When Toks Olagundoye looks back on the day she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she remembers it clearly. The Nigerian actress experienced an avalanche of emotions, but not those that you simply would necessarily expect.

“At first I was annoyed,” she tells ESSENCE with a chuckle, explaining that she had already had a mammogram, so she thought she knew what to anticipate from her doctor. “He calls and says everything is fine, and I keep going,” says Toks. This time, nonetheless, that was not the case. Olagundoye was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, which in accordance with American Cancer Societyis a more “aggressive type of invasive breast cancer” that may spread quickly, has fewer treatment options and can have worse outcomes. Black women, women under 40, and girls with a BRCA1 mutation usually tend to be diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer than women in other demographic groups.

Discovery Calm within the storm

However, the wife and mother admit that the diagnosis also brought an unexpected sense of relief. Olagundoye’s family history of cancer is extensive and has all the time been predictive of diagnosis. “There is a lot of cancer in my family, especially on my mother’s side,” she says. “All my life I thought I would probably get something. I thought, “Well, I don’t have to worry about getting anything anymore.” Now I’ve dealt with it, I can fix it and move on.”

The diagnosis got here while she was a part of the solid of the Paramount+ series. Due to the diagnosis, she underwent five surgeries, including a double mastectomy and chemotherapy. Despite the rigorous treatment plan, the actress continued to work and tackle latest projects.

“Luckily I didn’t have to work every day and they were really good with my schedule because I had three surgeries during the show,” she recalled. “I’m lucky because I love what I do.”

After the filming was accomplished, the actress with a theater education modified the topic and through treatment she only accepted voice-over projects. Her manager and agent never hesitated to alter things and ask for extensions on assignments and deadlines when she was too drained from chemotherapy to work. She also confesses the support of her loving husband and fogeys who helped her survive this difficult period. “I received really good support. My mother and husband drove me around Los Angeles,” she said. “I sat with gratitude for most of it.”

Opportunities amidst adversity

The additional blessing she had been grateful for throughout the battle got here in the shape of a brand new opportunity. She selected to play Olivia Finch, head of Harvard University’s psychology department, within the Paramount+ reboot of the classic comedy series.

“When I got it, it was two weeks after my last chemotherapy. I was exhausted but very grateful,” she says. “There are so many people on the show that I have always wanted to work with. I was honored and proud to represent the black community on a show that was so white.”

Before her diagnosis, Olagundoye was overthinking to the purpose of hysteria. But this time her experience didn’t allow it. From the primary day on the set of the series, she felt that something was just different.

“I used to be very excited to be there. I assumed: Just come and memorize your lines. That’s all you want to do. I just listened to what the administrators and producers told me and did my best to point out it and be present. Everything prepared itself because that is all I could do,” she says. “It was a truly emancipating experience. I usually worry about whether I’m doing my job well. I had just been hired looking the worst I had ever looked in my life, so I thought, “I actually have nothing to fret about.” I actually have a terrific job and I’m just going to take a seat there.

Adding to this gift is the exceptional team on set. She praises the solid and crew and its leader, Kelsey Grammer.

“He did a lot for Black people on television,” he says. “He’s a person who insisted I wear my natural hair, and after I desired to wear braids, he said, ‘I feel it’s beautiful.’ This is what white men should do. Use your power to assist everyone else. Representation is so essential to him, our writers room is amazing.”

The actress found that her newfound sense of peace as an alternative of hysteria and intimidation would carry over to other areas of her life as well.

“I realize that everything will happen as it happens, whether you are worried or not. There is no reason to raise cortisol and drive everyone crazy. I don’t want to upset anyone else. I don’t want to make anyone’s day worse.” she says. “I’m glad my son won’t learn this level of anxiety from me.”

The power of self-care

In addition to learning to let go of such concerns, breast cancer has made Olagundoye a staunch advocate of self-care for black women.

“We deserve it. We have been taught that we don’t deserve the life we ​​have. We have been taught that we must accept the crumbs they give us. We deserve the best,” he says. “If you look at black women and what we do and give to the world, we are valuable.”

She emphasizes that taking good care of yourself includes leading a healthy lifestyle, constructing a trusted healthcare team, getting annual exams and knowing the fundamentals of breast health.

“If we don’t take care of ourselves, who will take care of our families?” – Olagundoye asks. “Go to the annual meetings. Learn to look at your breasts. Get to know your breasts and the way they feel so when you might have a lump that should not be there. If you are feeling like there’s something incorrect with you, when you feel there’s something incorrect along with your body, go consult with your doctor. If they do not take heed to you, go consult with another person. I do not care if it takes you seven months to search out someone, keep going until you do. Until you get the imaging or tests you would like. If you’ll be able to afford it, get genetic testing. We deserve the most effective.”

If we all do our part in the subsequent two weeks, Kamala Harris will be our next president. But our job is difficult. We cannot vote alone. We need to help others mail their ballots and get to the polls. We can’t simply talk to individuals who agree with us about our hopes for a Harris presidency and the hazards of Trump. We need to talk to people who find themselves considering not voting and even voting for another person.

This is our task now. I’m not saying it is often easy. And it can’t at all times be fun. So I’m writing this article to offer some suggestions – and belongings you can say – that will make this job a bit easier.

We all know that there will be nothing higher than waking up after November 5 and seeing how well we did our job – seeing how much it paid off to change this election and seeing that Black people got here out on top. Because that is what it’s all about, ensuring that Black people come out ahead in this election.

We need to make this clear to everyone in our lives before they vote. This means talking to our entire family, even people who find themselves difficult to talk to; and the people we work with, even when it isn’t at all times comfortable to speak about it; and our friends and neighbors whom we see on the salon or barbershop, during school pickup, at church, or on the last picnics of the season, or anywhere else. Everyone we can talk to, we need to talk to.

But how will we get there?

#1 – Volunteering. Resources like voting.org, Black voters matter and Color Change Voting Being Black provides tools to assist you to talk to Black voters across the country — ensuring they’re ready and able to vote.

On these sites you can check your voting registration and be sure that you have not been faraway from the voter rolls by right-wing Republicans. You can use them to help family and friends do the identical. You can also enroll to volunteer – alone or with a bunch of friends – to do what matters most in the ultimate weeks of the election: texting other black voters, calling voters, donating to… voting programs, neighborhood walks door-to-door, organizing events to motivate more people to vote, and more.

#2 – Talk to people you already know. This can be difficult – talking to friends who may not yet agree with you. Someone may inform you, “I’m not involved in politics.” But you have to tell them: “If you don’t take care of politics, politics will take care of you. And if you realize that after the November 5 election, it will be too late.”

Sometimes it’s about saying the one thing they can’t ignore: the one thing they can’t deny that makes the election alternative and its urgency seem so real. For example,

Donald Trump executed more imprisoned black men than the federal government has killed in a long time. He wanted to look tough and Black people paid the value. Harris and Biden stopped it. But Trump will surely start it once again on day one. This is because Trump only cares about his popularity with the loudest white supremacists, not people like us.

Sometimes it’s about talking in regards to the reality we will all have to live with if we let Trump back in. In 2016 hate crimes increased by over 200% in places where Trump held campaign rallies. And after taking on the White House, they will rise even higher. Now he is gathering all this hateful energy against Haitians, leading to: over 30 bomb threats in schools, government buildings and officials’ homes where he told his mob to aim: Springfield, Ohio. This level of anti-blackness will not end with Haitians. We are all a part of the group of Black folks that he will order his mob to attack. And if he is within the White House, he will attack us: he will tell his Justice Department and the police to attack us by entering our neighborhoods, and he will tell his IRS and Social Security to attack us by canceling our advantages, and who knows what next.

Sometimes it’s about being clear and sober about Kamala Harris. She will give us an incredible opportunity to move ourselves and this country forward, even when she can’t do the whole lot for us, especially if a Republican Congress stands in her way – as they did with Obama. But it will move the Government forward in delivering what we need and deserve by way of health and childcare and the fight against discrimination. He will pursue economic opportunities for us. And like Obama, sometimes we’ll have to push her. The difference is that when Black people push a Democrat like Obama or Harris, we can move them. I used to be involved in this under Obama, and we won so much – especially in health care. But we cannot have any illusions in regards to the situation under Trump: we will never find a way to put pressure on Trump. We have no probability with him.

And this is one other issue: talking about Trump’s plans for us.

You may have heard of Project 2025. But what is it? This is Trump’s program plan, which might expand executive power – similar to a dictatorship – and hand over your entire decision-making process in the federal government to right-wing extremists. We all know who they’re and what they do.

Project 2025 features a plan to eliminate job protections for 1000’s of presidency staff and replace them with people loyal to Trump. Black staff create over 18% workforce on the federal level, so this is a direct threat: we have been kicked out of the federal government and will probably be the primary to leave. Project 2025 also plans to destroy the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides money to low-income people to buy food. They will attack diversity programs across the country. One results of this is an enormous shortage of black doctors. The scope of negative impacts on Black people is countless. You can see me speak about it here. You can read more here.

Sometimes we see people forget what happened when Trump was the last president, and we need to remind them of that. When Trump left office, the black unemployment rate was over 9%and the Covid pandemic, which he and his administration downplayed and allowed to spread, has resulted within the disproportionate death of Black Americans, at twice the speed of white Americans. The Trump administration halted consent decrees that finally began to regulate corrupt and racist police departments and halted Justice Department investigations into violent police departments. Trump appointed essentially the most Court of Appeals judges in a long time –none of them were Black– and appointed three Supreme Court justices who ended Affirmative Action, abortion rights, and more.

Vice President Kamala Harris has proven achievements working with President Biden to create record numbers of jobs, keep unemployment low, improve maternal care, solid the deciding vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, and far more.

Our work in the approaching weeks will not be easy. However, we need to talk to people. And we can’t leave anyone behind. As you saw within the Paint the Polls Black series, hosted by Global Black Economic Forum and with the support of Essence, we must make sure the exchange of data, dispel myths and mobilize to vote. If you have not seen the series, you can watch all of the content on YouTube.

No matter what anyone cares about – climate change, discrimination within the workplace and employment, quality education and health care, reproductive health care, inexpensive housing, criminal justice reform, LGBTQ+ rights, stopping corporations that cheat us with fines and costs at every step – we have to show them that what they care about most will be within the November elections: either they will get it (or they will have a probability to get it with Harris), or they definitely won’t get it with Trump – and in truth, the whole lot will worsen. Our job is to be sure that people know.

We can do this.

Today’s youth are bombarded with a continuing stream of toxic details about their bodies. Suggestions to cover flaws are in every single place, from social media to altered celebrity silhouettes and the rise of ads featuring artificial people. The “if you want it, buy it” culture offers a normal body and appearance before most young people learn proper body functions. Body awareness and, more broadly, health literacy are invaluable as we age. However, as schools, health clinics and other providers of essential information change into battlegrounds, ensuring that each one people, especially children, have the resources they need to grasp their bodies becomes an increasing number of difficult.

Nancy Redd, best-selling creator, health journalist, TV host and mother of two says current attempts to politicize accurate health information are impacting our children’s knowledge of how their bodies work, shaping their self-esteem and contributing to reduced health literacy in maturity. (The data confirms this.) Her last work, goals to offer a visible guide for young adults of all genders.

Even though she graduated from Harvard with a level in women’s studies, she is crowned Miss Virginia in 2003 and competing within the Miss America pageantRedd was not free from negative bodily feelings. “I grew up with a whole lot of body shame. I used to be a lady living within the south where your vagina was like “hoo-ha” and you only didn’t speak about anything. There wasn’t a whole lot of information available,” she says, reflecting on how a lack of awareness shaped her relationship together with her body.

She wrote the book to supply an image-based “playbook” to assist young people change into acquainted with their bodies during adolescence and beyond. Chapters cover lighter topics and activities, from the function of the skin, the most important organ, to the impact of mental health on bathing and in search of help.

“I would like children to know the names of all parts of the body, whether it is the septum or the scrotum,” she says. “I want people to talk about discharge the same way they talk about a runny nose – just matter-of-factly.” Some lessons are rarely discussed aloud, equivalent to the variability of sizes and appearances of healthy genitalia, what it means to be intersex, and an unbiased explanation of gender identity. Others, equivalent to tips on how to perform a breast or testicular examination, several types of discharge and descriptions of medical conditions, e.g premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), can support young people after they are too embarrassed to begin a conversation.

“It starts with rooting out shame from the very beginning and being as direct and informative as possible,” she says, noting the importance of teaching young people about many conditions, from benign ones like freckles to life-threatening ones like cancer , manifests itself in another way depending on the complexion.

Redd remembers how difficult it was to make use of health resources for diagnostic purposes after they didn’t look like her body. To be sure that the photos were representative, she commissioned a photographer for the web site , which covers a wide range of topics based on body size, gender and race, and rejects the “perfect body” in favor of an comprehensible one.

The handbook supports young people in developing body skills and agency and prepares them to advertise themselves in sexuality, health care and life.

“If only we could improve body education, health literacy is so low given the amount of information we have access to, and it’s because people are scared,” he says, noting that he wants everyone to talked truthfully with their doctors about pain and confusion without worrying about being judged. “Providing authenticity in a safe, medically accurate environment helps us prepare to talk honestly about pain and confusion without fear of judgment.”

The impact of that is immeasurable in Black families where medical interactions have left a scar on the community. Redd hopes to encourage open, intergenerational and non-judgmental conversations between parents and kids. In conjunction with the agency, he sees these exchanges as tools to eliminate health disparities by including diverse representation and medically relevant information.

“Body neutralization” away from good/bad binaries starts with talking to our kids in easy language. “When kids come to you with their innocent questions, respond with understanding and see where it leads,” Redd says. “If more people tried to do this, you would be amazed at the child’s reaction and how we can all act in a more harmonious community.”