[00:00:00] Adam Walker: From Susan G Komen, this is Real Pink, a podcast exploring real stories, struggles, and triumphs related to breast cancer. We’re taking the conversation from the doctor’s office to your living room.
This is Real Talk, a podcast conversation where we’re digging deep into breast cancer and the realities patients and survivors face every day. We’re talking openly and honestly about just how difficult breast cancer can be, from being diagnosed to selecting the right treatment plan to living day to day with metastatic breast cancer and life after treatment.
Today we’re getting to know the Titus family, Leo, Rosalie, Allison, and Laura. Leo lost his wife Jennifer to metastatic breast cancer in 2003. She was just 34 at the time and she and Leo had three young daughters, Allison, Laura, and Kelley. Kelley was just eight months old when her mother died. The Titus family has committed themselves to doing everything they can to save lives from breast cancer in the hopes Nobody would ever have to go through what they went through losing a wife and mother.
To date, this family has raised more than $350,000 for Susan G Komen and participated in Washington DC area races, walks, and other fundraisers. This year, everyone is all in doing their part to raise as much as they can for the cause. Titus family, thank you for being here today. And Leo, we’re going to start with you.
Tell our listeners how breast cancer has changed your life, and then we’d love to hear from each other. Family member about the impact this disease has had on them.
[00:01:38] Leo: Okay, thank you, Adam. You told this pretty much told the story in terms of how it changed our lives. I was 34 years old, living in northern Virginia.
Laura was born in 1997. And, Allison came along in 2000. And then, Kelley was born in February, during a blizzard in, 2003, and then the plan was, three kids living in a cul de sac, good job. Obviously, things changed pretty quickly. I think it was in March or April when Jen noticed something and, she went into the doctor.
And it took a couple months for the doctors to, determine what was going on and I, and it was actually in June of 2003 when we found out that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was stage 2 at the time. I didn’t know much about it. I think it was probably, we were both pretty much in shock with the diagnosis.
And not really hearing probably all the information, but I remember the words aggressive and that sort of thing. And it was we didn’t, we, our plan was, to, we’re going to fight this a lot of people fight it and win and speed bump in the road of life and it wasn’t very long. I think it’s August, late August, early September. Jen wasn’t feeling well and she’s going through her treatments. And they admitted her into the hospital because, they wanted to try to figure out what’s going on. And, the way it ended was in the end of October, she had passed away.
It was a very aggressive, fast moving, disease. And, so obviously, to your question about how did it change my life, it went from the, had everything going, good job, but three kids in the cul de sac, and then everything’s upside down. So, I had a lot of support from family, neighbors and friends. And, but, for me, I had to figure out, I had to figure a lot of things out. How do I go to work in the morning when I’ve got, an eight month old who needs to eat and have diapers changed and get Laura off to school and, but a lot going on that, Jen would handle as I ran out the door with my coffee to go to work.
I had to handle it. And so it was real. Yeah, it was a challenging time trying to figure out how we’re going to move on with life and, fortunately, for all of us, I met Rosalie in 2004, somewhere along the line in 2004. And we ended up, getting married in 2005. Despite me being bald with three kids, that’s a whole long story I’d share for another time, but, Rosalie came in, not having any children of her own and we got married and she jumped right into being mom and helping potty train Kelley and helping with, raising girls.
I’m a dad. I don’t know any of the girls stuff. And Rosalie, did a lot of that. As we’ve gone on as a family, fundraising for Komen has been, just an annual routine for us that we, aways, some parts of us don’t like doing it, because it was a tough memory, but we know it’s important and we always feel rewarded when we do it.
It’s been a big part of what we’ve done for the last 20 years. I guess this is our 20th year. And, yeah, we, set out as a goal. I think it was Allison’s suggestion that we set our goal at 20,000, for 20 years. And, where are we at Allison? We’re getting close to 21,000, aren’t we?
[00:06:34] Allison: Yeah.
[00:06:37] Leo: Yeah, we’ve got a couple of weeks to go before the walk and we’ve passed our goal. We’ve raised our goal a little bit. So we’re still raising a little bit of money. I guess that’s a good time for me to be quiet and maybe pass it over to Rosalie, who has a different perspective and how it changed her life.
She has not had breast cancer, but it certainly changed her life.
[00:06:59] Rosalie: Thanks, Leo. I’m Rosalie, I’m Leo’s wife and mom to our three girls, and my life changed when I met Leo and soon after became an instant mom to three kids under the age of seven. The youngest, Kelley was still even in diapers. As my husband said previously, I helped potty train her and everything.
I was working full time and so once we got married, I thought I was going to continue on that path of worki and, and taking care of three girls and it was a lot harder than I anticipated. So I chose to quit my job and just be a full time mom. And fortunately for us, we were able to do that, financially and otherwise, and I just thought it was a better decision for the family.
So I was happy to do it, wasn’t really my first plan, as I said, so for a while there, I ended up working part time and then I just decided it wasn’t fair for anybody, including myself. But I remember, wondering if this was real, what I was supposed to be doing. I prayed a lot, I talked to my mom
about, how this was going to be coming in. It’s to mom and the wife, to three young girls and, what sacrifices I would make and, all the blessings that I would receive at the same time. and I was also reminded about, doing breast cancer, self breast cancer exams.
I was always very good about mammograms. But always go in every year, do that. But I would never care of myself in that, sense. So now I’m a pest about that with my sisters and my daughters, all the other, females that I know. So a nag, I guess maybe sometimes, but yeah, so my life did change quite a bit, in the fact that, becoming an instant mom and wife and mom to three girls, but, all for the better.
And, it’s just been a blessing. I wouldn’t, I can’t imagine any other way. However, it came at such a great loss, for them. And, that, so it’s bittersweet at times, especially at the beginning, I think I felt very bittersweet. Like, why am I here and their mom’s not?
So I would ask myself that. I would ask God that, I would ask my mom that. Fortunately, the answer was that, this is where I was supposed to be. And I’m happy to be here. I’m happy to have my three girls. And I consider them mine as well as Jen’s and, Leo’s. So Laura.
[00:10:12] Laura: I will start out with a brief introduction of myself.
So I’m Laura. I am the oldest of the three daughters in the family. I studied at the University of Virginia, where I majored in foreign affairs and graduated in 2019. And then upon graduating, I moved to New York then to the Washington, D. C. area where I’ve been since working on Capitol Hill for a member of Congress.
And then just to turn a little bit to my story, so while I was very young, when my mother, Jen passed away I was six years old, I do have memories of her. I remember a few distinct moments in my life leading up to her death, like wanting to stay, and play with all the kids in the cul de sac like my dad was mentioning earlier instead of another trip to the hospital.
And I remember the moment pretty distinctly where my dad told me that my mom would not be coming home from the hospital. And, I remember the final goodbye, brief moments, but I am grateful that I have the memory to look back on, and it was definitely challenging for many obvious reasons to lose my mother at the age of six.
At a very early age, I was introduced to the idea of mortality. I had to learn how to deal with loss and say goodbye, try to be the best role model I can for my two younger sisters. And come to accept that a person who, I assumed, or, somebody who had been a constant in my life just wasn’t going to be there anymore.
And this was all at a time when I was learning how to ride a bike and picking out my favorite color in school, which of course was pink. And I still do like pink a lot. Anyway, despite these challenges at the same time, my mom’s passing brought a new passion into my family, which I’m very grateful for.
The passion that we all want to do our part to find a way to end breast cancer. And it also led to my mom who’s here with us today, Rosalie, entering my life. And I really honestly could not imagine my life without her in it. And it also taught me the value of having a really good support system around you when you’re going through something difficult or not.
So anyway, my mom’s passing has shaped a lot of choices in my life. Ultimately wanting to work my way towards making my family proud. And my mom, especially proud in everything that I do. So again, thank you for having us here today. Excited to be here. And I’m going to pass it over to my younger sister, Allison.
[00:13:04] Allison: Hi, thanks for having us again. I’m Allison. I live in Boston, live and work in Boston at Boston University. I went to Boston college, so it’s
Boston going on, but I graduated in 2022. I’ve been here since. And it’s the question of how breast cancer has changed my life is interesting for me because I don’t have any of those sort of poor memories that Laura can speak to.
So I think for me, it’s more how it’s shaped my life. Because I really don’t have a single memory pre this experience. And I think it’s been, my mom said, bittersweet, my whole life. In the beginning, when I was young, it was a huge part of my identity. And very hard to put into words. I think as I’ve gotten older and entered my adult life, I’m looking back and realizing how big a piece of my identity it was.
And as I learn more from my parents and my family, just growing up, like learning what all those terms meant that a six year old can’t wrap their head around, it’s really, it’s been weird at times, I will say. But yeah, just being a kid, and having this tragedy always around me, it was a little weird.
There were times in school where I found myself having to explain things, explain on Mother’s Day why I was, I have two moms, and it was, it’s strange to be in the classroom and all the kids are giving you funny looks, and all the parents are too. So that was, I can say as a kid, like that’s really where the experience hit me the most, but then our experiences Susan G Komen has been so transformational for me specifically.
I think having that early exposure to fundraising has really set me on my career path. I work in the development office at BU, and I really don’t think I would be doing that at all if I hadn’t had this experience and been exposed to fundraising when I was a teenager, I think that was really valuable for me.
The people I met through Susan G Komen, the survivors and co survivors, it’s just given me a really interesting outlook on life and my career.
[00:15:36] Leo: Adam, I don’t know, you can tell that Allison has really red hair and Kelley who’s not on as even more fire red hair. And, Allison was talking about experiences and explaining things. And I don’t know how many times are you in the grocery store with mom and someone says, Oh, where do you get your red hair? Because, everyone assumes that rosalie is their natural birth mom, and they look at each other, or they’ll say something like, Oh, she looks just like you, except for the red hair.
We just look at each other yeah, all right. That’s happened a few times, right?
[00:16:15] Allison: Yeah, definitely.
[00:16:18] Leo: Yeah. And then, sometimes you try to explain it, and then sometimes it’s Just let them think what they want to think.
[00:16:25] Adam Walker: Yeah. It’s sometimes easier to let it go. I get that. so I’m curious if you want to talk a little bit more. Allison, you mentioned fundraising and then I think Leo, you had mentioned your overall fundraising goal. So I think you, you have a goal for this year. I think you said you already hit it. I’d love for you to just talk a little bit more about that.
[00:16:42] Leo: Yeah, Allison said it. we Wad a little family meeting over text and decided we were going to, let me, I’ll just explain how we’ve done it over the years.
The first several years I led, we started fundraising in 2004, the first year after Jen passed away, and I don’t remember what my goal was or how much we raised exactly. It was a lot. We raised over, probably over 15,000 that year. And every year, while the girls were young, I led the charge, I’d sign up and I’d send up emails and do the fundraising and we’d raise some money.
And then as the girls each entered into high school, Laura was the first to take over the fundraising part of it, leadership for the family. And, I still helped. I still sent, Laura would write the email or the message and I would forward it on to the people that I would, have donated to my fundraising in the past.
And we’d all did that and we’d post things for Facebook and that sort of thing. So Laura did it for 2 or 3 years. Allison did it for 2 or 3 years. And, when Allison was in high school, she was part of the More Than Pink campaign and in magazines and commercials on television. And that was pretty exciting for the family to see Allison on TV.
And I think I was in Seattle one day and it was Allison’s face in the magazine bookstores. Pretty cool, I love that. yeah. And then, Kelley did it as well. So she led it when she was in high school. So, that kind of gets us now Kelley’s in college and this year, and I think last couple of years, Rosalie was doing the leading of it.
And then this year we decided to, we’re going to, do it as the Titus family. So, we’re doing it together. Allison set the goal of 20,000. It was her idea. Maybe it was Laura’s idea. I don’t know. Maybe it was Laura’s idea and Allison said it. That’s sometimes that’s how it works sometimes.
And then Laura looks at me like, who gets credit here?
But, yeah, so we set the goal at 20,000 and we send out emails and did our social media things. And I think we really quickly got to about 15,000. I think that happened in a couple of weeks. And then, as the summer was lagging around, we went on a little family vacation, got ourselves together and got another email put together, sent it out, and then we hit 20,000 pretty quick. We’re closing in on 21,000. I didn’t keep records for 20 years. I did a kind of a quick off the, you mentioned at the beginning, we’ve raised over 350,000. I think. We’re getting close to we’re getting close probably 375,000 based on my just memory of what we’ve raised over the years.
[00:19:49] Adam Walker: Wow. That’s amazing. And Allison, you mentioned that you’re in development, which is of course, nonprofit code for fundraising. So you’re in development and that this affected your career trajectory. Laura, I’m curious, did it affect yours and how has it affected Kelley’s? I wonder if you could all speak to that.
[00:20:07] Laura: Yeah, I can speak a little, and of course Kelley isn’t here, but I can speak a little bit to myself and a little bit about, I think Kelley as well. So as Allison shared, she was on the fundraising path. I’m on a different path that I work, on Capitol Hill, which is a, it can be a zoo. But it’s a really incredible place to work and I’ve loved all the opportunities that have come my way, since I’ve been here.
And, right now I work n, the legislative team for a member of Congress who, sits on the Appropriations Committee. And that committee is tasked with putting together, the,annual budget for the next fiscal year. In my work, I advise the congressman on healthcare issues as part of my portfolio.
It’s really surreal. I’m looking at it from a different angle, but I get to meet with advocates all the time. Sometimes Susan G Komen advocates who come in, to push Congress to fund different initiatives, at different levels for the next year. And, I get to take everything I learned from them and then advise my boss on what he should push for. And then we get to see things actually happen. Hopefully it can take some time here on the Hill, but we get the job done eventually. So anyway, yeah, I’m on the legislative side. I’ve gotten an opportunity to use what I’ve learned from a very young age about access to health care and the barriers that we face
affect a lot of people. Like you think it can’t happen to you, but it can happen to anyone. It doesn’t really matter where you live and people, whether you’re in urban, suburban, or rural areas all face different barriers to care. So learning about that, and looking for ways to increase access to health care for all Americans has been something that I’ve been, love to work on for my boss, and
keep the momentum going of our goals as a family to end breast cancer alive in a different avenue.
And then Kelley, of course, our youngest sister, who’s in class today. I think it’s her first week of classes for her senior year of college. She goes to Michigan State and she, of course, doesn’t have a career lined up quite yet, but I’m sure she’ll be getting that together soon. But she is very different from Allison and myself.
She is an engineer, so she’s very interested in math and science and everything that I’m not, but she is studying biomedical engineering. And I think she’s at a stage where she’s still figuring out what she wants to do. But I think, being the person behind the scenes developing that new equipment that can detect the lump earlier or whatever, the, I can’t say, I can’t even talk like an engineer, but anyway, she’s looking at it from that angle, on the healthcare side as well.
And we’re all kind of tag teaming just in different directions. It’s cool. I don’t think it was part of any of our plans, to somehow, have our careers line up with our childhood experiences, but it’s just turned out that way. So anyway, I’ve been talking for enough, so I’ll turn it back to you, Adam, unless anybody else wants to chime in.
[00:23:58] Adam Walker: Allison, do you want to share anything else about your career trajectory or, justwhat you shared earlier?
[00:24:03] Allison: Yeah, it’s really interesting that the three of us, it’s like a subconscious thing in our career paths that we’ve chosen that it’s connected to breast cancer and our childhood experiences, like Laura said.
For me, I didn’t really plan on the career path that I have in college. I studied English, didn’t have a clue about what I wanted to do with that. And when I graduated, I got a grant writing job and in doing that job, I was realizing that my fundraising experience as a teenager could really carry over into this whole industry that I didn’t really know much about besides the women that I knew at Susan G. Komen and their development office. And so that opened a new window for me. And when I got my job at Boston University, I was really excited because I realized how much there was to do, how much work there is to do.
[00:25:02] Adam Walker: I love that. I love that. You’ve all got a lot of experience around, giving support, being supported around breast cancer in general.
So I’m curious for each of you, what would you want other children or other spouses or other loved ones to know if they’re supporting someone that’s going through breast cancer right now?
[00:25:25] Leo: For me, and there’s so many different ways to, it really just depends on the perspective and the situation.
We didn’t have a lot of time to face having breast cancer. Our story is after Jen passed away, it was a very short time that we were dealing with breast cancer. And so it’s hard for me to give advice to someone who’s going through it because I don’t feel like I even remember going through it. It was so fast. But, when you ask that, the first thing that comes to mind is I had a very good friend of mine, years ago, called me up and said, you want to have lunch? And we had lunch, we were talking about work stuff and, the very end of lunch, after the bill came, he asked the question, what stage was your wife, when she was diagnosed with cancer?
That was completely out of my field from the other stuff we were talking about. Turned out, his wife had just been recently diagnosed and he wanted to talk about it, but it’s having a hard time getting to it over lunch. Probably thinking, because I’d lost my wife is very awkward and it was, so she had been diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer.
They had a young girl. I don’t remember her age at the time, maybe 5 or 6 and he wanted to know what I thought and what my advice was and what to do. And I honestly, I had a hard time giving advice because of my perspective and the only thing I could tell h,im was I said, listen, you don’t know how much time you have.
Jen was diagnosed with stage 2 cancer and she died 4 months later. His wife had been diagnosed with stage four metastatic breast cancer. And I just said, just live life the best you can make the most memories. You can have the best experience you can pray and hope that you’re able to fight it and live a very long time.
And if it does, come where, your spouse passes that you, did everything you could to make a lot of great memories and that’s exactly what he did. And he, I remember, going to Disney World, they traveled to the Caribbean together as a family. I think they went to Paris. They did a lot of things. She lived for another five or six years after her diagnosis, which was incredible to me compared to what I went through. So they have a lot more memories and a lot more things that they, you know, a legacy there that, we didn’t get that chance. So that’s the only thing I can say.
I don’t know if, because of our story is to those who are going through it just, be positive, make memories, and enjoy yourself and make as many memories as you can. I’ll be quiet.
[00:28:47] Allison: I can chime in. That’s a really tough question to answer, because of all the reasons my dad was talking about how it’s really just a situation of loss for us.
And we’re used to being the ones who were supported, not the ones who needed to. Who are there to support somebody else? But I think that something I would say, and I hate how, cliche it sounds and it’s not really what anybody wants to hear that kind of no matter what happens, yeah, if you’re making the most of every moment, there’s really nothing else you can do as long as you’re following that. Spending time with loved ones and trying as many new experiences you can, you just have to unfortunately, let it play out as it plays out. But know that there can be so many, you can have such a lasting impact no matter how short or long you’re here. we’re all leaving at some point.
And I think that my mom has had a really lasting impact, not only on my sisters and I, my mom, Rosalie, my dad, our entire family, so many of our friends, and the memory lives on. And I think even has added value to our lives. Otherwise we would have gone through life probably taking a lot more for granted, if we had not lost somebody at such a young age. So if you’re open to letting the good show itself at some point, I think there can be a lot of good that comes from these types of tragic situations. I was just going to say, I was going to echo what Laura and my dad were saying about that positivity and not taking every day for granted.
It’s funny and Laura and I have touched on memory and lack of memory in my whole life. I have been, every time I can find a connection to my mom, I really cherish that, photos, videos, her old journals, and I remember there was one time I was reading through her old diary after she had gotten diagnosed, and she made a note in her journal, she was saying, she went to the grocery store today.
And she’s learning to cherish those everyday moments and not be afraid of breast cancer. And I thought that was really powerful. And I try to take that kind of mindset with me every day and know that everybody’s suffering behind closed doors and you don’t know what they’re going through. But I feel like that perspective has really helped me, open myself up to other people. And when they’re suffering, I try to be as supportive as I can, like coming from that angle.
[00:31:44] Rosalie: My advice to children and spouses is just to be there, listen, don’t always, if you have a loved one that’s going through it, don’t feel like you have to solve their problem. Most of the time, just listening is more important than anything else.
And, because I was never really holding my girlfriend’s hand, but I was, I’d pick up the phone anytime she called and we’re states away and we could talk to each other all the time. And, it meant more to her than it did to me, to know that, I was there for her and vice versa.
[00:32:28] Laura: So I just want to add one thing.
So my dad is really passionate about family history and finding things. He wrote a book on our family history. And that’s so cool to have our entire history written down in one place. I didn’t have to do any work and it’s right there and I can look back and see where I came from and the stories before me and we live in a, world now where it’s so easy to
document what’s happening to us. And so Allison was referencing my mom’s journal. And that has been one of the most valuable things to look back on is we don’t have we have some videos and pictures, which are great. But I think just, I would encourage people to write down their experiences and tell their stories every day, or as often as you want, just because it’s really helpful and encouraging to get to look back at that. Anyway, that’s all I wanted to add.
[00:33:31] Adam Walker: All right. I love that. Write in your journal, write your stories down, that write your stories down. They mean so much. Oh, this has been great. I think that’s actually a good place to close this out, with your story.
And I really appreciate all of you joining us on the show, sharing your shared experience, sharing your memories and just sharing some hope at the end as well. So thank you so much for being here.
[00:33:57] Laura: Thanks for having us.
[00:33:58] Rosalie: Thank you.
[00:33:59] Leo: Yeah, really appreciate the opportunity to share the story.
And if anyone out there is listening who hasn’t donated to Komen yet, the Titus family, if you go to the main page for Komen on the walk, we’re in the top 10 of the national fundraisers. You can just click on us and donate 10 bucks or how much however much you want just to help the cause, we appreciate it.
So thank you all very much. Thank you adam for having us.
[00:34:27] Allison: Thank you.
[00:34:27] Adam Walker: So appreciate that. Thank you.
Thanks for listening to Real Pink, a weekly podcast by Susan G Komen. For more episodes, visit realpink.komen.org. And for more on breast cancer, visit komen.org. Make sure to check out @SusanGKomen on social media. I’m your host, Adam. You can find me on Twitter @AJWalker or on my blog, adamjwalker.com.