Welcome to Find Your Colors, the publication and podcast where I am breaking down the narrative of the Shards of Color Trilogy through an exploration into the psychological concepts within and real life inspiration behind the first book of that trilogy titled, BLUSH BORN.

I am Jeff B. White and today I'm going to be discussing something a little bit different from my normal writing. There will be no chapter, and today's breakdown already happened privately.

I started chemo today.

Four years ago, which blows my mind that it's been that long, I began my cancer experience. It was a terrifying moment in my life. I woke up one day with a softball-sized lump on my neck, and I actually hurt from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. I could barely move, but I got myself to the hospital. In an Uber, because I live in America, so I can't afford an ambulance. After they ran some tests, they came back and told me that I had a malignant tonsillar carcinoma.

They demanded that I do a biopsy right then and there on the spot. The doctors came at me with a gun-like needle device they were going to jam into the side of my neck to pull cells from the tumor. They told me to be still and quiet. I did not. One of the doctors held me against a wall as I screamed and begged for them to stop. He pressed my face and my body firmly against the wall while the other one stabbed me with this giant, silver gun thing.

Of course, they didn't get the cells that they needed. So they did it a second time. The doctor pinned me harder against the wall and clamped my mouth shut while the other stabbed me in the neck again. They did not get the cells that they needed the second time.

They actually attempted and tried to go in for a third attempt. I punched the doctor in the face. Afterward, a third doctor came in the room and sincerely apologized on behalf of Mount Sinai. I then left the hospital against medical advice and was told that I would not survive the weekend.

Yet, I continued on and I lived with this malignant tonsillar carcinoma for thirteen months. During that thirteen months, I was also diagnosed with perinasal sarcoma. The treatment for perinasal sarcoma is the removal of your nose, leaving you with a hole in the center of your face. I wrestled with this diagnosis quite heavily.

I couldn't imagine, as difficult as my life had been already, to consider living my life without a nose. I fully came to the determination that I was simply not going to seek treatment and would find a way out quicker.

To my surprise, at the end of that thirteen months, I was informed that I did not have malignant tonsillar carcinoma. I also did not have a perinasal sarcoma. Both of those were a misreading of my test results. Isn't that fantastic?

For thirteen months, I began to seriously and thoroughly plan my death to avoid life without a face. This is when they decided to inform me that I had the least cancer of all the cancers. The cancer that the cancer doctors don't treat as real cancer. The cancer that they sit and watch. Chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The cancer that you can live with for 30 years. Isn't that fantastic?

It was at this point that I began to face my own mortality.

Susan G. Komen

Back in 2015, there was this commercial that would come on late at night for the Susan G. Komen Foundation. It was a commercial with a name: Kathleen's Story.

Kathleen was a woman in her mid-to-late twenties. She shared about how she had just had a baby and she found out that she had breast cancer while she was pregnant. She wasn't sure if she was going to be around to watch her son grow up. When she said that because of the research of the Susan G. Komen Foundation there was a chance that she might, that's all I needed to hear. Kathleen's Story worked on me, because I signed up to give monthly donations, and I've given that $15 a month donation for years. I wanted to do my part to assist with breast cancer research. I wanted her to be able to see her son grow up.

She led me to think about all of the women in my life. I thought about how grateful I was, and still am, for my own mother. I thought of how grateful I was that, despite her health concerns over the years, she was able to watch me grow up.

And then, I thought about how grateful I am that I'm a man and that I would never have to deal with breast cancer myself. I wore the little pink ribbons from time to time to show support during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and I proudly wore my Susan G. Komen t-shirt. I just thought I was being a good man; I thought I was being an ally.

F**k Cancer Entirely

A few years ago, after having received a leukemia diagnosis, I had just begun to learn the steps necessary for navigating that, when a new lump emerged beneath my right areola.

This resulted in a diagnosis of Paget's disease. Statistically, this disease makes up for 1 to 4% of all cancer cases. To add to that, only 0.01% of men will be diagnosed with breast cancer. Of breast cancer patients, only 1% of them will be men. The odds of this diagnosis being given to a man is 0.0025%. I am the noise after the decimal point. I am the cancer unicorn.

When my doctor made the order for me to have my first mammogram, I suddenly found myself in a crisis of my own manhood. The word breast was now being applied to my own body. I have no appreciation for that word in reference to myself. I have to admit that I still can't use the word when discussing my own body. And I can't bring myself to state that I have that specific type of cancer. I have Paget's disease.

It has been an assault against my masculinity that I had never prepared myself to face.

My relationship with masculinity and manhood has always been a war. Growing up in the South, I was never masculine enough. We are taught that masculinity is a strength that allows us to be pillars of male rigidity. We don't measure up to what we're told being a man is about if we show our emotions or wear the wrong thing. If we care about how we look or present ourselves, or apply self-care practices.

As the years stripped away the noise, I realized that the standard definition of manhood is a hollowed-out lie. It never applied to me anyway, because I'm not some weak little man who allows my masculinity to be defined or gauged from external sources. I'm a strong queer boy who navigates my own manhood and masculinity from within my own internalized barometer. There’s a big difference there.

The stoic man, terrified of his own reflection and unable to name his feelings, isn't strong. He is incomplete. A man whose identity is threatened by a hue or a gemstone is the most fragile little creature among us.

In truth, the concept of masculinity is nothing more than a fragile box. It is a structure that, for so many men, shatters the second it touches anything soft, vulnerable, or pink. In my case, I found myself facing the very real fear that my masculinity would reach its critical point of breakage the moment that it was placed between two cold panels of a machine.

The straight world loves to look down on gay men because they see us as overly feminine and place us in a category where they also place women. Within the gay community, we enforce this rigid hierarchy in the same ways for the same reasons. We look down on the bottom because we bought the lie that assuming the passive role sexually is an effeminate act, and they equate femininity with weakness.

Meanwhile, the tops would cry and beg for it to stop if they ever had to do what we do. Men would literally die if they had to do what women do.

Because men, even gay men, don't want to be seen as a woman. It’s absurd. I am not a woman, but if you refer to me as one out of your own weak masculinity, I take it as a compliment. Women possess a resilience that men are taught to fear. Women contain this raw, Earth-grounding power and strength. That truth leaves men feeling forced to define themselves as stronger simply because they aren't.

I carry no fear over a little lipstick, or some concealer, or even a cute little skirt, if it accentuates all the right parts. Because that's what's cool about a skirt. How I decorate my manhood and how I dress my manhood does nothing to diminish my masculinity. It enhances it. And if your manhood is so weak that it's easily deconstructed by things like this, then it defies the definition that you claim your manhood carries.

My masculinity isn't a porcelain vase. It doesn't break because I wear eyeliner or find power in the color pink. I stopped questioning my masculinity years ago. It was solid.

I thought that my sense of masculinity had passed every test. Then life gave me a pop quiz.

Hold Your Breath

Calling to set up the appointments for these mammograms was honestly the worst part, in hindsight. I could hear the receptionist’s smile through the phone. She had her polite, ready-made rejection of a confused man calling a women’s clinic prepared. She always had to put me on hold while she went to go check because she believed that the doctor must have made a mistake. But then she came back on the line, her voice dropped an octave into a solemn tone and I could hear the dead silence behind her words. That was the exact moment the screen told her that I wasn't lost. I was the patient.

I missed my first two appointments, because I just couldn't go. When I finally arrived, the clinic smelled of perfume and hand sanitizer. The walls were a sea of pink ribbons and non-threatening pastels. I felt like a trespasser in a quiet space that had been curated for female vulnerability.

Every time I sat in that waiting room, the other patients seemed to find their thoughts very difficult to mask. At first, there was an unmistakable recoil. I watched their lips tighten and their brows crease. They silently demanded to know what a man was doing in their sanctuary.

Then, a softening would wash over them. They realized we were standing on the same terrifying ground. Their eyes would offer a sudden embrace of deep understanding before they looked away. It was those moments of empathy that left me wanting to crawl into a hole and hide.

Another unforeseen moment that came from this was when I witnessed women who had just received the most terrible news of their lives. They were sitting in the waiting room looking as if they had been completely leveled. They would stare out the window with tears rolling down their faces. But then, something Divine happened. They would take a breath, ball up their fists, and suddenly be taller right where they were sitting.

I was being granted witness as they plated themselves with the armor of the Amazons. It felt like a sacred moment I wasn't supposed to see. Even still, it was a moment that I am very grateful to have been granted audience. It was the gift of being allowed to watch them as they moved into their strength, which allowed me to gain mine.

Then the nurse called my name. I walked into the back and put on the paper gown.

Step forward. Place your breast on the plate. Lower your shoulder.

I turned to look at the nurse because all I could think was: How? I don't have one.

Well, she found it. I still think it was witchcraft but, I stood there as she pressed my chest into the machine.

Turn your head to the side. Hold your breath.

Holding my breath was easy because I constantly had to remind myself to breathe during this time.

And this was the moment a new reality set in. Surviving this ordeal immediately stopped feeling like an emasculation. It became a transcendence. I viscerally understood something fundamental about women, about pain, and about endurance.

I thought of every woman I had ever known. I knew they had all stood exactly where I was standing. I thought of Kathleen. For the first time in years. I wondered if she got to see her son grow up. I realized that because of her, I had been donating to the very same research that would later save my own life.

I found the lineage of suffering, of survival, and of quiet grace in the face of the impossible. In a strange, beautiful way, I was allowed to touch it for just one second.

It was this realization that a man's strength is born not from stoic silence but from radical vulnerability that is the exact foundation upon which I built Jethran Frye, the hero of BLUSH BORN and the center of the Shards of Color Trilogy.

In his world, the oppressive Gray Order views emotion as a nasty disease. They want perfect, silent chords. They want compliance. When Jethran’s vibrant colors begin to bleed through the gray, they diagnose him with a chronic case of Attention Necessity. They demand he dull his shine.

But Jethran redefines power not just in his world, but in general. He is a male fantasy lead who cries because he is sad, screams because it hurts, and complains because it isn't fair. He doesn't use muscle or win with a sword. He refuses to stop feeling. His greatest magic manifests through his pink Blush. He proves that a man rooted in emotion isn't weak, but is a force because he is a danger to the status quo.

True strength isn't about dominating a room or fitting a mold or wearing earth tones. It is about taking the moments where you are terrified, shattered, and utterly out of place, and allowing them to transform you.

Let's Discuss

This post explores the profound clarity that comes from stepping outside of the fragile box of traditional masculinity and the jarring reality of facing your own mortality.

* Have you ever experienced a moment where witnessing someone else's quiet grace and survival finally opened your eyes to your own strength?

Jethran is someone who proves that a man rooted in emotion isn't weak, and it's through the lineage of suffering and resilience that I discovered the foundation of his radical vulnerability.

* Do you have a moment in your life where surviving a particular ordeal stopped feeling like a deconstruction of yourself and actually became a transcendence?

As a man, the parts of myself that the world tries to use to disembody me from my own masculinity are actually the parts of myself that define my masculinity.

* What parts of your own vulnerability are you hiding because the world called them flaws?

Men facing this illness are rare, if you or someone you know is a man facing this disease. Please reach out. I would love to chat with you.

Feel free to answer these questions in the comment section below or just take them with you as you go. My inbox is always open.

Donate to Breast Cancer Research

Over the past 15 years, an average of 74 cents of every dollar spent by Susan G. Komen have gone directly towards research, community-based health programs, education and advocacy programs to support its mission of saving lives and ending breast cancer.

To find out more about all the things they're doing to help those who are fighting and surviving breast cancer as well to find out all the ways that you can help please click the button below.

What's Next?

On Monday, we will dive into a complete read-through and discussion on Chapter 13 of Blush Born, titled "Storming Colors." We will see Jethran encounter another one of the Seven Songs and learn a very valuable lesson on anger.

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And so as always, if you read this all the way through or if you listened to it all the way to the end, then you are absolutely my hero. I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me the time in your day and the space in your brain to share my story and to introduce Jethran to the world.

Colorfully yours,

Jeff B. White

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