Big-hearted Fife woman up for Nicest Job after escaping despair by helping others

NATALIE HARRISON is having a very good day.

She leans back in her seat in the low-ceilinged pub in Rosyth and, against a backdrop of darts on the telly and the clack of balls on the pool table, sighs happily and takes a sip of Pinot Grigio.

Her wine is well deserved. She’s had a day of excitement and endless phone calls and now looks a little shell-shocked, albeit in a contented way.

It’s no wonder Natalie’s buzzing – she’s just been told she’s reached the shortlist of The Nicest Job In Britain, a nationwide search for a big-hearted humanitarian.

The successful applicant will become a National Philanthropy Manager, travelling the country for 12 months, working with 40 charities.

Now she’s down to the last eight contenders, she can barely contain her joy.

“Getting this job would mean the world to me!” Natalie exclaims. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”

It’s the icing on the cake of a year that has seen the 36-year-old go from the depths of despair to the heights of positivity.

To say her life has been full of ups and downs is an understatement. But it’s helping others that has pulled her through.

“Life is full of highs and lows,” she agrees. “It’s like a rollercoaster.”

Born in Dundee, she was just 14 when her dad, David, was diagnosed with cancer in his lung and shoulder.

“He was given a 20% chance of survival,” says Natalie. “It hit me for six. We were expecting him to die.”

In the midst of the trauma Natalie recalls the Macmillan nurses visiting to offer support. “I remember that being significant,” she says. Perhaps that was when the seed that would blossom later was sown.

Thankfully Natalie’s dad recovered and her life became more settled. The rollercoaster was heading upwards again.

Aged 17, she landed a place studying psychology and life sciences at Dundee University. While there she met the man who would become her husband.

Her first year over and having a whale of a time, things seemed to be heading in the right direction.

Then came the bombshell.

“Aged 19 I fell pregnant,” says Natalie matter-of-factly. “I felt shock, fear, absolutely everything. But also determination. I didn’t think for a minute that I couldn’t do it.

“I was petrified, but I thought ‘it’s done now, I’ve got to deal with it’.”

Her parents struggled to deal with the news. “My mum couldn’t speak to me. It was very strained,” explains Natalie.

Happily the pair were reconciled before Natalie’s daughter Naomi was born in 2000, and a son, Lucas, followed 22 months later.

She’d left university by then and was working in retail to make ends meet, but things had evened out and once again life appeared to be on the up.

The young parents got married in 2003 and moved to Inverkeithing. It was while there that Natalie’s life would spiral downwards.

“I struggled to make friends and was going stir-crazy,” she says. “So I decided to apply for a nursing course.”

But bringing up two young children while studying an intense course and having to work shifts to cover outgoings is no easy task. Her husband worked shifts too, and they were like ships in the night – when one was coming in from work the other was leaving for theirs.

The cracks were starting to show.

In a cruel twist, fate decided at that moment to really pile on the pressure.

During the terrible winter of 2010, Naomi, then 10, was struck down by viral pneumonia.

“It was horrendous,” winces Natalie. “It didn’t matter what drugs she was given, she was just getting worse and worse.

“Between the ages of 10 and 14 she probably spent 50% of her time in hospital. When she was in high dependency I thought I was going to lose her more than once. I thought I was going to outlive my little girl.”

Meanwhile, having qualified as a nurse, Natalie had decided to go on to do midwifery training while also working. The strain was beginning to take its toll.

“I became more and more stressed,” explains Natalie. “It came to a crunch point and my husband and I ended up splitting up in an incredibly traumatic way.

“I felt the only thing I could do was move out and we ended up sleeping on sofas and then in a homeless shelter, in a family room with the kids, for around eight weeks.

“I was also chucked off my midwifery course because I’d missed so much.”

She pauses and takes a sip of wine. A pool ball rattles in a pocket and drops with a clunk.

“I’d hit an absolute low and I didn’t see any way out at all,” she says quietly. “I’d reached rock bottom.”

Suffering from depression, life seemed bleak. But somewhere in the midst of her despair there was a spark inside Natalie that was about to flare into life.

“In the middle of all that, one day I woke up and made a decision that I was going to change things,” she says, smiling. “I cut some people out of my life, quit my job and met a whole new bunch of friends who made a real difference.

“At that time – which was this time last year – that little boy, Aylan Kurdi, washed up on a beach in Turkey. It hit me like a sledgehammer. I knew what it felt like to nearly lose your child and I immediately thought, ‘what can I do to make a difference?’”

It was the beginning of the climb back upwards.

She joined a convoy to Calais to take aid to the ‘Jungle’ camp and help set up a first aid caravan.

“It was a shock,” she says. “It was the unaccompanied minors I was patching up that broke my heart most. The 14-year-old boys and girls.

“But helping others filled the void of the hopelessness I’d had. They say on mental health
websites that one of the best things you can do is to help others because it will give you a natural buzz. It’s true.”

She went out to Greece after that, to help refugees on Lesbos.

She’s now working as a therapeutic support worker with children. Naomi, now 16, is getting better and Natalie is really starting to feel like she’s contributing to the happiness of others.

“I’ve gone from the worst of the worst to feeling I have control of my life and am doing things that make me feel good,” she says. “Working in the caring industry makes me feel good, helping
others makes me feel good.”

She’s also modelling now after she posed for a photographer friend for a vintage fashion shoot and the pictures were spotted on Facebook.

It was while doing a modelling job in London in July that she spotted a woman who had fallen into the Thames. Natalie immediately leaped to her rescue and saved her from drowning, an act of bravery that garnered her headlines across the national press.

It was just another example of how she is putting others first – and why she’s one step away from landing The Nicest Job In Britain.

She’s determined to make the world a better place, even by helping just one person at a time. And she knows how powerful
that can be, having ridden the rollercoaster all her life.

“Things will always get better,” she says. “You have to go down before you go up – it’s peaks and troughs and you just have to learn to ride them out.

“The secret to that is your connection to people. And the biggest thing is to help someone – if you can connect with somebody and make them feel good that will make you feel good.”

Although her wine glass is now empty I get the feeling her glass in life is almost always half full. Her parting words confirm that.

“You only get out of life what you put into it. If you don’t put anything into it you won’t get anything back.

“It’s that simple.”

As part of the Nicest Job In Britain process Natalie is helping raise the profile of the Little Princess Trust, which provides real hair wigs for children and teenagers who have cancer.

She’s pledged to have her hair cut off to raise funds and you can donate at www.givepenny.com/teamnat_hair_donation_fundraising

She’s also launching a selfie campaign at www.givepenny.com/teamnat_fundraising