Hey Guys! Did you miss me? We haven’t seen each other for like a YEAR!
Yeah, I look a little different now…and I sound a little different than I used to.
Believe me…I’m not happy about it, either.
If you read this blog you probably already know that before May of 2018, I was a singer, on-camera host, actress and a model… but I had a big ol’ three centimeter tumor on the back of my tongue, and after my surgery and cancer treatment…
I now have a “Leg-tongue”.
WHAT? Yeah. Let me explain.
But before I tell you about my surgery, I want to reiterate something REALLY important to me. I'm re-launching my blog and channels, but NOT JUST to exclusively talk about cancer.
This space is a place for all the things we love together—fashion, style, staying healthy, and keeping your spirit in a good place when the spaghetti sauce hits the fan.
And the spaghetti sauce WILL hit the fan. It will hit the fan, and then it will hit you in the face, and then it will hit you right on your brand new white hoodie, that you LOVE, and you won’t have that hoodie anymore…and in that moment you’ll have a decision to make.
Are you gonna sink? Or are you gonna swim?
YES WE ARE GOING TO SWIM, MOMMAS AND POPPAS…and we are gonna look gooooood doing it!
I didn’t make content for the past year because I didn’t want to talk about cancer. I mean, listen to me, I didn’t want to TALK, at ALL. I had SUCH A PRETTY VOICE YOU GUYS UUGGGHHHHH. I felt like I’d lost a LOT.
So what happened to me, exactly? Well….they took me apart and put me back together, basically.
They took out some of my jaw-bone because it was in the margins of the tumor. Then they took bone and tissue from my leg and rebuilt my jaw and tongue.
I lost my four back teeth on the right side. Lost hair on the back of my neck from the radiation. Lost way too much weight from the chemo.
Was in a wheelchair for a little while….then a walker for a few weeks…but slowly I started to regain the ability to walk, run, and work out little by little.
MEANWHILE…
Had a feeding tube for about five months…had to re-learn how to speak and swallow food and drink…lived on boxes of corn syrup nutrition drink that entire time…
And the trache that kept me able to breathe for over a week after my surgery put a nice big scar right here on my neck…that pretty much matches the scars on my chin, tummy, and leg.
When “Life Happens,” it can feel like you’re looking at a super close-up zoomed in photo of something bad, and you can’t always see all the GOOD stuff happening around you at the same time.
I needed time to ZOOM OUT. Everyone’s always like, man, you’ve had a hell of a year, you’ve lost your career, and yeah, that’s true on some superficial level. But also, my year was MEGA SUPER AWESOME and here’s why:
Number one: when you have cancer, all your friends and family come to see you.
Everyone rallies for you. Total strangers were coming out of the woodwork to cheer me on.
Number two: when you have cancer, that’s when you find out that your fiancée is the kind of guy who pushes you eight blocks in a wheelchair to a dog park in a busy part of Los Angeles just to cheer you up with petting cute dogs.
Number three: When the spaghetti sauce hits the fan, that’s when all the growth happens inside you!
It’s the great paradox of life. When you lose, that’s when you WIN. That’s when you know who your friends are. That’s when you get out of your comfort zone. That’s when you have something to say to people, to connect to them in a real way.
I know it’s hard to hear me speak and watch my videos. But it’s only going to get better. Speech therapy, another surgery next summer to un-tether my tongue, a lip revision to get that looking beautiful again, and there’s all kinds of cool scar treatment stuff and beauty treatments that we can research and experiment with here. And I’m gonna get TEETH BACK HERE TOO! WHOOHOO!
And I’ll let you in on ALL of it. I won’t sound like this forever. Deal?
And while we explore beauty and style and fun stuff—the cherries on the sundae of life-we are also going to explore ourselves. What’s really important to us. That’s the steak dinner.
And I want to hear YOUR stories. I want to rally for YOU while you’re going through whatever it is you’re going through. We’re in this together, Mommas and Papas!
So come with me. We are doing this, you and me. Click that red Subscribe button. Hit that Bell. Click that Follow button. We are going to be friends and we are going to grow and we are going to have an amazing time looking and feeling awesome, no matter what challenges we have in life.
I can’t wait to get to know you guys.
By the way...should we do a handbag video next and lighten it up a bit?? :)