FLAME with Brad Hook
What Does It Take to Row an Ocean (and Beat Cancer)?
Felicity Ashley rowed the Atlantic for two months — one of fewer than 250 women ever to row an ocean — then faced stage-three bowel cancer. Her story is a masterclass in turning fear into fuel.
Mother of three, ocean rower, marathoner at Everest Base Camp: Felicity keeps saying yes to things that should be too big. But the machinery underneath is what makes this conversation useful — preparation as the real source of confidence, fear treated as information and energy rather than a stop sign, and the identity work of refusing to shrink after a diagnosis.
From the mid-Atlantic at 3am to the oncology ward, the same principles kept holding. Drawing on her best-selling book Stronger than the Storm, Felicity makes a compelling case that resilience isn't a personality trait — it's a practice you build by choosing hard things on purpose, before life chooses them for you.
In this episode
- Two months rowing the Atlantic — what it's actually like
- Fear as fuel: using it instead of obeying it
- Preparation as the honest source of confidence
- Facing stage-three cancer with an athlete's toolkit
- Choosing hard things before life chooses them for you
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