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.
