When Margaret Benson’s up there teaching people to dance and sharing her story, the major theme she keeps coming back to is one of belief.
Benson has always believed in herself and has strove to live a full life despite everything.
She has made it her mission to extend her positive approach to everyone she encounters.
In fact, the only thing she never truly believed was when doctors were telling her she wouldn’t be OK.
“My mantra is to believe, to believe in your dreams and your goals and, most importantly, to believe in yourself,” she says.
“I didn’t believe what he was telling me. I said, ‘No, no, no, I’m going to live ’til I’m old and have lots of grey hair. Don’t tell me I’m only going to live till I’m 15.’”
The “he” Benson refers to is her childhood pediatrician.
The moment she’s talking about is when she was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as a teenager.
For the then-14-year-old Benson, the diagnosis was a tough one – but it wasn’t all that surprising.
“I had been very sick as a baby,” she explains.
As she got older, her lungs were constantly filling with mucus, she was often succumbing to fits of coughing and pneumonia, and she started to have trouble digesting food.
Back then, she adds, the diagnosis came with little to reassure the victim.
“It was still a pretty unknown disease back then,” she says.
One thing that Benson did know, however, was that she wasn’t going to let her disease get her down.
“I did everything and anything I could to prove the doctors wrong.”
If living well is the best revenge, Benson has done well to silence her childhood detractors who said she wouldn’t be able to be an athlete or fulfill her dream of being a teacher.
At 21, Benson graduated from SFU and returned home to North Vancouver in the early 1980s to start a teaching career.
Being a teacher is something she always knew she wanted to be, spurred into it by a desire to lead by example.
“You can’t give up, you’ve got to keep going. My whole mantra was that no matter what happens in your life, you can do anything,” she says.
She started her career working at Cloverly Elementary before a 15-year tenure at Brooksbank Elementary where she taught Grades 5 to 7.
In the late 1990s, however, Benson’s life was put on hold as her lungs started to fail her.
Her cystic fibrosis caused congestive heart failure and she was also living with diabetes induced by her illness.
She was told by doctors that she would have less than two years to live if she didn’t receive a double lung transplant.
“I understood the intensity and the severity of that and I did believe it. When I had to quit work in September of 1999, I knew I was getting really, really sick. I will say, that was the hardest day of my life, having to quit work,” she says.
Benson received her transplant a few months later and her life changed again forever.
While there were complications in the initial months after her lung transplant -- she suffered a stroke as a result of the procedure -- it was a mere eight months later when she was able to give her first presentation to students at Sutherland, encouraging them to persist and believe in themselves.
It was during this time, too, when Benson entered the athletic realm in a more serious way after she discovered the World Transplant Games, a multi-sport event that occurs every two years that aims to educate the public about the principles of organ donation and showcase the thriving lives that transplant recipients can lead.
“The best way that you can actually honour your donor and donor family is by participating in these games,” she says.
“That was my path that started me believing I could do the Sun Run, I could honour my donor in this way – by being athletic, getting out there and living the healthiest life I could be and do.”
Benson has competed in a multitude of sports at the games, including dragon boating, kayaking and race walking. She has won many medals in her time, mainly in her primary sport, which is race walking.
Ten years after she received her lung transplant, Benson set a record in her age category for race walking at the World Transplant Games in Gold Coast, Australia, in 2009.
She says she’s passionate about the transplant games because she thinks it’s important for people to register as donors.
“There are thousands of people waiting for transplants,” she stresses.
Benson also serves as the representative for B.C. for the Canadian Transplant Association, an organization that strives to celebrate life while promoting organ and tissue donation.
Her other passion is dancing, namely Zumba.
Last Wednesday, she was at Highlands Elementary in the Capilano-Highlands neighbourhood giving one of the many inspirational presentations she gives to students every year.
She even set up an impromptu stage to get the kids moving around and dancing.
“Even though I’ve had a transplant, I can do pretty much anything. I show them my medals, I show them pictures of me in the different countries in the world, and I say, ‘This is my greatest passion: Zumba.’”
She discovered a long time ago, much to the chagrin of her early doctors, that for her exercise was the answer, the key to helping her breathe easier and feel healthy.
“I love teaching kids dance. I love being connected with kids,” she says. “I love introducing kids to music from all over the world and just to get their bodies moving so they’re not sitting at a desk all the time.”
She says it’s unfortunate she had to give up the classroom, but she still believes in teaching.
“Eighteen years ago I was lying in a bed hooked up to everything possible, and now I’m out teaching children dance and loving it.”
