Latest / Side Note... / How Losing My Job Led to Skin Cancer and an Unexpected Life Transformation
Transcript
- Melissa: Welcome to Side Note with Melissa, where personal stories spark deeper connections, conversations, and questions. There's kind of a crazy ironic ending to my esthetician story. But first, you have to listen to part two: the other good stories around being an aesthetician before I tell you the irony. Welcome to Side Note. This is episode For part two, I knew I'd have to do a part two because it's such a good story on how and why I became an aesthetician. And I'm hoping what I share with you resonates in some way as far as connections and meaning and how the things that we do lead to other great things. I have to tell you the story about one of the spas that I visited in Italy before I tell you the rest of the stories. Around being an aesthetician and the great things it led to. I had gone to a spa on the Amalfi coast in a little town or village called Positano. You may or may not have heard of it, but it is a gorgeous Italian little town right on the coast. And this is one of the spas that I had contacted beforehand, told them I was the spa health writer from Santa Barbara, California, and wanted to review their spa. This is also one of those places that is a resort spa. I will definitely link it in my comments so you can check it out. I'm telling you, when you hear my story and you go to their website or even their Instagram, you're gonna want to get on a flight straight to Positano. ⁓ technically you'd have to fly into Rome and then drive to Positano, but details. So anyway, this resort spa is called Le Serenuse. And I'm trying to practice my Italian accent at the same time, I'm trying to learn Spanish. So it's so so so. But this place is magical. And so when I arrived Again, they're expecting the spa health writer from California. I get there, they introduce themselves, lovely Italians, and they were giving me a tour of the entire hotel. So again, it's a resort spa. So they asked me and invited me to stay at the hotel. So as they were giving me the tour, and then eventually I get to my room. I am like trying to hide my excitement. I cannot believe what my eyes are seeing. And I don't want it written all over my face like I've never been in a place like this before. I was trying to be very like, ⁓ well, yes, this is just one of the many spas that I have visited. But truly this was, I mean, do I want to say the best one out of all the ones? definitely in the top three. As I'm thinking about it in this moment. as soon as the guy left and showing me the room and all the amenities and everything, I seriously wanted to get on the bed and just jump up and down. I could not believe where I was. I felt like I was in a dream. And then I went on the balcony and then I looked out and just the coast and the beach and everything, just gorgeous. And so I'd also done a spa treatment there by I'd gotten a body treatment and a body massage. And when I'd written an article about that, I just remember women were like, okay, I'm getting on a flight to Italy right now just to get a treatment by this guy. It was totally different than anything I'd had in the United States. Just amazing. I remember at one point ⁓ he I could tell that he was climbing on the bed to walk on my back. And at that point I hadn't had any treatments that did that. I was like, what is going on? But it was the best treatment, the best property. It was just so beautiful. So I will link their information. If you ever go to Italy, if you ever go to Positano on the Malthy Coast, highly recommend it. But I I don't even know how much it is. It's it's quite expensive. ⁓ so I had had all of these Italy spa experiences. I had learned about light therapy while I was there, hydrotherapy, gone into all these different ⁓ pools and talked to the aestheticians there, totally different than the ones trained in the US. And ⁓ so it was quite the experience. So as I alluded to in part one, All of this would help me with what was coming up next for me. So I get back to California and honestly, I didn't want to come back necessarily. Of course, I always loved going back to Santa Barbara because it was my paradise, but I had just been in Tuscany for three months. And I had this. little love affair with my Italian language teacher and I was visiting spas and I was eating the most amazing food and you know, I mean, right out of a movie, right? And so but I had to go back because I only had a passport and I'd actually stayed there a little bit longer than I should have. So I went back to Santa Barbara. And if you recall, I went to Italy in the first place because I lost my job. So I'm going back to one of the most expensive places to live, and I don't have a job. Well, one of the first things that happened, which was so amazing and lovely, I had written some of the spa reviews from Italy online. I think it was maybe on my website and some other websites, but somebody had Read those and they were from a California bridal magazine. And they reached out to me and they basically said, We ⁓ researched spa writers and Italy, and your name came up. And again, that's one of the main reasons that I did that because I thought to myself, if I'm gonna be a spa health writer, if I go to Italy and I add that to my list, then how many people can say that they've been reviewing spas in Italy? Now, there are some, but there's not a lot, at least there wasn't at the time. And sure enough, that paid off because they researched Italy spa reviews. My name came up, and there was so random this, I think she was an Austrian pop star. marrying a Los Angeles real estate mogul guy. So the magazine and the couple getting married paid for me to go back to Italy for a week and went to the island of Capri, which was not far from Positano, and stay in this beautiful little boutique hotel. ⁓ it's called JK Capri or Capri, depending on how you pronounce it. But now these ⁓ JK Boutique hotels are everywhere in the world. They're really special. I'll link those in the comments too. But anyway, we stayed there. I basically as a journalist or followed her throughout her week there and was documenting things and then just did this whole article. on her and we did spa treatments. And so that appeared in a California bridal magazine when I got back. So that was an amazing experience. I actually got paid to do that, got paid to go back to Italy, and and that was because of the experience that I created for myself. Now, for me, the best part about being an aesthetician is what comes next. And people might say, well, what's better than living in Italy? And what's better than spa reviews? And those are really dreamy. But for me personally, the experience that I got from the next chapter, so to speak, of being an aesthetician was all of my heart. So after I got back from Italy from doing that research for that. Article on the bride, I was still jobless. And I think it was Trader Joe's, maybe. I went into Trader Joe Joe's to do some grocery shopping. And I ran into my former esthetician teacher. Her name is Sherry Davis. And I ran into her and I really enjoyed her as a teacher. And she said, Well, you know, what are you doing? And I explained to her about how I ⁓ had lost my job and then I went to Italy and all the stuff that I did. And just told her I don't have a job, I don't know what I'm gonna do. And she said to me, I'll never forget it, she said, you know, we are hiring teachers at the cosmetology academy. We're hiring aesthetician teacher. And she said, You should apply. I said, Well, I don't have the credentials to teach at the college level. I I have a master's degree in higher ed administration and counseling. I don't have any kind of credential for teaching. And then she explained to me it's much different in the community college system, at least in California, and then with the cosmetology academy, because it's vocational. She explained to me that I actually had a higher degree than any of the other instructors there. And that really the only experience I had to have was that I was licensed. I just said, gosh, I I I don't know. I just don't know. I'll never forget this either. She said, something tells me that you would be a great teacher. And you know what? She was right. And I am very confident when I say that. I am a great teacher. And I think if you asked 99.9% of my students, there might be one or two. ⁓ and I could probably tell you who that wouldn't think that, but if you asked any students that I've ever taught, whether it's in aesthetics or the other topics that I've taught in, which I'll tell you about in another episode, ⁓ I'm confident they would say that I was a great teacher for them. And so that was the best chapter of me being an aesthetician. So I was hired as Adjunct faculty for Santa Barbara City College. And if you don't know, an adjunct faculty is only part-time. So that has some challenges. But let me tell you, I had so much fun with this because as a teacher, I got to take all of that experience that I had from visiting spas. And writing reviews on treatments and looking at spa menus from some of the best spas in the United States and outside of the United States and could tell them about my experience in Italy. And so I brought all of that into the classroom. And then of course I came from grad school. Remember, I went I did it backward. I had already been to grad school. So I did learn that I had a higher degree than anybody else. In the cosmetology academy. What that allowed me to do was in aesthetics, you have to learn practical, hands-on. And so we have a clinic where you learn how to do facials and we accept clients, and clients can come in and get facial treatments, but you also have to learn theory. And most students, generally speaking, especially the ones that tend to go into beauty school, don't like the theory. But They loved my theory because I was very good at lecturing. And because I'd come from grad school, it was really important to me to add that academic element to beauty school. We're gonna do this better. So even with the textbooks that we had, those came with PowerPoints that they'd already made for teachers. I scrapped most of them. I was like, this is not good enough. This is not interesting enough. And I made my own PowerPoints. I put in pictures of all the spas that I had visited, created assignments that students would have to not only improve their aesthetician skills, but they had to present projects. I made them do essay questions on their tests, testing them on their writing and consulting abilities. They had to write practice spa menus. I mean, it was so much fun. And they loved it also. We would do field trips. So sometimes I would take them to the spas that I had reviewed and I would coordinate with the spa managers and say, Well, I'm the aesthetician teacher now. Can I bring my class of 25? Or I would have them come into my classroom and be guest speakers. I mean, guys, seriously, I killed it. I was an excellent, excellent aesthetician teacher. And it was so much fun and I loved it. I also, because of those. the theory classes. And I had a partner teacher named Porchney, and ⁓ she was amazing. We were a dynamic duo. And she was this wonderful little Thai Chinese woman who's also a massage therapist and one of the best little aestheticians ever. She was known for her extractions. She was amazing. We were a great team. And so between the two of us, our students had a hundred percent passing rate for the state licensure exam. If you know anything about state licensure exams, especially for cosmetology, you know how wonky they are. I mean, it's the most bizarre experience. So keep in mind for aesthetician, and I talked about this in part one, there's a practical part hands-on that you're tested on, and then there's a theory part that you have to take a written part. And you have to pass both of those in order to become a licensed aesthetician. And we were so good at those, Porchony and I were so good at those, that some of the Cosmos students were wanting to come over and take our aesthetician theory classes. And, you know, I even taught my students after a while that well, there's this narrative about beauty school. Well, it's an outdated term. If somebody asks you where you're going to school or what you're studying, Don't say beauty school. Don't say cosmetology or skincare. Say skin physiology. I'm studying skin physiology and I'm studying facial anatomy. I'm studying chemistry, ingredients, and skincare products. And really creating that narrative so that you are confident and proud of what you're studying. This was the class that we had created. I mean, we had. When I say we, I mean fortunate and I, we had probably twenty five-ish girls that would register for the class and we had a part-time program and we had a full-time program. ⁓ depending on if they were part-time or full-time, they would I think it would last anywhere from six to eight months to a year. And as you can imagine, being an esthetician program, it was predominantly women. In the years that I was an esthetician student, I had four. Males, perhaps, but it was mostly mostly women. Every few months we'd get a brand new group of women of all ages. Usually I would say they were younger women that had opted into going to aesthetics training instead of college. But we did see that trend of non-traditional second career women coming through. My oldest student was Joan, and she was amazing. She was 72. She had come back. To be an aesthetician. And we had a lot of women who were second career that did this. And they were some of my favorite students because they were so passionate about what they were doing. Now keep in mind, side note, as an adjunct faculty, adjunct basically means part-time. And not to get off on a tangent, but if you work in higher ed, you know that the adjunct system. is not good for the adjunct faculty member because it's basically the college's way of saving a ton of money. Because you're part-time, you're not allowed to work more than I want to say 23 hours. Because guess what? If you did, they'd have to pay you health insurance and retirement and all of that. And then you've got the conundrum of being in Santa Barbara where everybody wants to live in Santa Barbara and also everybody wants to teach at Santa Barbara City College. So guess what? If you don't like the adjunct faculty rules and guidelines, then you can get out because there's a list of people here that will take your place in a heartbeat. That was kind of the feeling overall in Santa Barbara. And it certainly was at Santa Barbara City College. I was getting paid hourly. It wasn't so salary again because I was adjunct. No health benefits, no retirement, but it was a pretty good hourly rate because. They paid you based on the level of education you have, and then I got a raise for each year that I did it. ⁓ I want to say I was at 45 an hour, which was good at the time. But it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to make a living in Santa Barbara. And so I did what I had always done. And I'd gotten a second and a third job. One of those jobs was at another esthetician school or cosmetology academy that was a private one, so was a lot more expensive. And it was in Ventura, which was about 30 minutes south of Santa Barbara. Somehow they knew that I was an aesthetician teacher at Santa Barbara City College. They called and said their teacher was going on vacation and they needed a substitute. Well, I needed the money and the class was at night and so I would teach at Santa Barbara City College in the day and then drive down to Ventura and teach at night. Well, what ended up happening with that was I loved it so much. I did so well. My class was an amazing group of six girls. It was a tiny little class. And I was their substitute teacher for I think it was a couple of weeks. Well, they learned so much and they loved it so much that they wanted to keep me on. And so I don't know exactly what happened, but that college offered me the position. I took over as the esthetician instructor there, teaching there at night, and I was also teaching at Santa Barbara City College during the day. The other job that I got that I also killed was I got a job as a rep in a skincare sales for a skincare company called DNA, which was founded by a Dr. Aguilar. I did really well. I'm Really good at sales if I believe in the product and I loved these skincare products. I was able to do more skincare training, which then I brought into the classroom, and then I brought Dr. Aguilar into my classroom to present. Side note that was a good idea in theory. But let's just say drama happened and I mixed personal with professional and it was not good. But that's a side note. Other than that, I was killing it in the skincare sales. And I had all these accounts at all the spas that I already had contacts at, and they were selling DNA. I was learning how to do chemical peels at a whole new level. We were using stem cells and all kinds of cool stuff. And then one of the other coolest things that I started doing again as an extra job. Now, mind you, I had said to myself years before in Santa Barbara, okay, if this is where you want to live and you have to work three or four jobs, the rule is you must love all of your jobs. They've got to be fun and they've got to contribute to each other or have some sort of connection or meaning. And so that was always what I aimed for. This other gig, so to speak, that I got was. An organization, I think it was called AWAI. It was an organization that catered to travel writers. They offered conferences on how to be a better travel writer and how to get jobs and all kinds of cool stuff. Somehow, I can't remember how, they found out about me doing spa reviews. And guys, they paid me to do spa writing workshops for travel writers who wanted to add spa writing to their resume. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. And at first I was like, okay, this is a fun little thing. They paid for me to go to Chicago to do a little spa writing thing. And I did a presentation. I was like, hey, I'm really good at this. This is fun. And the travel writers loved it. I did another one down in LA, one up, I'm gonna say Oregon maybe. And those all were great. And they paid me, I think it was a couple thousand dollars. So that was a lot of money to me. And then they asked me to do a spa writing retreat in Ecuador. I mean, seriously, I'll be honest with you. I mean, I'd gone to Italy and all of that. I was still kind of not a well traveled small town girl from Colorado. Okay, I've heard of Ecuador, but I've never thought about going to Ecuador. And so, but I'm telling you, the organization was amazing. I worked with a woman named Christina. She was a dream to work with, very organized, very detail oriented, the perfect partner to have in something like this. And we were booked at a place in Ecuador called La Mirage. And it was in the mountains of Ecuador, and she had this whole itinerary planned of all these things that we would be doing during the day, and then we would be getting spa treatments, and then I would have these assignments for my students to write about the treatments they were getting. Mind blowing. Mind blowing. It was one of the best trips I've ever had. I'm almost tempted to say it was better than Italy. The one in Positano. I think the one in Ecuador, the property we stayed at, was it was different. It was totally different, but man, life changing. And they paid me a lot of money to do that. And just side note, that organization led to me doing other write to heal grief workshops, utilizing my writing in other ways that I'll tell you about later. But it just One thing led to another, one thing connected to another. I was able to bring all of that information back to my class and tell them about Ecuador. It was lovely. Now, mind you, here I am an aesthetician instructor. I'd been doing it at this point for several years in my 30s. I think in total I did it for six years, maybe, maybe a few more years. I I can't remember, but let's say six years. And the whole time I was adjunct and the whole time I was doing other jobs. But there was definitely an undercurrent of I'll just call it bullying going on by the other instructors. Not all of them, but three of them. They were the old school ladies that had been there and were grandfathered in when the college bought the private beauty school. It's ironic because at the beginning of every aesthetician class that started, first day that they would come in, I would say, okay, the first thing I'm gonna tell all of you ladies is that you're all wonderful and we're all adults here. But guess what? You're gonna see each other every single day for several months. We're all women here. And so I'm telling you right now, based on experience, there's gonna be drama. And so right now we need to remind ourselves that we're all here to support each other. We need to talk out conflicts. We need to communicate those. You need to come to me. I'll help mediate them, whatever. But I would say that at the beginning of every class. And I'm glad that I did because it worked. Sure enough, things came up. I have this funny memory side note. One of my students, I think it was Adriana, she was having a squabble with another girl. And she wrote on a little post-it note, I still have the post-it note by the way, that said, Miss Melissa, I think we need a mediation or something like that. I'll take a picture of the post-it note and show you. But I love that because that's what you need to do. If you're arguing or you're not agreeing, you need to talk it out. But it's ironic because of the bullying that I experienced at the cosmetology academy. And I'm sorry to say, but I'm gonna say it. It was classic insecurity on their part. Some people might call it jealousy, but it was classic insecurity. These were women that at the time were in their 50s and didn't have the education that I had and certainly didn't have the spa health writing and reviewing experience was like which was like a cherry on top, right? I had a master's degree. I was offering theory classes that were actually real academic classes. I was bringing in speakers. It was good. And instead of supporting that or learning from that, there was this undercurrent of bullying. I was constantly threatened that my class would be canceled. And of course it never was because of low enrollment, because we always had a wait list. They were always threatening me with that. Had to kind of play it really carefully because I was only adjunct. And one of them was the director of the program and the other one was her best friend, both cosmetologists. So that happened and then I gotta tell ya, something really fantastic happened, but it actually made my situation worse. The cosmetology academy was off campus. So we were usually on an it was like on an island. So things could go on out there and nobody would even care or know. ⁓ we were kinda like the Stepsister out there because it was the beauty school. And that's why I told my students, you tell people you are studying skin physiology and facial anatomy, you don't say beauty school because there is this idea of what it is. And so we fought that narrative a lot. But one day, one of the deans actually came out to the college and came into my class. I'll never forget it. His name is Dr. Ben Partee, nice guy. And it was break time. I was in the teacher's lounge, so there were other teachers around, the ones that were bullying me. The ones that I, you know, just kind of kept a low profile. I just was like trying to do my own thing and ignoring it, you know, moving through it, not being a victim to it. But he said publicly in the teacher's lounge something that was as a compliment, and ⁓ and that's the way that he meant to convey it. He said, So Melissa, I'm out here because I wanted to ask you. I was contacted by a Some parents of one of your students. And at first I was like a little nervous about that. And I was also like thinking of confidentiality and in higher ed and parents contacting about students. You know, there's there's some guidelines regarding that. And I said, ⁓ okay. And he said, Do you have a Jennifer in your class? I said, Yeah, I have Jennifer Guterres and I have Jennifer O'Connell. And he said, Jennifer O'Connell. And I said, Okay. He said, I was contacted by her parents. And they went on and on about you because they said that she ⁓ had never really liked school or was challenged by it or something. She can't stop talking about you and your class and she looks forward to it and she's learning so much and she's thriving. And I said, My gosh, that's wonderful. Now keep in mind these teachers are hearing all of this. And at the time I kind of knew that, but I couldn't help it. These are words of affirmation for me, which I love. I said, ⁓ my gosh, that's wonderful. But I'm still thinking, like, why did they contact the dean just to tell him this? Like, this is an adult student. I said, Well, that's great. And he goes, You don't know who the parents are. So then I'm thinking, O'Connell, O'Connell. Of course, we're in Santa Barbara. So I'm thinking, a celebrity? Somebody famous? And I go, I don't know. And he goes, Jack O'Connell, he's the state superintendent for the state of California. And of course, I don't know who that is. And I go, ⁓ okay. And the dean was like, Well, I just wanted to convey that compliment to you because we all know who he is. ⁓ and he's an amazing guy and an amazing politician for the state of California. And I wanted to let you know that because that's impressing impressive to me. And I think it was the next day Jen, Jennifer actually had come up to me. She goes, I'm not supposed to tell you, but my dad I'm just so excited. My dad is sending you a letter and he got a copy of your book. Side note. I wrote a book called The Little College Handbook, and it's for first generation college students. He got a copy of it because I give it to my students at the beginning of every semester and said, if you are a first-generation college student, good for you. Here is a book that will help you. And if you are not a first-generation student, Share this with somebody who is. Well, I think she had given it to her dad, and Jack O'Connell himself had been a first-gen student. So between what his daughter was sharing with him about my classes and between my book, he decided to write me a letter. All of a sudden, I get this letter delivered to the cosmetology academy with my name on it from the state of California. And I was opening it again in the teacher's lounge. And everybody saw it and it was a handwritten letter and it was just basically saying, you know, what a good teacher I am. And he was so impressed with my book. And anyway, I have that letter framed in my house right now because I cherish it. But Jennifer had said to me in class later that day, she said, I just want you to know because she's looked at the letter and I said, ⁓ I got your dad's letter. It's really nice. She looked at she goes, ⁓ yep, that's his handwriting for sure. She said, even his assistant didn't write it. She goes, He never does that. And so it just made my day. It just made my day. I really cherished that. And as the years went on, I continued to teach there and deal with the other staff. There were some other things that I did that created problems for me that I didn't think would, that I was just trying to be proactive and help myself. But the first one was that I'd created And written a stack of what I called interactive aesthetician flashcards. So for stay bored, all of my students would write their own flashcards, which was a great way to learn theory because you had to memorize a lot of vocabulary. Side note, I could tell you all 14 bones in the facial skeleton, all eight bones in the cranium, and the layers of the skin, including the five layers of the epidermis. That's a side note, but that gives you an idea of what kind of theory they have to memorize. And that's just a tiny part of it. Flashcards were a really great idea. So I created these so that they were interactive and they had to fill in the blank. And then I gave the answers on the back and then I printed them with a spiral notebook ring and also color-coded them. I mean, like curriculum development was my jam. And I loved it. And so I would offer these to my students and charge them just basically what it cost me to print. And also one of the companies that would come to the school and sell the kits and the books and all of that that we that the students had to buy for their classes, she bought several copies of the flashcard kits so that she could sell them at all the other beauty schools throughout California. It was a pretty cool little thing. But apparently it was a conflict of interest. And even though I had said, well, I'm adjunct faculty and I'm only part-time, and I know other faculty who write their own textbooks and make those a requirement of their class. So this is not a textbook, but flashcards, and I'm not requiring it. Anyway, that was one of the things that they had said that I was doing. And then I'd also wanted to pursue another dream of mine. And It was a dream that I didn't have before, but through the years as I became a really good aesthetician teacher, I just thought, okay, this is really great basic training, but there needs to be an advanced academy of aesthetics where they can learn different levels of chemical peels and other forms of hair removal like sugaring and you know spray tanning, all the things that you are not taught in BASIC, which makes sense because in BASIC, you are just prepared to take the state board to pass the state board. You don't want to take anything advanced. So it's usually not till after your license that you'll go off and do advanced trainings. So in my mind, there was this new kind of goal or dream to open an advanced aesthetics academy in Santa Barbara. So I was actually able to find a little space to rent. And let me tell you, it was a stretch. And I came into some money, not a lot, but I did. I use that to rent this space where I had two classrooms. And it either me or somebody else would come in and teach advanced aesthetics, one of the teachers or contacts that I knew from the other spas and I would charge for these classes. And then I also had a treatment room in my academy where new grads could rent it by the day and start to build their clientele so that they could slowly move that into their own practice. And it was a great way to build their clientele without having to rent something for a lot of money that a lot of them could not afford. So I had this great group of girls that were renting the room by the day and ⁓ maybe doing it part time while they were still working their other jobs. I mean, it was a wonderful model of learning. And it was on the days and the hours that I wasn't working at the academy that I'm not gonna be going in my classroom. ⁓ promoting the sales of my advanced classes. Like it was completely separate. But ultimately that's what they had accused me of is this conflict of interest. And they had said if you don't close your school and they'd found out about it because the Santa Barbara Independent, which I had a good relationship with as far as a writer, they had done a write-up on Santa Barbara Aesthetics Academy that I had founded and started. And they said, if you don't close this, if you don't stop doing this, we will let you go. And it was that in the flashcards and probably just me standing up for myself and also, you know, all the other stuff that had happened. That I was getting excellent reviews. The students loved me, the cosmetology academy, cosmetology students wanted to come over and take my classes. It just was, you know, getting to the point. And they Let me go. After six or more years, they let me go. I had such a strong presence in the community that I got support letters from spa owners, other people at Santa Barbara City College, other skincare experts in the fields. And I had a packet of things that I submitted to advocate for myself. I don't even think it was looked at. So after all those years of one of my favorite jobs, I was laid off. And that was really hard for me because I was also Fortuny was also laid off. We were a team and we advocated for each other. And I advocated for her a lot because she didn't know or have the skills to do that. I think culturally Language wise, there were reasons was she was older, and so I had advocated for both of us and they laid us both off. I had been replaced by a lady who was a licensed cosmetologist but had never worked as an aesthetician. She was friends with the director and that's just what happened. That was a bummer for me at the time. It really was. Now here's the ironic part that I spoke about at the beginning. I was laid off. I didn't have a job. I was middle to late 30s, no health insurance, and I had a suspicious spot on the side of my nose. And of course, that was part of my theory that I would teach. Chapter eight, skin physiology, skin disorders. all the different levels of skin cancer that you teach your students about. It was out of our scope of practice to diagnose. We always had to refer out, but we were trained, aestheticians are trained to know the warning signs of skin cancer. And so it was ironic that I ended up with a suspicious spot on the side of my nose and I went in to see a dermatologist and she diagnosed me with Aggressive growing squamous cell carcinoma. If you're familiar with skin cancer at all, and believe it or not, a lot of people are because it's kind of prevalent, you've got, generally speaking, there are lots of different details in it, but generally you've got basal cell, you've got which is kind of the least concerning, but still concerning, but the least concerning. And then you have melanoma, which is the most concerning, and we know how to look for those. And then you have one. I guess kind in the middle. I again I'm not a doctor. But it's squamous cell. So I had aggressive growing squamous cell carcinoma and it was on my nose. And I knew it because it was the scab that was not healing. And so when I went in to see the dermatologist and I'd known her because of my work with skincare, and she even said to me, She goes, You know better. Why didn't you come in sooner? Well, I didn't go in sooner because I didn't have health insurance. And I knew how much it would cost, but I think the scab just kept getting worse. And so when I was laid off, I went in. She said, Yeah, sure enough. She said it's pretty bad. And we're gonna do Moe's surgery. Moe's is a common procedure they do for this kind of skin cancer. That's what they did. She showed me pictures of it. The one flap side of my nose was completely removed. There was a hole in my face. And she used skin from my cheek to rebuild it. And she was amazing. She was an artist. She's amazing. She's a dermatologist who specializes in MOS surgery. And she's also does plastics. I was so, so grateful to her. So I don't have a job. I was diagnosed with skin cancer. I had surgery for the skin cancer. My face was all taped up and I had no money. And I w had a very large medical bill coming my way. And I'll never forget it. I was all taped up and everything on my face. And I had gone into Costco with my best friend, I think it was. And I had run into the lady that had taken my job, taken my place at San Barbara City College. And it was just this moment for me that was just really hard and sad. I saw her, I was in Costco, I had this stuff all over my face, and she just looked at me. And I just felt so defeated, so deflated. Given all of that, I had to make a difficult decision. And I moved to Wyoming to live with my mom. And it was Pretty much it I think it was the beginning of the fall, so I was there throughout the winter. Wyoming in the winter time, I was healing. I was getting unemployment, but I didn't have any bills because I was living with my mom. So I was using those to pay my medical bills. And just healing in all the ways that you can imagine. And I just kept thinking I cannot stay here. I I got I've gotta get this is cold Wyoming. I've gotta get back to California. But guess what I did while I was in Wyoming? I wrote Cowboy Dad. That's what I did while I mean healing from skin cancer, healing from the heartache of losing my favorite job. And I wrote Cowboy Dad. And when I was done, it was about eight months later, I moved back to Santa Barbara, determined. And I got a couple of new jobs, a new studio, and started over. If you know the story about Cowboy Dad and everything behind it, I can't wait to share more about that. But it worked out just the way it was supposed to. I think there are so many takeaways in this part one and part two of why I became an aesthetician. I mean, sure, became an aesthetician so that I could have a job and I could work in a spa or whatever, but look at all the things that I did. Proactively that connected me to different opportunities that were outside the box, that were bigger than life, that allowed me to do things that I never thought I would do. Even looking back on your own life, what connections happened in your past that are connected to your passions or your careers or things that you want to do? What is the meaning there? What connections do you have there? Or even in thinking about what you want to do, ask yourself like what else can I do to become the expert? Like for me, spa health writer in Santa Barbara. Well, first, move to Santa Barbara. Second, become an aesthetician. Third, go to Italy. ⁓ and then I get to be a spa health writer instructor for travel writers in Ecuador. I mean, what else could you do? To be the expert in your field to get ahead of the other people that you might be, you know, working with or even competing with. And I went through in those years, I went through some traumatic things. Some I spoke about in this episode and others I didn't. But there was always grace in it. There was always grace in it. So looking back at it, what was The good that came out of it. And I would just ask you to ask yourself the same thing. It's really maximizing your time. Again, it's that awareness of time. What else can I do in this lifetime or in this decade of my life that can maximize my goals and my dreams? And then that's going to build the grit and the resiliency. And I gotta tell you, I think. Probably one of the best takeaways for me in the esthetician story is don't kill the messenger. And this keeps coming up for me over and over again in my life. But did I have a right to be upset about the bullying and the unfairness and the getting laid off? I had a right to be upset about that. And I advocated for myself. I did. But because I was laid off, because if I hadn't been laid off, I think I would have stayed because I loved that job and I was good at it. And I was making just enough money to get by, especially with all my other gig. If it weren't for getting laid off, I would not have written Cowboy Dad. And Cowboy Dad is at the center of my world. It's my heart. It's just I I love it. If I hadn't gotten laid off, gotten skin cancer, had to move to Wyoming because I had to heal and I had no money in the bedroom that I was staying in in my mom's house, you know, while it's blizzarding outside and typing this book and sending the pages to my editor and she was sending them back to me crying the whole time, I wouldn't have done that if I wouldn't have gotten laid off. So don't kill the messenger. And in my case, the messenger Or the bullies. So you have to move through it. You have to be proactive. You have to advocate for yourself, but you also have to just go, okay, universe, God, thank you for using humans to give me a message that it's time to shift. That's the story of how I became an aesthetician and why I became an aesthetician. All in all, here we are today. Got my beautiful little lavender store in Hill Country, Texas. And I gotta tell you, when you come into my store and I start talking about skincare products, or I tell you that, you know, let me know if you have any skincare questions. Just know I know what I'm talking about. Because for me, it's not just about, ⁓ I've got some lavender and I'm gonna make a lavender facial oil. No, it's going, ooh. I know about carrier oils and I know about essential oils and I know about facial oils and let's do this and let's do that. And I want to have a cleanser. So I want to work with somebody who's formulated a cleanser with this ingredient and that ingredient. And I talk to you about it. And I can actually say why you should use this because of your skin type or any other questions that you have. That is what gives me a leg up. In the world of lavender farming, I'm not just a lavender farmer, I'm also an aesthetician. And side note, hopefully you've realized this in the theme of my stories. I love lavender. I love skincare. I love aesthetics. But they are all platforms for my real passion. And that is people. And their stories. Okay, so I wanna share one more funny side note story about my esthetician students and I wanna dedicate this story to them because it's sort of a if you know, you know kind of Story, but it's pretty funny. So keep in mind that the Cosmetology Academy was not on the main campus in Santa Barbara. It was actually in Galita, which is, I guess you would consider it, a suburb of Santa Barbara. And the Academy was located in like a little shopping plaza. So there was a main grocery store, then the cosmetology academy, I think a little restaurant, and then there was Lassen's, which is a natural food grocery store. There was A skincare product there that I loved. I discovered it because I had read a book by Dr. Paracone. It came out in the early 2000s, I want to say 2002. It was called The Paracone Promise. And it basically, if you love skincare, you'd love this book. I think he was a dermatologist or plastic surgeon. I'm not sure. But he talked about these ingredients, which were fairly new at the time. They weren't in all the other skincare products. But he talked about these specific ingredients and how they were. just gonna transform your skin. And also he talked about diet, you know, eating a lot of salmon and things like that and how that would improve your skin. So I loved this book. Well of course I looked into his products, the Dr. Pericone products, and right now I think they're actually sold at like Nordstroms or something, which I don't like. But anyway, this is back in the day. But they were really expensive. And so I was of course I did not have the budget for it and So I started researching other product lines that had these specific ingredients. So I found a skin serum at Lassen's with all of these ingredients that he talked about in his products that were key ingredients. This particular skin serum was a lot less expensive. I want to say at the time it was less than $30. So if you know skin products, you know that that is very affordable. The Dr. Pericone ones were. Over a hundred dollars. My students on day one of their class starting, and this is every few months, right? When I have a new class of let's say twenty-five students, twenty-five women starting. And we would go through orientation and they would always ask me a lot of questions about the classes or skincare. And one of the questions they always asked me was What is one of your favorite skincare products? Why does your skin look so good? How is it so dewy, et cetera, et cetera? So I shared with them. I said, here's the book that I read and I learned a lot from it. And I use the the serum that I found at Lassins. It's so good. And I swear I should have like, you know, had a kickback from it or something from Lassins. Of course I didn't, but ⁓ so I would tell them this every term. And so they were like, Well, what is it called? What is it called? And I'd say, It's called Skin Eternal Serum and it's at Lassens. So during your lunch break. Go over there. It's, you know, it's in this aisle, it's in this bottle, and it's called Skin Eternal Serum. By source natural or natural source, I can't remember. I'll link it in in my comments. So they did this every time. This group of students would go at lunchtime and they would come back and they would have their skin eternal serum and they would be very excited about it and they would use it. And of course they would love it as much as I did. And this went on for years. But there was one class in particular, same story, day one. They asked me the question. I expected at this point, because everybody wants to know what my favorite product is as a small writer, as an essential esthetician teacher. So I say it's skinny turn serum, it's atlases. They go on their lunch break, they come back and they look really discouraged. This group of, you know, I think six girls had gone over there. I said, Well, did you get it? Did you get it? And they said, No, they They had no idea what we were talking about. And I said, Well, what do you mean? They they've been they've had it for years and they always have people go over there and buy it. They said, No, they said they didn't have it. We asked if they had skinny turtle serum and they didn't have it. They said they've never had it. And I said, Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. What did you just say? And they said, We asked for skinny turtle serum. I died laughing. I said No, no, no, no. It's not skinny turtle serum. It's skin eternal serum. I mean, it was hysterical. They died. Of course they went over there and went and got the skin eternal serum. But now to this day, if I do any sort of post or anything that's aesthetics, I'll hashtag skinny turtle. Or I'll say the legend of skinny turtle lives on. And when I say that That's what it means. And you'll always see a bunch of aestheticians on my Instagram or my Facebook who like it, who like the post because they know because if they weren't in that particular group that tried to buy skinny turtle, then I told that story every time a new class started. And I said, Now when you go over there, you ask for skin eternal serum. At the end of every episode, I like to answer and acknowledge the questions. Comments and feedback or constructive criticism that I've gotten. The ones that I got this week kind of made me giggle a little bit. The first one was from Gabby from Johnson City. She actually came into my store and I asked her if she listened to the podcast. And she said, yes, but there's something that you're saying that is driving me crazy. And she said that I say podcasts. The word podcast too often when I should be saying episodes. And I love, I mean, I laughed a little bit, but I love this feedback. This is good feedback. This is what I need to get better. I think honestly, I've just been nervous as I'm recording this. And you know, you kind of stutter and repeat the same words over and over. And sure, there's editing, but still, and I'm really glad that she pointed that out. So Thank you, Gabby. I will try to say episode. Great feedback. Thank you. Thank you. Then I had three other customers who actually shared with me that listening to my podcast is like ASMR to them, or some people say Asmir. If you don't know what ASMR is, it's a long explanation. You should Google it. So it's a compliment. And I really appreciate that. And thank you for sharing that. So that to me tells me that you enjoy listening and that listening to my stories and my voice is relaxing. So thank you for that feedback. And then the questions are related to that. The first one is if I'm gonna just continue doing auditory so you're just listening, or if I will start to do video where you can watch me. And we are going to start doing videos where you can actually watch, but I would say maybe in the next month it's a goal, it's what we want to do, but I'm really trying to get comfortable as I'm learning this whole new thing. It's hard. I'm loving it, but it's a little bit ⁓ difficult. And being on video is gonna bring about a whole new set of challenges for me. And then also along with that question is will I be having guests on my podcast? And the answer is absolutely. So I love telling stories and Lord knows I have a ton to tell. But one of the really fun things about my life experience and also my daily experience now in my store is how many great stories I hear from amazing people. So Yes, I will start doing videos so you can watch. And yes, I will start having guests. But for both of those, I would say maybe in the next month. Until then, just please keep listening. Please keep sharing your comments, constructive criticism and feedback, and please share your questions so that I can answer them on the next episode. Thanks for listening. Thank you so much for listening to Side Note with Melissa. If these stories resonated with you, please share this episode with a friend. Don't forget to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, and feel free to leave a comment. You can also follow and connect on my Instagrams, Side Note with Melissa, or June Bloom Lavender. And I hope my crazy convoluted stories made you laugh, smile, and even reflect on your own chapters. This podcast is brought to you by June Bloom Lavender. A lavender speakeasy in the Texas Hill Country. June Bloom specializes in handcrafted lavender gifts and a premium skincare line made with lavender harvested each summer by owner Melissa Broughton, that's me, in Santa Barbara County, California.