Tapped in with @milkkarten to chat about every brand’s most vital asset: community 🫂
I’m so glad I had this opportunity to reflect on 2023. Here’s to what me and this @topicals community has coming this year.
And I really do mean that! 🗣️ the last slide! and shoutout @tyb.xyz
Ok, but fr I spent the first half of my career working with/for nonprofits creating pathways and access for Black & brown students to achieve higher ed, build confidence in themselves, and recognize their brilliance! So when I say I do be about my community, I really do not play!!
Being featured in @bof was one of those wins that almost got lost in the whirlwind of my crazy year. Our Slick Alps brand trip feels like a distant dream now, but taking a few of our Topicals community (@wumi.afuye@glamwsab@kiranxkajal ) to the French Alps was truly one of my best treats of the year 🎿
2 years since I found a lump
5 months of vomiting, cold capping, weekly poison injections, bed (chemo)
6 weeks of not being able to eat solid food
22 months of chemically induced menopause
1 double mastectomy
1 year of pills
1 reconstruction later
and I finally feel normal(ish)
I officially finished my cancer treatment in May. But cancer doesn’t end when chemo does, or when the pills stop. It doesn’t end when your hair grows back or when people start saying “you look good!” again. It doesn’t really end. It’s always on your mind, it’s impacted every cell in your body and shifted your life perspective.
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, this is the message I wish more people understood. And survivors I talk to always say the same thing - we don’t feel the same, we aren’t the same. Nothing goes back to normal, you just figure out a new one.
So here’s to my new needle phobia, to my bun length hair, to my period finally coming back, to my eyelashes, my estrogen, my new body, and to being the best version of myself I’ve ever been.
Here’s to everyone in chemo, to everyone who’s ever had cancer, and to everyone trying to find their new normal.
