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By Shirley Brady
Geralyn Lucas, a director of programming at Lifetime, sat beside me at a Cable Positive dinner earlier this year. She proved to be lively and entertaining company throughout the evening, so I was stunned to turn around at one point and find her in tears. Asking her delicately what was wrong, she said she'd just been chatting with another breast cancer survivor...and then spent the rest of the evening telling me her incredible story.
This fall, readers can share her story when St. Martin's Press publishes, Why I Wore Lipstick. A sassy, empowering yet sorrowful tale, it begins with Lucas discovering a lump in her breast during a self-exam at age 27 and follows her as she undergoes a mastectomy and chemo. It relates her struggles not only to conquer breast cancer but redefine herself as a woman, wife (and later, mother) and survivor.
She wrote this on her 29th birthday: "I've lost my breast and my hair and my energy and I have gone through four boob blowups, four boob surgeries, 12 chemo sessions and a lot of mental mix-up." Like Lucas herself, the book is funny, irreverent, inspiring and honest, sharing not only her darkest moments but also her most joyous, such as when she gives birth to her first child and discovers "boob bliss" while feeding her newborn daughter, Skye, with her remaining breast.
Lifetime is producing more than 75,000 cards with inspirational messages from her book to be distributed in Comcast's markets this fall, just one part of a larger effort to alert women to available tools in their communities to detect breast cancer. During October, Lifetime affiliates can offer local advertisers the opportunity to sponsor their Stop Breast Cancer for Life campaigns.
Lucas is writing a piece for Lifetime Magazine in October about her experience with fellow Lifetime public affairs staffer and breast cancer survivor Mary Dixon as they starred in an episode airing in October of Head 2 Toe, Lifetime's makeover series featuring pairs of friends. The network also is throwing a "hero lunch" for Lucas this fall.
Lucas has received top-flight support from outside the company as well. Fashion designer Betsey Johnson, a fellow survivor, has designed a T-shirt celebrating Lucas' book that will be sold in her stores, and Stila is selling a lipstick dubbed "Geralyn." Both efforts will raise money for breast cancer research. A coalition including the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and the Young Survival Coalition is helping promote the book.
For more information on how to get involved (or just to congratulate Lucas on her personal public affairs initiative), drop her a line at .
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