Behind the Shield: 9 Months In
He bought me this shirt.
That tracks.
Nine months ago, my body updated its terms and conditons.
A kidney transplant resets more than your health—it resets your pace, your tolerance, your expectations. Even your metabolism. Lately I’ve been fighting malnutrition and significant iron deficiency due to the anti-rejection drugs. It led to weekly infusions that my body is now ghosting. I will be undergoing a biopsy next week. Even with all that, it beats dying—the lonely, helpless feeling of needing a kidney layered onto already gridlocked emotional traffic. A transplant doesn’t mean life suddenly stops being difficult, but it does give you more fortitude to face it.
And life has been challenging.
In the middle of all the infusions, I lost my dad.
There isn’t a clean way to write that. Loss doesn’t package itself neatly between milestones. It interrupts, it lingers, it reshapes the space you’re trying to carve out for yourself in the world. It’s an emotional devastation amidst a long-awaited emotional reprieve. The transplant was the eye of the storm of a daddy’s girl losing her daddy. And still—life keeps moving. A poetic dichotomy. Fitting—Dad loved poetry.
There’s a version of strength people understand, and then there’s the quieter one: the kind that shows up every day without asking for attention.
Dad was there when I got my transplant. He was already physically frail and struggling, but he showed up anyway. He had beaten his fight with cancer, but the chemo was causing his liver to fail. He mustered the energy (that he didn’t have) to be goofy and push me in a wheelchair all the way across the hospital and up to the eleventh floor to see the fireworks that first week of July. I knew it took everything out of him. But he gave me everything anyway, and my nurses had to tend to him afterwards. Within a couple of weeks, he was hospitalized and the decline was devastating. Part of me thinks that in the same way he was pushing me in the wheelchair after the transplant, he was pushing himself to stay alive long enough to see me get one. To make sure I was okay. That we all were. It’s probably a selfish thought, but a comforting one—and not far-fetched, because his family was everything to him.
Honestly, I don’t know how to deal with the loss of my dad. It doesn’t feel like the pain will ever go away. So I have kept working on this brand, as if any chance of coping depends on it.
The work isn’t flashy. It’s been decidedly unglamorous. Yet, it’s consistent and deliberate. Formulas – tested, rejected, and tested again. Fussing with packaging samples. Taxes, sourcing, logistics. Every detail handled painstakingly, quietly.
It doesn’t look like much from the outside. But it’s everything right now. Because every quiet moment is a chance for the grief to take over. And every busy moment is a testament to what my dad instilled in me. No matter how difficult things get—you show up. No matter how ugly the sickness gets—you find a way to shine. You love the people you love, and you do the things you love to do.
I love my dad. And I love this brand. It might sound like a shallow comparison, but it isn’t. Afterall, he was the original gladiator. A true warrior in every sense of the word.
Gladiateur Beauty isn’t about pretending everything is perfect. It’s about creating things that hold up when it isn’t. Products that perform when you’re exhausted. When your body is recovering. When your mind is elsewhere. When showing up feels heavier than it should be. Because this brand isn’t being built in perfect conditions. It’s being built in real ones.
Dad knew perfect conditions didn’t exist. He never chased perfection. Instead, he modeled passion and resilience. I’ve been putting my heart and soul into this, and he’s responsible for the strength of both.
That’s the standard Dad set—and the one I’m upholding.
Nine months post transplant, I’m still here. Stronger in some ways, tested in others. Clear on what I’m building—and why.
No big reveal yet.
Just progress—quiet strength that doesn’t quit. Like my freaking awesome dad taught me.
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More soon.