The Seagull

Through the '80's and 90's, Australia’s biggest and fastest selling, healthy eating cookbook author changed a generations eating habits. Julie Stafford's famous ‘Taste of Life’ cookbook series (22 best-selling titles) sold over 2.3million copies in Australia, NZ, UK and USA. Her life-changing direction from art teacher and farmer's wife to healthy eating guru began after her husband Bruce, aged 30, was diagnosed with life-threatening cancer. Having only just begun their love story Julie wasn't about to give up on it so easily. She wouldn't buy into the doom and gloom prognosis. Instead, she researched the link between diet and disease and how diet could turn things in Bruce's favor. Bruce beat the odds, living free from cancer for 22 years. Julie became a regular presenter at food and lifestyle exhibitions, appearing on television in Australia, UK and USA, teaching how to cut back bad fats, lower cholesterol, eat less sugar, shake less salt, and choose a diet predominantly of fish, lean meats, nuts and seeds, fresh herbs, and organic fruits and vegetables. She introduced us to the benefits of fresh juices too. Many called her 'Australia's Juicing Queen'. She consulted with food and appliance manufacturers helping design and promote products for the growing health aware. In 1990, she wrote ‘Stepping Out'. This best-selling motivational title put her on the lucrative speaker's circuit where she taught her audiences to step out of their comfort zones to more walk through life following the path of their passions, trusting in the lessons of the journey so as to experience a great taste of life. She fast earned a reputation for challenging audiences to embrace the power of change, pursue life passions, and to never stop dancing through life no matter the circumstances of life. Julie has presented to over 1500 community and corporate audiences ranging in size from 5-5000. In keeping with her philosophy, to never be shackled by the chains of what keeps us too comfortable in life, when Julie's life took an abrupt turn, at 53, when Bruce lost his fight against mesothelioma (terminal asbestos cancer), a totally unrelated cancer to his first (Hodgkin's Lymphoma), Julie began a journey to discover who she could become in the next phase of her life without the man she'd adored for more than 30 years always by her side. Inspired by a pesky seagull that came to live on her beach house front balcony, just days after Bruce passed, having Julie question the seagull's true identity, Julie let go of the safe confines of her comfortable life and stepped into her next unimaginable life-changing adventure. Her rebirth began in Dubrovnik. Though her travels lead her to France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco, Dubrovnik and its people made such an impact on Julie she has so far returned more than 8 times—staying for long periods, sometimes up to 2 months at a time, to be grown by the energy and spirit she found in the people and in the city's extraordinary history. The journey Julie bravely chose to travel, after Bruce passed, reminds us that no matter the paths we're asked to walk in our lives, it's when we boldly step off the paths we walk every day, into the unknown back lanes and alleyways, that we most often find the full of surprise wonders that are life's greatest lessons and rewards, not only in what we see and experience, but in what we find residing in us because of what we see and experience. Julie's journey has rewarded her in so many ways. She not only found the words to share her extraordinary love story with others, to encourage others to find more of the extraordinary in their own love stories, she found an artist waiting to be born. The result is a collection of beautiful seagull artworks. And, Julie found love too.