After 38 Years, One Woman Succeeds

This is the first time I've shared a post written by a fellow vaper. I met Emma Ramshaw on Facebook and have had the pleasure of learning more about why she started smoking and why she wanted to stub out tobacco cigarettes forever. This is her story.

Cigarettes have been with me my whole life. 38 years, in fact. My mother smoked whilst she was pregnant with me. When I was growing up, it was in a smoky house. My mother would sit on the couch, with a cigarette in one hand, an ashtray in the other, and my sister and I on either side.

I started smoking when I was 14 years old. It didn’t seem a big deal then – a cigarette here and there, smoked behind the gym at school. The years passed, all of them with a cigarette in my hand. First they banned them on public transport, in bars and restaurants, friends started quitting smoking and so I’d be in the back yard, by myself. I stopped smoking indoors once I had children – I was not going to be like my mother subjecting her kids to her secondhand smoke, so in the winter I’d be outside in sub zero temperatures or driving rain – looking into my kids in their warm, cozy home through the glass and think, “this is craziness!!”

As the years passed, the number of quit attempts racked up. None of them were successful long term. I always felt I was missing out on something. No more chatting with smoking friends, no break at work, no reward for a long, arduous task, no sitting in the afternoon sunshine with a book and cigarette. Life was quite boring without a cigarette to pass the time with. After all, it had been twenty years - two decades of being a hardcore smoker. I was starting to look like a heavy smoker with fine lines on my face, I smelled like one, I really physically FELT like one, too. It was starting to really hit me hard. Not to mention the cost – I was sick of paying out nearly six dollars a pack for something I felt I needed to get through the day. It was becoming more and more difficult to justify my habit.

I spent so long with mints in my purse, hiding out in back yards at parties, emptying stinking ashtrays, seeking out other smokers so I could share my habit guilt free, that I didn’t even think there could be an alternative. I signed myself up for a 10k charity run, in memory of my sister who passed away three years ago, and if I’m honest, I was totally expecting to just walk it. There was no way I was going to be able to run 10k, not on a pack of smokes a day.

I saw an advert for The Safe Cig, and thought, “well, it’s worth a try, I’ve got nothing to lose”. It seemed like the perfect way to change the way I was living, without feeling like I was giving anything up. That was nearly a month ago and I’m pleased to say I am 100% tobacco free. I can now run 2 ½ miles without stopping for breath. I am well on target to reach my goal of running that 10k. Not walking it. There’s a mountain near my house that I’ve only ever been able to climb half-way up for the last four years. This week I made it to the top, feeling amazing the whole way. I even had a vape on my Safe Cig at the top! I could finally BREATHE properly!!

I tucked my seven year old daughter into bed last night, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. She hugged me close, and said “Mummy, you smell nice. You smell really, really nice”. I don't think I ever said that to my mother, when I was growing up. Not once.

I think back to that little girl sitting on the couch in a haze of cigarette smoke, and I know I've broken the cycle of generations of smokers in my family. It's taken years and years, but my kids will never seen me smoke again. If I can change my life this way, I know you can, too.

A Note About Emma: Emma Ramshaw has lost two people in her life to cancer. The first was her Grandfather to lung cancer and the second was her sister. Her sister's last wish for Emma was that she would quit smoking. Emma has changed her life with The Safe Cig and you can too.