnosis can make it more treatable.

"I think the education around it is getting better and we're really privileged that [in netball] we've had female doctors come in and speak to us about it," Sophie says.

"We're at the top of our sport and we're only just being able to get this education. It needs to start from grassroots and from that younger age."

She wants to help others recognise first signs, advocating for early detection tests.

"The more you talk about it, the less taboo it becomes and the more it sparks that conversation," she says.

Sophie is in her first season with Thunder. She traded a Sydney summer for a Manchester winter and has begun the twentysomething's rite of passage - scoping out new cafes and bars.

Without Maureen's influence, this move wouldn't have happened, because netball wouldn't have happened for Sophie in the first place. She had to be coaxed into following her sisters into the sport as a young girl.

"I hated going to the courts on a Saturday and watching them play. I was like, 'I'm not putting my hand up for it, don't want anything to do with netball'," Sophie remembers.

Maureen signed her up. Sophie would later thank her.

Sophie wonders how this sporting journey might have taken a detour if her mother had shared the terminal diagnosis: the extra mother-daughter time they could have spent together.

"Could I have gone on another walk with her or could I have appreciated our time together a bit more?

"I probably know deep down that if she told me, I wouldn't have tried to pursue netball. I would have turned down quite a bit to just spend a little bit more time with her, and I know that that's not what she wanted."

Few sporting careers are straightforward. Sophie had a wobble last year when she was struggling for court time with Swifts. For a fleeting moment, she considered a future outside netball.

"It was one of those moments where I was like, Mum would know exactly what to say and it's just so crap that she's not here to like tell me."

Sport has helped her navigate grief, with support, humour, and a little irritation.

"I really dislike when people are like, 'your mum's watching, she's here, she's with you', because I always think it's so funny. I would be doing anything else except for watching me.

"Grief is so different for everyone. I found maybe for the first year, it was every month around the 23rd - which is when she passed away - I would feel really doom and gloom and blue."

It took Sophie a while to join the dots between the dates and the darkness. Swifts team-mates stepped up.

"They'd tread a bit lightly towards the date or they would do something special, like, 'do you want sparklers and we'll go down to the lake and celebrate?'

"For the girls to wrap their arms around me... it's the best thing when people just listen and let you like speak freely."

What would Mum have made of her joining Thunder?

"That was one of the questions I really had to ask myself," Sophie says.

"Not only was I leaving everything that I had known, but I was also leaving a big part of what my mum was to me as well in terms of the netball world.

"Knowing who my mum was and how supportive she was, she would have backed me no matter what."