There's Soap For You Yet

I'm a pouf and body wash kinda girl. Truth be told, I LIVE for it. Offer me a shower pouf any day of the week in a punchy color, add maybe a pop of pattern on the hang-ribbon and an energy-promising lather wash in some combination of essential oils and fruit fragrances, and I'm capital S SOLD! Slap on some solid packaging design and slick branding and it'll basically jump off the shelf and land a dismount in my shopping cart. Not bragging but... I'm kind of a marketer's dream. 😁

It was exactly this life-long love of mine of cute, girly sweet-nothings that hooked me on Birchbox, a monthly subscription box service of mini beauty and self care products. My girlfriend Shawn introduced me to it a few years back as a means to try new things (although it wasn't much of a hard sale). And given my deep adoration of receiving gifts in the mail, even when self-purchased, I've been addicted ever since.  

I share these seemingly insignificant details because together they resulted in an act that forever changed the course of my life. In summary, this is a story of how a bar of soap saved my life. And how it could save yours.

My March Birchbox came as scheduled in its elegant lavender box, this time filled with a delightful mix of age-defying serums, conditioning hair masks, and one magnificently-scented square bar of strawberry face soap. Because I was both hesitant to try a scented product on my face but also excited to slather it EVERYwhere, my new bar was immediately upgraded to full body status. I'm telling you, this was a smell so glorious even Strawberry Shortcake herself would approve. 

Which brings me to my fateful day - March 10th, 2022. The day I stepped in my shower, children happily playing downstairs on their day off from school, and began my clean-up routine. Rinse hair, wash hair, wash face, grab soap and suds up those underarms. I'm right-handed so I start with the left side, then with a little swoop under my breasts I make my way to the right. It was that swoop. That day. With that soap. When everything changed. 

I've never been good about doing self-exams. I do, however, remember taking special note (even a professional LinkedIn shout-out) of an awesome marketing campaign I'd seen once teaching women how to do self-checks in a way that mimicked turntable record spinning styles. I applauded that campaign. And yet still I had never gotten into a regular routine.

But what I found that day was a 3cm lump. Something you could NOT deny. Something that sent me to my knees. Something that stood out so much I'd find myself slack-jawed to find out it'd been growing in my body for anywhere from two to FIVE years. Something I'd learn later was a mix of both "ductal carcinoma in situ" and "invasive ductal carcinoma", words that'd never meant a thing to me before but would ring in my ears like a nightmare you can't shake. I'd lift my arms and watch it pull a strange pocket under my breast which made sense only after the doctors explained it had morphed and attached to my pectoral muscle, which hopefully hadn't yet broken through to the other side being my healthy but vulnerable lungs... 

All of this is to say that without my bar of soap, without that Birchbox, without that little moment of openness to try new things, by the time I found my tumor, it could have been too late. I caught my cancer before it could travel to my lymph nodes. That one simple fact is perhaps the difference between this being my story or my in memoriam. Thank you, my dear beautiful friend, Shawn, for that recommendation. Thank you, Birchbox, for my strawberry soap. And to all you pouf-lovers out there, next time you hop in the shower, please remember this story. And for your own good, raise the bar. 🧼