BOObs and Pink Pumpkins. It’s BC Awareness Month.

This blog has been updated. 

It was first published October 2018.

Fall, fall, fall… It is always fall at our house.  That’s a poem my daughter wrote more than two decades ago. One of those bad Mom moments… It was summer when she wrote it.

As a breast cancer survivor and the author of a children’s book about it, I was always pitching a story idea, or planning the next marketing event. Many of them targeted October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month. 

Since I loved Halloween, I would combine it with my breast cancer awareness props, which meant painting our orange jack-o-lanterns pink. This was before you could obtain the pink plastic ones at Walmart. 

It seemed only fitting that years later when they were available, the Tickles Tabitha school program character was birthed from a giant plastic pumpkin. Yep! Underneath all that hair is a huge pumpkin head.

I’m always a step ahead or behind popular perception, so naturally Tickles Tabitha was created before Pinterest and Instagram made it cool to be an artsie, nerdy, DIY, children’s book writer.

Much has changed since I began the path of my breast cancer maze.  Talking to children about cancer is no longer taboo. You can even include the word breast. When I received a new set of breast implants (I outlived my first pair!) my insurance paid for both of them! 

Some things have not changed. October is still a scary month… As I’m usually on edge until I get my mammo results back, and EARLY DETECTION is still the best way to survive breast cancer! Please remember to examine your BOObs.

Bwahahahaha. 

                                                

                                             Tickles Tabitha's Cancer-tankerous Mommy

Our tree is up and the lights are working, the house has been ( as my former MN neighbor boy, Andrew Toperzer would say) over-decorated top to bottom, we've made Christmas cookies, candies, and gingerbread houses, and St. Nick has come and gone.  Now all I have to do is my Christmas shopping. When Jordan was 5 years old he began writing his Christmas list for Santa in June and by Christmas had a total of about 58 items that he narrowed down to 12! Jordan is 17 years old now and not quite so greedy.  He's only got one item on his list this year so you would think my Christmas shopping would be done already, but I have yet to buy a single gift. So this blog will be short,  sweet and sentimental .  I thought I would share some of my most cherished Christmas presents from my creative children when they were still in elementary school.  Jordan is still a witty and talented writer (on the school newspaper staff )  and Tabitha's a gifted, award-winning artist.

I am off to do some shopping, baking, crafting and all the other activities that come with the season --and this year it seems "other" means ridding myself of a nasty computer virus that has infected my laptop.  Bah, humbug!

October is a bittersweet month for me. I love this time of year, dressing up for Halloween, the cooler temperatures, the beauty of the leaves as they change color.

October is also the month I lost my friend Laura Bouldin Karlman to cancer, and this October I am sad to write that her mother Barbara Bouldin's family has requested Hospice services for her.

Once again I am reminded why I established Nutcracker Publishing in the first place and I have been busy trying to remind everyone else.

My efforts have paid off and I have received some national press. This weekend I will be flying to Tampa, Florida to film a segment for the syndicated lifestyle and entertainment program Daytime.

You can read about it below in Nutcracker Publishing's latest press release:

#Beat Cancer: Author and Cancer Survivor Amelia Frahm talks about establishing a Career while beating Cancer.

Raleigh, NC---Amelia Frahm, the award-winning author of Tickles Tabitha’s Cancer-tankerous Mommy, and creator of Crack Open A Book! cancer education programs will be in Tampa, Florida, October 26th, to film a segment for the syndicated lifestyle and entertainment program Daytime, on how she established a career while beating cancer.

“Somewhere along the way I quit thinking of cancer as my diagnosis and began thinking of it as my career,” says Frahm.

She will share with Daytime viewers how the courage, motivation, and perseverance she used to battle cancer prepared her for the rejection, humiliation, and even bad-luck she experienced in order to establish her career as a successful author and publisher.

A career was the last thing on Frahm’s mind when diagnosed with Breast Cancer 15 years ago. She was 34 years old, the mother of two toddlers, and all she wanted was to find a children’s book to help explain what she was going through to her children.

Diagnosed during a time when talking to children about cancer was considered unconventional, Frahm’s experience resulted in her originating the Nutcracker Publishing Company, and publishing Tickles Tabitha’s Cancer-tanerkous Mommy, a children’s book about a family surviving the emotional and moody behavior of  a mom battling cancer.

Her book was released in October 2001, and made national headlines when it debuted on the Rosie O Donnell Talk Show amidst an Anthrax scare that shut down O Donnell’s New York City studios.

Tickles Tabitha’s Cancer-tankerous Mommy is recognized across the country as recommended reading for families coping with cancer. Last year Frahm’s company, Nutcracker Publishing, introduced a blonde pig-tailed Tickles Tabitha and launched the first cancer education school program, created by a cancer survivor, designed specifically for elementary aged children.

Frahm has appeared on radio and TV segments across the country, and is a member of the National Cancer Survivors Speakers Bureau. In August her story was recognized by the National StandUp2Cancer Foundation:
://www.standup2cancer.org/blog_su2c/2009/08/with_you_we_stand_-_81809.php

This October, she and Tickles Tabitha were pictured on MSNBC Today First Person at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33245310.
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