Also, a fun fact is that the host and I unintentionally wore the same color scheme of navy and red! Everyone on set thought we planned it, but nope! I think our energy and fashion were matched in real time!
I’m honored that Blood Cancer United trusted me to serve as a spokesperson/ambassador and share a part of my cancer experience that doesn’t always receive the spotlight: being a caregiver.
Video recap from my social media
I know what it’s like to hear the words, “You have cancer.” I also know what it’s like to be the daughter of a mother living with a rare blood cancer.
Being on the caregiver side of cancer has opened my eyes to an entirely different kind of fear, strength, exhaustion, advocacy, and love. Caregiving means keeping track of medications and appointments, asking questions, speaking up, offering emotional support, and trying to process your own fears while remaining strong for someone you love.
It also means staying on top of your own mental, physical, emotional, and financial health. It can be beautiful, overwhelming, and deeply isolating all at the same time.
That’s why raising awareness about all blood cancers is so important to me. It’s also why I want patients and caregivers to know they do not have to navigate this confusing and exhausting healthcare maze alone.
Blood Cancer United (formerly known as the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society) offers fantastic resources and supportive services for people living with blood cancers, as well as the family members, friends, and caregivers walking beside them. Caregivers need care, guidance, information, and community, too. I have attended many of their local Atlanta events & and conferences and have always attended virtual webinars as well to stay on top of the blood cancer my mother has had for well over a decade.
During the segment, we talked about my experience as both a cancer survivor and a caregiver, the importance of blood cancer awareness, and Atlanta’s Light The Night event on October 3rd at Piedmont Park.
Light The Night gives survivors, caregivers, family members, friends, chosen family, and advocates an opportunity to come together, honor those we love, remember those we have lost, and bring hope to people affected by blood cancer.
I also want to say this clearly: A lot of people assume I only know about breast cancer. Nope!
My lived experience, advocacy, and professional work extend across the cancer continuum. I understand cancer through multiple lenses—as a media & marketing professional, survivor, caregiver, patient advocate, patient education leader, a woman, a Black woman, ally, writer, storyteller, and speaker. I can speak about many types of cancer and the broader realities that patients, young adults, and families face.
Please don’t pigeonhole me. I am more than my diagnosis, and my expertise is bigger than one type of cancer.
Anyhoo, visit BloodCancerUnited.org to explore its resources and learn more about Light The Night. If you’re in Atlanta, I hope you’ll join us at Piedmont Park on October 3rd.
Let’s continue bringing blood cancers, and the experiences of caregivers, into the light.
Then came co-presenting at the Association of Oncology Social Work (AOSW) conference.
Then Breastcancer.org invited me to record a live podcast episode from ASCO.
Then BlackDoctor.com featured me alongside two incredible Black women in an article highlighting people changing the future of cancer care.
And somewhere in the middle of all that…
I celebrated a milestone birthday. Not just because of the number, but because of what that number represents. Ten years ago, birthdays weren’t guaranteed. They’re gifts I somewhat welcome, even with new wrinkles on my face.
What surprised me most wasn’t the recognition.
It was the messages.
Texts.
Emails.
Phone calls.
DMs.
Gifts and cards.
People I hadn’t spoken to in years and friends from every chapter of my life.
Colleagues.
Patients.
Researchers.
Physicians.
People who simply wanted to tell me I was remembered and that I’d made a difference.
So many thoughtful messages and well wishes brought me to tears. It reminded me that we almost never understand the impact we’re making while we’re making it.
We’re too busy wondering if we’re enough.
Meanwhile, someone else has been quietly changed by something we said years ago. I’ve spent years believing my work was about cancer advocacy. Now I realize it’s always been about something much bigger.
Helping people feel seen.
Helping patients trust themselves.
Helping clinicians understand lived experience.
Helping minoritized voices know they belong in the room.
Helping audiences laugh, cry, think, and leave differently than they arrived.
That’s bigger than advocacy.
That’s storytelling.
This birthday wasn’t just another year older.
It was a reminder that surviving was never meant to be the finish line.
It was the beginning of the work I was called to do.
For years, I questioned whether I was enough. Whether my voice mattered. Whether sharing the hardest parts of my story was making any difference.
Now I know the answer.
Every stage I’ve stood on, every article I’ve written, every conversation with a patient, every room where I’ve been the only Black woman has been preparing me for what’s next.
The next chapter isn’t about chasing bigger titles or collecting more accolades, even though I still hold onto my dreams from when I was 12 years old of winning a Tony, Emmy, and an Oscar.
It’s about using every ounce of my voice, creativity, and lived experience to change how we think about healthcare, storytelling, and human connection.
Because stories don’t just inspire people.
The right story, told at the right moment, can save a life.
And after everything it took for me to still be here…
Yes, I’m older and feel every inch of it, but I’m not ready to take my final bow.
I decided to revisit the original Mixed Fragility piece that I wrote back in May 2020. This is my 2.0 version after spending the last few years fully awake and embracing my Blackness. So, buckle up and read about my evolution and reintroduction to myself.
I felt like I’d been hit on the head — not hard enough to knock me out, but just enough to wake me up.
And once awake, I couldn’t go back to the way things were.
For years, I was uncomfortable being vocal about the racism I saw and experienced. I felt silence was safer. Politeness felt protective. Assimilation felt like survival. But I now understand that my silence didn’t protect me; it only delayed the inevitable reckoning. So, I’ve pushed through the discomfort because remaining quiet has cost me far more than speaking up ever has.
Antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo put words to something I had already been witnessing for years: white fragility. It shows up when white people are challenged about race and immediately become defensive, angry, afraid, guilty, or shut down altogether. Instead of leaning into discomfort, people often respond by arguing, deflecting, or staying silent. And those reactions aren’t accidental. They work to restore comfort, to reset things back to “normal,” and to avoid the hard, necessary conversations that real cross-racial understanding actually requires.
When I first learned the term, it felt like I had been given new glasses to see clearly with. The more I named racism out loud, publicly, without softening, the more I watched white fragility surface in real time among people I know deeply, and those who only know me at arm’s length.
But what I didn’t yet have language for was my own.
I came up with the term mixed fragility because of my tendency to be defensive, wounded, angry, or dismissive toward the Black community itself — stemming from years of internalized self-protection and self-hate. A fragile balancing act founded on the idea, learned early and reinforced often, that proximity to whiteness might shield me from harm. At the same time, complete identification with Blackness might cost me acceptance, opportunity, or safety.
Even writing that sentence makes my chest tighten.
This realization didn’t come easily. It came with grief, shame, and a deep sadness for the girl I once was — the one who learned very early that belonging always came with conditions.
I grew up in Macon, GA, in a family that was educated, where going to college was not just an option; it was a given. On my mother’s side, both grandparents were college graduates. My parents (divorced when I was 2 ½ years old) both earned master’s degrees; my mother went on to earn two Ph.D.s.
Raised Catholic, I attended St. Joseph’s Catholic School for elementary, Mount de Sales Academy for high school, and later The College of Saint Rose. For much of my childhood, I was either the only Black student in my classes or one of just a few until high school. My mother and I were also among the few Black parishioners at our church.
I took ballet. I threw myself into community theatre. I lived on stages and in rehearsal spaces where, again, I was usually the only Black person present. These spaces became my refuge. They developed me artistically, emotionally, and socially, but they also isolated me in a somewhat protected bubble that I wouldn’t fully understand until much later.
Outside of my family, I had very little sustained Black influence growing up. And when I did encounter Black peers — at summer camps, in school, later in college — I was often told I was “too white,” a “sellout,” that I “talked white.” I wasn’t trying to reject anything. I was just trying to be myself during years that were already painfully awkward.
Those words stuck. They hardened something in me.
My mixed fragility responded with resentment: Why am I being punished for liking what I like? For loving Anne of Green Gables? For being theatrical, articulate, earnest? I felt judged, so I judged back. I now know that both sides were operating within systems that taught us to police one another rather than interrogate the structures around us.
I often felt suffocated by insecurity and a sense of not belonging anywhere.
In high school and college, that suffocating grip deepened. I was the only Black cheerleader at Saint Rose in Albany, NY, during my sophomore year in the late 90’s. At basketball games, I heard Black students jeer from the stands: “Quit acting white.” “Cheerleading is for white girls.” I smiled through it until I couldn’t anymore.
I left the team the following year because there are only so many ways you can fracture yourself before something breaks.
What I didn’t yet have language for back then is a term I hear often now: Predominantly White Institution (PWI) trauma. Being in these spaces caused a severe psychological toll, hyper-visible and invisible at the same time. Constantly performing excellence while absorbing microaggressions and outright hostility, recognizing that your presence is conditional.
Despite all of that, I still found myself gravitating toward whiteness.
White friends often told me, “I don’t see your color.” I interpreted that as a compliment. In my mind, it meant they saw me as one of them. I didn’t yet understand that what they were really saying was that they didn’t see the parts of me that required them to change, to listen, to be uncomfortable.
And still, acceptance was never complete.
I wasn’t invited to certain birthday parties or sleepovers because parents didn’t allow Black children in their homes. A boy who had been my dance partner in multiple productions at Macon Little Theatre wasn’t allowed to take me to prom. His parents said, “It’s one thing to be on stage with a n****r, but quite another to be seen in public with one.”
As an adult, I’ve been followed in stores like HomeGoods and Target because I apparently look threatening when wearing a fascinator or vintage hat and carrying a purse that matches my shoes. One of my “favorites” is when someone asks me where something is in the store, assuming I work there. It took years for me to say: You’re being racist. Do I look like I’m wearing a uniform? They always seem shocked and backpedal. I usually just shake my head and walk away.
Then I entered the workforce.
And that’s when I learned “my place.”
No one prepared me for how little my talent would matter once I crossed that threshold. No matter how educated or accomplished I was, I would still be seen first — and often only — as a Black woman. My tone was policed. My ambition is labeled aggression. My confidence read as arrogance. My mistakes were magnified while others were given grace and second chances.
I wasn’t prepared for how exhausting it would be to prove I deserved to be there constantly.
And then came breast cancer.
Cancer didn’t just attack my body; it crippled my momentum, nearly crushed me financially, and derailed professional goals. It interrupted opportunities, altered trajectories, and forced me to rebuild yet again in a system that already offered so little grace.
Surviving cancer is supposed to make you feel victorious. Grateful. Courageous.
Instead, I grieved the career that never got the chance to fully breathe because of surgeries and toxic treatments. I was told I had to choose between my work and my health.
I longed to support myself through media, storytelling, advocacy, and the stage, but anxiety and insecurity kept pulling me under. I wanted to amplify my voice without diluting myself to be palatable or safe.
When Donald Trump entered the White House for the first time, the hostility and overt racism intensified. The permission slip for racism felt signed in bold ink.
I remember a white woman in line ahead of me at the pharmacy pointing at me and telling her misbehaving child that I would “ram my cart into him” if he didn’t behave. It wasn’t an anomaly. It was witnessing, in real time, how hatred is taught. That little boy is being taught to associate Black people with violence.
When I shared that story publicly, many white friends asked why I didn’t say something. They couldn’t understand my silence. But my silence saved me. I think about all the viral videos of white women weaponizing fear, and how deadly the consequences can be for Black people who speak up.
The most painful part?
Another white woman witnessed the entire interaction.
And said nothing.
I am still working through my mixed fragility because the trauma runs deep. But I am no longer confused about this:
I am not protected. Black people are not protected.
My education doesn’t protect me. My eloquence doesn’t protect me. My proximity to whiteness never did.
Discovering the works of James Baldwin in 2020 changed everything. My mindset recalibrated in ways that shocked me. As attempts are made to erase Black History, I am grateful for Black creators who ensure our stories endure — reminding me that others’ inferiority projections are not mine to carry.
I have reclaimed my voice.
I speak up for myself and others, even when labeled an “angry and arrogant Black woman.” I don’t care anymore because silence is no longer an option.
Racism exists and is wrong. Racism infects healthcare and cancerland. Willful ignorance is wrong.
And while I continue this internal work, I need white people, especially those who say they love and support me, to do their part externally.
Speak up. Intervene. Risk discomfort. Vote with Black people, not against us.
You may not be able to change a racist. But you can change an outcome.
Life On The Cancer Train 