I’m dedicating this space on my corner of the world-wide-web to serve as the encyclopedia of my cancer diagnosis and my life as a cancer survivor. If you or someone you know is going through this crushing reality, I hope this page helps you feel less alone. It’s only because I looked up hashtags about cancer that I discovered other people like me sharing their stories, that’s when I knew I would be able to at least manage. Unofficially, and without my consent, I’m an advocate. I have to be. I got the big C, it changed my entire life, and now I must continue on to provide a glimpse into what life can look like as a survivor. It’s not what you think. Survivorship is its own incredible, painful, heartbreaking, and mind-evolving journey. My story is just one of millions. It’s unique in many ways, and yet, the Cancer Badge is one I wear, like so many, and it doesn’t have to be exactly like my journey. We have an understanding, you have people, who at the very least, are going to get it. Just that part. And that is a feeling like no other. Someone gets it. So, this is where I’ll be that person for you. <3

Vertical me’s of 33, an age I was gifted despite its many disappointments and depressing ass times :) I love alliteration you cannot take that away from me!! This album really saved me not only in my grief but in reigniting my passion for my art and the art that filled me every time I listened to the whole thing through (duh you have to it’s a PIECE dear lord) and the ballet I saw in my mind forming, making me giddy with dreams!! That’s so amazing @beyonce lol really really awesome. I put the album on just now to figure out which song I should ‘add to photo’ for ‘better engagement’ ‘what are we doing’ anyway, I put the album on and as I recalled the early days of the best worst year ever (33 woooo!) I burst into tears just boom sprinkler system. Because I’m trying to not focus on HAHA any of that but specifically the fear as I TYPE THIS HA that my body has abandoned me and that that ballet in my mind is a nightmare never to exist past the few minutes at a time I can dance anymore without The Pain. I don’t want to dwell but maybe I should at the very least tap it in case it signals a single butterfly effect thing that maybe one day leads to….idk healing? I don’t know because I don’t know what it is that’s happening to me all the way! The ramped up aches are scary and as much scheduling to see a doctor there’s just so much you can do in any amount of time. Anyway, that’s me dwelling! That cancer gift she REALLY keeps giving!!!!! Because all of this just alwaysssssss dwindles down to a loud reassuringly THERE truth that life is short. You can’t spend a second of it not aware you might not get anymore after that! Every second you breathe is another one you were lucky to have!! it’s so much smaller and grander if you get a chance to have a brush with death and all. Weeping!!!! Is that ok? Is that ok to share?? You tell me. Hardest year of my life, so fucking grateful for it.

Horizontal me’s through 33. I wouldn’t have survived this year without this album by @doechii full stop!!!! To find comfort and feel so validated by a relatable experience through her amazing music and artistry made this bitch of a year buckets and buckets lighter, and through such a turd time I got to feel so inspired by this artist who is only getting started and that’s SO COOL!!!!!!!! “I’m everything!!” God I knew the moment I heard that line I was IN. 🥹🤩💜

One day I listened to this clearly iconic @beyonce song and it magically translated into an ode to self so thank you as always and forever beyonce for ?!?!??!?! Consciousness?? Idk but I love listening to this song now and singing it to ME!!!!!!!!!! If you want more of a life update, I’ve started a substack account to bring back the blog bish within 🖤 and while you’re here, it’s a great time to feel it on the first and start taking active steps toward monitoring your breast health and get to know YOUR normal!!!!!! Touch ya boobs touch someone else’s (consented duh) and next month on the first you do it again!!!! 💖🖤💖🖤 breast cancer awareness month is over but is it ever really 🙃

5 years + 1 day since my Major Life Event. Well okay, not that one. No, no that one was from when I was a kid. Like I was saying, 5 years and 1 day, my Major Life Event changed my—okay, hold on a minute now you’re thinking about the other life event, that was from when I was a teenager ok, let’s not even go there please. Now, can I PLEASE announce the anniversary of my most RECENT major life event without any interruptions from the little green men in my head? Perf. lol. Today is 5 years and 1 day since my double mastectomy, the single last day that cancer was inside of my breast and thriving on my estrogen. The long awaited Cancerversary. The big one! The one I’m lucky to get. A milestone that is supposed to mean the end of the journey. A king-sized PHEW after 5 years with no major occurrences or scares. An end to a chapter. Only a chapter. This photo struck me when I looked back. How much it looks like I’m leaning on me. She stuck through a lot & has been my reason for pushing through the pain and change. The little me pics fill me with the same feeling. I did this for them. 💜 All versions of me, I’m really glad to be where, how, WHO I am now. Thanks to where, how, who I’ve been. Give or take some behavioral angst. I’ve never been faced with my mortality in such concrete circumstances before, and without a doubt, it has been the scariest and most life-affirming experience in my life. I wear my Scarlet C with pride, every single person who’s gone through a cancer diagnosis, you are in my life. And though this is not a ‘thanks cancer’ post, NEVER that, because yo cancer everything HURTS so yeah 🖕 this is a ‘holy shit I came out of those 5 years a whole different, cooler, better, hotter???, healthier, happier, OH EARTH you’re too wonderful for anybody to notice you, thankful and humbled human bean’ post. And most of all, 5 years ain’t shit. Just like the 5 from those teen years that I feared would define me 😏 or that Major Life Event when I was a kid…or whatever the next 5 years doles out. I think this is all to say, it’s so fleeting? It’s so short. An ever-present current of energy hums with that yearning to LIVE this life.

33 is the 1!!!!!!! 🎂🙃🕺🏻 🎈 🎉 🌎 How lucky I am to see another year! Just thankful for the journey and the ability to recognize the changes and growth I’ve experienced through it. It is a true gift to be able to catalog a life lived, to be able to look at what you have made of your existence in a tiny-ant-on-a-floating-rock-in-space sort of way. Big or small, choices made, regrets, challenges faced, wins and loses…I mean we’re all just trying our best. I’m humbly gracious for this slice of life and I consider it an obligation to live as if not a moment of it is ever wasted. 🦂💫🖤 be kind, children of the universe!! We all have a RIGHT to be here.

I don’t have a lot of the words tonight. I’m waist-deep in a thick molasses river of emotional/mental AHHHH and I’m teetering on the edge of a very high building (metaphorical and mental) that requires a helping of mindlessness and mindfulness to keep from going coocoo. I think next month will be a better time to reflect, when all today is is the day 5 years ago I was told I had breast cancer. That isn’t a celebration day. It’s more of a, “hehehe think about it THINK ABOUT IT!!!!!!” and honestly, I really just don’t want to today. I think about it enough, and while I still like to note the day with some kind of ‘Hello, fuck you’, other than that I just want to see tomorrow. 5 years is nothing. Wish I knew that in college, in my youth. I wish I could have known how much more the surviving parts were going to be the challenge they’ve been, the physical stuff and of course all the mental things that, again, even on my most Meisner acting gold star A student emotional prep day, I wouldn’t have chosen to do my scene about having cancer. Because I would have just been so wrong. So far off. I just wouldn’t have known the depths and darkness. The only thing that has made survivorship not a literal pain in the ass is seeing those who’ve been there, be there. BE there. BE THERE. Thank you for being there I would be lost and so afraid of every little thing. Even if I’m scared though, my survivor and thriver siblings let me know it’s ok. They show me how to show up and be there too. So I’m here. I’m in a lot of pain which is the newest version of this whole tamoxifen fun fest. Or maybe it’s just where I am now. It’s scary and it really has me sad these days, but I’m here and dammit Elton John, I’m still standing. For now, that’s all I’ll say. Next month is a time to celebrate, today is a reminder to #fuckcancer not just for me but for every single person or pet you love and have lost FUCK CANCER. The one and only thing cancer did was make me a bigger bitch who is working every day to stand strong, be a good person, and take no shit. Hey yall? One last thing. Life is just too short for worrying away your life. Stop doing it. It’s going to be ok. Live. LIVE. 💝

This is the picture I took of myself when I thought, “despite the pain and discomfort, I thank my body for getting me here.” The second one is more so saying, “alright let’s get rid of these suckers already.” 🙃 Tomorrow is my 3rd revision surgery to swap my implants for a smaller set. Another milestone I guess, though they are constantly changing and completely different than each others’ cancer journeys. Still, in this journey of mine, I’ve made the choice (choice!! Don’t we love choice) to try again and make a little more Frankenstein’s monster out of my body in the hope that it will bring me better peace of mind and physical comfort! It’s pretty hard to know at all what you’re going to be okay with in terms of a new set of yabos (hocus pocus for boobs) when you are at the beginning of your fight/journey/hell valley with cancer so most likely a fair amount of us are going to get revisions. For me, I’ve been so extremely lucky to have had no complications with my surgeries thus far, and I cross my fingers this one will be all dandy too. I’m excited to choose my ‘going under’ song that plays when I’m getting put to sleep in the operation room. Yes, it will be Beyonce, I need to decide if any Cowboy Carter is good or one specific song 🤣 But all this to say, to anyone who’s in a similar boat, you have the right to do whatever you want with your body. If you want to spend the time and get cut open and try on some new boobs, you get to do that, no matter what your reason. We got our natural breasts removed and there’s no replacing xyzzzzzz of that, so the things you CAN do, freaking do em! Thank you New York for being a place that says free surgery for breast cancer baddies, appreciate it!! And thanks to Dr S who is not covered but somehow always makes it legal and possible to do my surgeries where I don’t pay a dime 🫶 I don’t know how things will be after this one! That’s part of the whole thing too. Another corridor to walk down, another room full of choices and opportunity to get acquainted with. Maybe nothing changes. Maybe everything!! What a blessing to make it to the end of this chapter and actually be excited and ready for the next one! 💚

Ok I know we haven’t heard this song is a hot minute, but when it’s right, it’s right. Maybe no one else loves and lives to dance quite like Rhonda. No sitting it out for her, she’s getting up and shaking her groove thang. Jazz hands and cane optional. It’s my luck and curse to have this person raise me, as I too, fell in love with dance, and that alone can sometimes be the curse 😇 I can’t comprehend what my life would look like without dance. It sounds so silly if you aren’t someone who NEEDS it like my mom and me. But we do. We have to do it; there’s no world where we won’t be tapping our toe to the beat or doing a soft shoe tap dance in the grocery store. I spent my childhood dancing in my room full force like I wasn’t thiiiis close to kicking the ceiling fan doing a tour jeté that shouldn’t be done full out in my bedroom, like, every day. Growing up submersed in and surrounded by art is a true blessing for a kid. If I ever sprout one, I hope they get the itch too. I’ll be embarrassing them to no end dancing everywhere I go too, just like their esteemed and talented grand mère 😇 I hope my mom’s life of dance can inspire you as well. Even if you don’t dance, you can dance. Even if you really don’t dance, do YOUR art like Rhonda does her dance: uninhibited and honest. Delicate but sharp. Jazz hands for good measure 🤗💃🏻🩰👯‍♀️ Happy Birthday Dancin’ Mama.

We may be covered in cat hair, but dammit, we are cats.

How about a bright cat distraction from all the uhhhh news today. 🫠😽📸