 As the title of this video said, I've been keeping a secret and I want to share it with you all. So if you'll hang with me just a few minutes we'll get into it and I will share with you what is going on in my life and what kind of changes are going to be coming my way which I hope won't affect the channel too much but let's talk about it. Hey girl friends! A little bit more of a serious note today. Not really because in a way this is really some good news for me but in a way it's kind of scary news for me as well. No it's not a collaboration. Yes I'm staying on YouTube, nothing like that. Let's start out with just a little bit of my backstory. If you go back and see my videos when I very first started by the way I've been on YouTube for seven years in January. I cannot believe I've been on it that long and I love what I do to get to visit with you guys and to get to see all of you and to get to interact with all of you and bring you content that I am so passionate about which is Makeup Skincare Beauty. It's like a dream come true for me and the fact that I've gotten big enough now that I'm actually making enough money to help my family and be able to support my channel on my own is just such a good feeling. So I love this. I love everything about it. When I started my channel seven years ago I was 120 pounds heavier and if you go back and look you'll be shocked at what I looked like and I struggled for those first few years probably the first three years on YouTube. People were with me and I had a great time with the subscribers that were there but I wasn't attracting a lot of people because number one I was sick and I think that came across through the camera lens in that you know not a lot of people want to watch a person that is struggling that hard and I struggled really hard and even though I love doing it being that big it was a challenge for me to do YouTube. It was a challenge for me to do anything. So I decided through a lot of prayers and a lot of soul searching and a lot of talking with my family that I was going to do gastric bypass weight loss surgery and I did that in July of 2019 and I lost 120 pounds which my life has completely transformed. I everything about it has transformed. I feel so much better. I don't have, I was in pain 24-7. I'm still in pain because I still have fibromyalgia. I have trigeminal neuralgia. I have renaud syndrome if any of you know what that is affects your fingers and your toes. I also deal with PTSD from a really bad alcoholic abusive husband years and years ago. I have left bundle branch block in my heart and I also have POTS that is a part of my heart condition after I got COVID. So I have all these things that I still deal with but the weight being off not carrying around I mean seriously go into Costco pick up a 50 pound bag of sugar and walk up and down the aisle with that. Now imagine that you had two and a half of those and walk up and down the aisle. When you have that kind of weight on oh my gosh you know what I'm talking about. It's so hard and for anybody that struggles my heart is with you. I know how hard it is. It is it's really hard and I know a lot of people said that I took the easy way out. It maybe maybe not. I don't feel like it was the easy way out. I had tried everything but that's beside the point. So after all of that happened after I lost all of that weight I had a lot of extra skin and you don't see that a lot. You do see me when I stand up. My middle is very round all the way around. I had three Caesareans and that's how I delivered my kids because I couldn't my pelvis was off kilter from an accident when I was when I was a kid and so I had to have a Caesarean and after a Caesarean your skin gets pulled up right in that area in the pubic area and so I have all of this very very loose skin that flaps over and you know I mean this might be gross. I don't know some of you might appreciate it some of you might be going what are you talking about but this skin because of the way that it is and because of how loose it is actually get a lot of infections in there every year. Not only is it unsightly and nasty it diminishes my quality of life and so here I am again at a point in my life where I'm grappling with whether or not I want to have another surgery to fix something that I've inflicted on myself. So I've decided to have skin removal surgery but in the interim of finding a surgeon that I could work with and that was perfect for me I found that not only do I have to have skin removal surgery I actually have to have it all the way around the circumference of my body because you don't just lose weight on your stomach right you lose it everywhere and so I have that same problem in the back as I have in the front trigger warning. If talking about surgeries and different things like that set you off this is your trigger warning to skip past this video right now. Shut it down and just move on because you know I'm going to talk about what my surgery entails. I'm having a 360 tummy tuck and that is where not only they cut you from hip to hip they cut you all the way around your body and they take off all of that loose skin and then they pull everything together and so I will have an incision all the way around my body not only that on my abdomen in my muscles they're going to stitch those muscles in from the abdomen back together so they're going to stitch those all together so I'm going to have that and I'm also going to have liposuction down the hip area because of the way that the skin hangs there too so that they can pull the skin a little bit tighter because just of all of the weight is I think about when you blow up a balloon you blow it up really big you know you get this little bitty balloon you blow it up really big and it stays that way and then you deflate that balloon and what you have is all of this it just is never going to be the shape that it was before you blew it up well that's what loose skin is after weight loss it's this just for lack of better word an empty balloon that looks like crap and can cause a lot of health issues and in my case it's been every single year and it's not just in summer summers are super hard I have to take care of that skin differently I do a lot of things to keep that skin dry and I still get either a yeast infection in there or just a plain old really nasty infection in there um I get heat rashes constantly and I'm uncomfortable and I know good lord as I talk about this and I'm sure that a lot of you're growing you sound so selfish I have a lot of you friends that come here to my channel you're battling cancer you're battling lifelong diseases you're battling things that really have altered your life and I come on here and I talk about skin removal surgery but this is what's going to be happening to me and this for me is my next step in the journey of my life where I want to get to be a better person and to get to do something that has bothered me for 30 plus years because my oldest son is 32 but what I want to tell you is number one I'm not trying to diminish any of what you're going through I just had one of you that is one of the sweetest people and you've only found me about I'm sorry you only found me about six months ago and you just told me that you had a cancer diagnosis friends the gal that just told me about this is and you'll see her in every single video she comments on every single video and so many of you do but she was so bubbly and so upbeat and she still is but she's just barely got this diagnosis I'm sorry I don't know why I'm and I just want to jump through this camera and just hug her I mean that's how I feel about so many of you when you talk to me I want to jump through here and I want to hug you and I want to tell you that I'm your friend and that yeah I may not pray for you each individually because there's a lot of you but I pray for all of you for all of us to have the fortitude to cope with whatever we face and as many of you know I lost my dad this year oh my gosh I don't know if I could have gotten through without all of you I mean I've lost a lot of people in my life a lot of people I've been through a lot because as many of you know I have three kids that are type 1 diabetics and that started I was 27 when my middle son got type 1 diabetes and I've lived the roller coaster life with my kids and now they're going on almost into almost into 25 years of type 1 diabetes and now we're starting to see the effects of that so my life isn't easy just like you guys this isn't but boy you don't realize how you get me through so much and that's why when you come into the comment section that's why I try so hard to take the time to answer you because if you take the time to comment and talk to me that means that you really not don't you know I mean I get the haters yeah but it means that you really have enjoyed something that I've brought to you and that you are invested enough to just take a few minutes of your time and chat with me and I treasure that and I've said this over and over again but I really do I feel like if it's important to you it's important to me I wouldn't have a channel without you I wouldn't be where I am without you I couldn't be a beauty guru that has this as their job without you and the fact that you are value me enough to take a few minutes out of your day and watch me and then you take a few minutes to comment because you felt good after my video that's special you're special and I am not somebody that that is wasted on I will never take for granted what YouTube has done for me or what social media has done for me and the freedom to be at home with debilitating diseases and health conditions and still be able to contribute to my family's welfare that's huge and so I'm never going to take you for granted because you help make my life what it is and I love you when I say that those aren't empty words love you you know mm-hmm no those are words that come from a place of deep gratitude for a youtube family that picked up for me and helped me when my own family wouldn't anyway I'm gonna stop so January 9th I'm having skin removal surgery that will take me about six weeks to recover from I'm not going to be gone for six weeks but I'm not going to be able to talk and converse back and forth for that six weeks very much I'm uploading a lot of videos right now that will be will populate and will come up on your feed during that time so that you don't you don't miss me too much but I just wanted you to know that that's what's going on fingers crossed no complications everything will be okay the biggest complication is blood clots but they know how to manage those now and I don't get those in surgeries anyway so yeah I don't know what made me just do that just now but a little bit into my life and who I am and I love you I love you I love you I love you and I truly mean that and I'll be talking to you and showing you my progress very soon and I hope that any of you that are battling anything yourselves please know that I'm that's not lost on me that's not wasted on me when you tell me those kinds of things and when I comment and say I'm sorry I am my truly am this world is messed up and we need each other and I need you so please take care of yourselves stay happy and I'll see you in my very next video goodbye girlfriends