Lisa’s the ‘luckiest unlucky person alive’

Woman of Substance...Lisa Salmon, with her husband Mark and two sons, Joel and Cristian, on their wedding day.

Rochdale-born Lisa Salmon is the winner of the inaugural Woman of Substance award.

Here she tells how she has come to terms with everything life has thrown at her.

A smiling Esther Rantzen tapped me on the shoulder and put my take on life in a nutshell.

“I’m off to my daughter’s wedding now,” she said. “And I’m going to tell her that your advice is ‘s*** happens. Deal with it.’”

The setting was last week’s inaugural Woman of Substance Award ceremony and I had been telling Esther that despite enduring a catalogue of devastating personal tragedies and problems, I could never see the point in moaning about it and just got on with life.

A few minutes before our conversation, Sky TV’s Kay Burley had announced to the star–studded audience gathered at London’s Dorchester Hotel that I was the winner of the award.

With my mother in floods of tears, I’d accepted the accolade and the impressive prizes that went with it from the Duchess of York.

It was all completely unreal — the sort of thing that happens to other people. What on earth was I, an ordinary 42–year–old mother doing standing beside the Duchess of York, being clapped by celebrities including Cherie Blair, Jenny Seagrove and Kate Adie?

Standing on the plinth with the Duchess and me was the almost regal figure of Barbara Taylor Bradford, the novelist whose bestseller “A Woman Of Substance” celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.

It was to mark that milestone that Taylor Bradford and her publishers, Harper Collins, launched the Woman of Substance Awards, to recognise “ordinary women who do extraordinary things”.

Taylor Bradford described my story as “amazing”, and said I’d won because, after dealing with a series of tragedies, I’d had to “find the strength to carry on and overcome great adversity”.

The writer added: “She truly epitomises what it is to be a real woman of substance today.” It’s incredibly flattering to hear that said about you — but, in my opinion, all I’ve done is get on with life without moaning.

Perhaps my habit of never feeling sorry for myself has something to do with the fact that my problems started when I was very young, and I’ve just got used to bad things happening.

I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of three, and as a result lost most of the sight in one eye and sometimes had to use a wheelchair.

I outgrew the illness in my early teens, having had about 30 operations, although the sight in my left eye couldn’t be restored.

Then, when I was 11, my father, Dennis, died suddenly at the age of 46 from a heart attack.

There were no more problems until I was 29, when I was diagnosed with the auto–immune disease lupus, which brought the arthritis back.

But it was at the beginning of 2001 when life really started to test me.

I was in a head–on collision with a lorry which crushed my head and face, severely bruised my brain and broke bones all over my body. My good eye was destroyed and had to be removed.

I wasn’t expected to live but hung on, although I was blinded.

But the accident wasn’t life’s cruellest blow — that came exactly a year later when my first child, Conor, accidentally suffocated against me after I fell asleep while breastfeeding him in a maternity unit bed.

It’s hard to imagine anything more painful than your baby dying — especially a baby which, for my partner Mark and I, was a reaffirmation of life just a year after mine had nearly ended.

I’ve got tears in my eyes as I write about him — as any mother will understand, the pain of losing a baby never goes away.

But Mark and I had to deal with it. The day after Conor’s funeral, we went on holiday to Lanzarote to try to come to terms with our loss.

While there, I was rushed to hospital with a large deep vein thrombosis in my leg.

Fortunately, after that there wasn’t much more adversity — although, after what I’ve been through, I never say never.

When I came off the drugs for the blood clot, we were able to try for a baby again. I quickly got pregnant, but had an early miscarriage.

Since then, though, I’ve had two sons, Joel, now aged five, and Cristian, aged three, and Mark and I got married two years ago.

And now, of course, I’ve won the award. As well as attending the glitzy awards ceremony, I won a luxury family cruise from P&O, and had a wonderful day at Debenhams, where I was given an outfit for the ceremony, a full makeover, and a £250 Debenhams gift card.

It was utterly fantastic — but I couldn’t help thinking: “What have I done to deserve this?”

People say I should feel proud of myself, but I don’t. I think that’s because while getting through it all hasn’t exactly been easy, it’s not been as difficult as you might think.

How can I moan about things when I’ve got so much to be grateful for? I’m alive, I have a wonderful husband and sons, and I love my job.

In short, I think I’m the luckiest unlucky person alive, and that it would be ungrateful to moan.

If that makes me a Woman of Substance, then so be it.