412: Why is the Lipstick Journey Such an Awesome Company Helping Cancer Patients Thrive

In the latest episode of On the Brink with Andi Simon, we’re thrilled to feature Anna Warner-Mayes, an inspiring entrepreneur whose company, The Lipstick Journey, is making waves with purpose and profitability. She is helping cancer patients thrive.  Anna’s story is a testament to resilience, passion, and a deep commitment to making a difference. Her journey, marked by multiple cancer diagnoses and countless treatments, is a source of inspiration for all of us. Anna’s decision to channel her adversity into something powerful and uplifting, The Lipstick Journey , is a beacon of hope and empowerment. Her company, with its unique ‘buy one, give one’ lipstick initiative, is a living proof that even in the face of adversity, we can make a difference.

How Can Lipstick Turn Into a Caring Community for Cancer Patients?

The Lipstick Journey stands apart from typical beauty brands in its commitment to giving back to a community that has supported Anna through her own battles. Each lipstick purchase goes beyond the buyer to reach a cancer fighter, serving as a reminder of beauty, strength, and connection in the face of struggle. The concept is simple but powerful: each product bought gives a lipstick to someone battling cancer, offering them a small, meaningful moment of self-care and solidarity. As Anna shares on the podcast, ‘Lipstick was always a little touch of normalcy for me, a way to brighten my day despite the challenges I faced.’ This gesture embodies her desire to uplift others through beauty and kindness, and it’s a call for all of us to come together and support those in need.

As Anna has said: “What sets me apart from others is my mission while fighting cancer myself. For every lipstick purchased, one gets donated and when someone purchases, I allow them to choose the recipient. This has been extremely rewarding and heartfelt as some of the recipients send me personal notes. In my mission to help thrivers know they don’t fight alone, I get the support from them knowing I also do not fight alone.”

You might prefer to watch the interview on YouTube:

Women Entrepreneurs are Creating Companies with Purpose and Profits

Throughout the podcast, Anna shares how she found purpose amid adversity, which ultimately led her to launch The Lipstick Journey. This endeavor goes beyond typical entrepreneurial aspirations; it combines a profitable business model with a heart-centered mission. Her focus on creating a company that serves a dual purpose—empowering consumers while supporting cancer fighters—demonstrates that businesses can thrive while significantly impacting people’s lives. Her message is clear: building a purpose-driven company that operates for profit while profoundly benefiting the communities it touches is possible.

Oor conversation also illuminates broader themes of gratitude, hope, and the importance of lifting each other up. Anna’s story powerfully reminds us that even in the darkest moments, we can find light and strength in the support of others. For Anna, the simple act of sharing lipstick can be a symbol of resilience and a small but impactful way of showing solidarity with those in the cancer community.

Listen to the Power of Community

Listeners will walk away from this episode with an appreciation for the power of community and kindness. Anna’s journey reminds us that by pursuing our passions and building purposeful businesses, we can make a tangible difference in the lives of others. The Lipstick Journey isn’t just about cosmetics; it’s about connection, hope, and the transformative impact that even the smallest act of kindness can bring.

In a world where entrepreneurship often centers around the bottom line, Anna Warner-Mayes is redefining what it means to be a successful business leader. Her dedication to The Lipstick Journey offers a hopeful perspective on businesses’ ability to drive social change, one lipstick at a time. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking for inspiration on combining purpose and profit in ways that benefit both the entrepreneur and the broader community. By supporting The Lipstick Journey, you too can be a part of this transformative journey.

Read more about Anna Warner Mayes journey here:

Website: lipstick-journey.com (Blog)

You must listen to what Danielle Finkelstein and Thyme Sullivan have created with Unicorn:

405: How Denielle Finkelstein and Thyme Sullivan Are Revolutionizing Period Care

And how Dr. Dionne Laslo-Baker is creating healthy foods for healthy kids:

403: Dr. Dionne Baker. Making Your Business A Force For Good

Reach out and contact us if you need work on improving your business.  Let’s Talk!

From Observation to Innovation,

CEO | Corporate Anthropologist | Author
Simonassociates.net
Info@simonassociates.net
@simonandi
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Read the text for our podcast here:

Andi Simon:  Welcome to On the Brink with Andi Simon. I’m Andi Simon, I’m your host and your guide. And my job is to help you see, feel and think in new ways so you can get off the brink. And what I like to do is bring you people who have had journeys through their lives that have been transformative for them, and whose stories can help you begin to see your own life through a fresh lens. You know, as an anthropologist, my joy is stepping out and looking inside in ways that the people who are inside might not know, because we can only see what we know, and we can’t possibly imagine what we imagine, what others are actually going through. So today, I have a wonderful woman with me, Anna Warner-Mayes, and her story is about The Lipstick Journey, but it’s actually about Anna. So I’m going to read you her bio a little bit and encourage you to listen carefully to a woman who has truly tackled all kinds of things to bring you today the joy of looking beautiful even when you’re not feeling well.  So Anna was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States at two years of age, excelling and passionate about music. And I always love this counterpoint about what I love and what I can do. She attended Western Michigan University to study musical theater, but graduated with a degree in, of all things: biomedical science and chemistry. That doesn’t fit, but it works. She spent 30 years in the pharmaceutical industry, with various roles from field sales and training to global marketing operations. She’s been singing and dancing most of her life and has had a wide variety of experiences, including TV, radio, sporting events, church weddings, and even a chance to be on Broadway. Now, this is a nice position in juxtaposition of a musically talented woman who’s in the pharmaceutical industry. She had cancer diagnosed in 2008 and she had a difficult surgery on her neck to remove the cancer, and her right vocal cord was permanently paralyzed. For musicians and singer, this is tough. She regained the use of her voice, but singing was put on the backburner. And then cancer returned three more times. And she currently lives with stage four metastatic cancer. Now, I’ve brought other women on here who have had cancer six times, who have just been diagnosed with cancer. I wish it wasn’t so ubiquitous, but the resilience of the women who are facing these things is something to celebrate, elevate, educate, explore. So, as she writes, cancer has been part of her life for 15 years after her stage four cancer diagnosis in 2017, when she decided to fulfill one of her dreams of all things. She wanted to start her own lipstick company and look at her beautiful lipstick. Colored lipstick and the power of color helped Anna express herself on her journey through her company, so she wanted to help other cancer fighters do the same. So with a cosmetic chemist, she created a product she loved, and the Lipstick Journey Lipstick Company launched in 2019, began with her Buy One, Give One initiative. She gifted almost 5000 lipsticks, probably more now to cancer Thrivers across the country, while also donating partial proceeds to cancer organizations.  And she’s going to tell you about the gifts of giving, the kindness that comes from it, the personal joy, but also the sharing. This is just a rich, wonderful story. She’s grateful for every breath. She and I talked about how every day is a gift, and she and her husband, Jim, reside in Metro Detroit, and as a blended family, they’re parents to five young adults scattered across the country. I think I’m going to pause there and let her share with you her own story, her reflections on her gift of life and the gifts that she continues to give, and how one takes resilience and flies it to these challenges. And I thank you for joining me today.

Anna Warner-Mayes:  Thank you so much, Andi. It’s a pleasure to be here. So I guess I will start with my story or a snippet of the story starting with my first cancer diagnosis. So like you said, I was a representative at the time, pharmaceutical. I was a singer about town. so my voice had a significant impact on my life.  It was something that I hate to say but was a huge part of my identity. Plus I was a mother of young children. So not that I was shouting at them, but singing to them, you know, putting them to bed, things like that. So in 2008, I was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer. and it actually came after the holiday season. I was singing it a lot of places and I kept losing my voice. And then I started to not reach certain notes, and I was massaging my neck and found a nodule kind of in the clavicle area. And, I thought, well, that’s odd. And it was kind of moving around a little bit. It wasn’t painful, so I thought I would just go see an endo, but because it was the holidays I had to wait till January 2nd. And so I went January 2nd, and he did the scope, and he said, I don’t see anything. You probably have thyroid cancer. and my bloodwork was normal.  And he said that it was because there was nothing visible with a scope. And also typically it’s a female in their late 30s. And he said, I just fit the bill. So he scheduled an ultrasound. And on the ultrasound, they found a huge nodule on my thyroid. So they went back, and he said, we’re going to do a biopsy. But thyroid cancer is easy. We’re going to take out the thyroid. You’ll do the radioactive iodine and bada bing, bada bing, you’ll be all set 90% curate. So I went into very positive thinking. Great. If there’s going to be any cancer, it’s going to be this one. Fast forward, the surgery was a month later. And when they opened my neck, the cancer was an encapsulated tumor. So there were multiple tumors all across my neck. And the 45-minute surgery became a seven-hour surgery. And so when I woke up, I remember hearing the nurse tell me, Are you okay? It’s been a long time.  And I was still kind of joyful, like, yeah, this is great. I’m done. I’m awake. And she said it was very complicated. And, in the process, your vocal cord, the laryngeal nerve that supplies your vocal cord was cut. So I was in disbelief. But after 2008, my vocal cord is paralyzed. So I had to stop singing and I actually could not speak for about six months after that. So I had to take a leave of absence and really process. Because one thing, you know, I think if you are blessed enough to have all of your senses, sight, hearing, voice, you don’t really realize until something’s taken away how much it impacts and affects your daily life. And without a voice, I couldn’t say goodnight to my kids. I couldn’t say I love you; I couldn’t work, I couldn’t sing. So in six months, there were two things that happened. One was I was grieving. Grieving a part of my life that had played almost 40 years as my identity, but also grieving the life that I thought I had moving forward. And the prognosis at the time wasn’t great because they had never seen a cancer so aggressive across the neck. So along with that, grieving was the will to fight. Like I just thought, there’s no way I’m leaving my kids. There’s no way whatever that needs to be done is going to be done. Fast forward, my voice came back about six months later, and the radioactive iodine was deemed successful. Cancer free joy. and my voice came back as a whisper, and it randomly came back. I had a lot of speech pathology after that. My vocal cord is still paralyzed. That’s 2008, 2009. I’m going for my annual kind of checkup, and I get the news that your cancer is back. So this time it was in lymph nodes around my neck. And then, another nodule or tumor somewhere in my neck. So grieved again, went through surgery, was worried about my voice that had just come back. And, that surgery went without a hitch. Became like I was only there overnight. And I thought, this is great.  I could speak when I first came out. And then they decided, well, you’re probably refractory to radioactivity and it won’t work on you, so we’re just going to let it go. We got all the cancer out. You’re good. I’m great. So that’s 2009, 2010. I’m back at a checkup. My cancer is back again, and this time it was up my left laryngeal nerve. So it was very, very risky. They had already been in my neck a couple times. And the prognosis wasn’t great. And I was told prior to surgery that because my right side is paralyzed, if that it was wrapped around the left laryngeal nerve. So the chances of them cutting were very high. And so in that case, my physician, my surgeon said you have to wake up. So in order for us to see, you know, even if it’s cut, he said. But when you wake up, if you can’t breathe or speak, don’t panic, but we’ll have to take you.  I’m thinking, don’t panic. So, lots of prayer and crying and grieving again. This is the third year. This is now the most serious it’s been. I went into that surgery, which lasted four hours, went to a wonderful specialist at the University of Michigan, and when I opened my eyes, I was in the hospital room, and the first thing I did was this, to see if my voice was there. Because if my voice was there, that means my left vocal cord is still functioning. And so I remember having a huge smile on my face thinking, it’s still there. They’re not going to have to take me. So after that, the physician came in, the fellows came in and they said it was beautiful. He really scraped it off. But the cancer had spread also across my esophagus. So this time the physician, they decided that I would do seven weeks of external beam radiation top like shoulders up just to clean it out externally, which was a very, very rough time because it was head and neck.  I lost a lot of weight, I couldn’t swallow. And then again, there was a period of time where I lost my voice, both vocal cords paralyzed, but in an open position. So it was very hard to drink fluids, because it was wide open. but fast forward, after the seven weeks of radiation, everything was fine. Again, I was rebuilding and every year after that, cancer free, cancer free. Everything’s great. And so it’s almost like you forget a little bit where you came from and you just kind of start that, oh, well, here I am. I’m done with that. And then in 2017, I was struggling with some numbness in my arm. So I told my doctor at a checkup, he asked, how are things going? Any changes? I’m like, I’m just a little bit numb. But that’s a side effect of a lot of radiation to be expected. He goes, well, let’s check. So he did a CT scan, and they identified several nodules on both of my lungs. I was diagnosed with stage four metastatic thyroid cancer with distant metastases. Now the first thing he said was whatever you do, don’t look at the statistics. I’m like, okay, what do you do? You go to your car, and you open up Google.  And the statistics there basically said 50% of patients are gone in five years, 90% are gone in ten. Now, by then, my youngest son was in eighth grade, and I thought, just get me to his graduation. You know, you kind of bargain in your mind like I’m just going to make it there. So then he’s an adult and they’re all adults, and I can. I’ll be okay. But truly, you’re never okay. Because then there’s another landmark. It’s like, well, just till that first child gets married or just till that first grandchild, there’s always this landmark. So that is the cancer portion. Interwoven with that is the lipstick. So, I believe it was cancer number two.  I realized that I was always going to lipstick counters and, no, it had to be a cancer one because I didn’t have a voice. I was at Sephora, I was at Nordstrom, I was at Macy’s, always trying on lipstick. I couldn’t speak, and those ladies at the counters and at the stores, they became my therapist. They were like what are you looking for? And I was like, telling them I couldn’t speak because of cancer. I whispered, whisper I had cancer. So they would say, oh, you need a coral. It’ll brighten your day. Or oh, you need a red. Let’s fight this. Be fierce. And so I was probably at the counters 2 or 3 times a week up until I was cancer free. And then in the next year I was going back. And that’s when I thought I was in a car, and I remember thinking why do I have hundreds of lipsticks at this point? And the ladies knew me.  They were like, you know, you bought that color probably a few months ago. I’m like, okay. And so I realized that I was using lipstick and the color of the lipstick to describe to the world how I was feeling on the inside or how I wanted it to feel when I went to radiation. I would be wearing red lipstick because I wanted to be fierce. When I started not feeling well, probably four weeks in, I bought a color called raisin because I thought, well, I’m becoming a raisin, I’m frying from the inside out. So that’s when I started a blog, I started writing, and I realized now that my singing voice became my writing voice, everything I could express through the song I was writing. So I started a blog called My Lipstick Journey Through Cancer, and I would write about how I was feeling, what was going on, and at the very bottom. And I would say, and that’s why I’m wearing Bobby Brown reason. And then I would say, because I’m burning from the inside out, I’m feeling like a raisin. And then I would do a little lipstick review, like this lipstick is moisturizing and blah blah, blah would look great on these skin tones. So I did that almost daily for probably five years and my followers grew. I think at peak I was at 40,000 followers, and along with that, I was getting emails and messages of encouragement, of love and of gratitude because they were feeling encouraged as well. So that blog went on. And then after the third diagnosis, it kind of faded between the third and the fourth because life had just resumed. So when I was diagnosed with stage four metastatic cancer in 2017, of course I was devastated, that’s beyond even devastated was hard to hear and then I started asking myself the whys. Like, not why me? Because everyone has something. But why does it keep coming back? What is the purpose? What is my purpose? I already can’t sing. And I grieve about that whenever I see an amazing performance. I can’t sing. My kids have grown up with a mom fighting cancer. Through their youth, it was their youth that was kind of stolen. That’s how I feel. and it took about a week for me to think. Well, what can I do for other people to not feel alone? to not feel hopeless because I thought that was probably my purpose. It’s just because I identified with different feelings throughout the way, throughout the journey. So I wanted others to feel like you’re not alone. There are other people out here that are battling different things, different chronic illnesses, different all kinds of things. So then I thought, well, well, how am I going to make people feel not alone. And it took about another week, and I thought, it’s going to be through lipstick, because that’s when I started writing again, saying, this is what’s happening. I’m back. I’m going to try to write every week. And then I didn’t know how I was going to do this, but immediately I went to Amazon, and I thought, I’ll make lipstick at home and just give it away.  I wanted to go to hospitals. I wanted to sit with other cancer fighters and say, you know, I’m with you. Here’s lipstick. How are you feeling? Here’s this color. This is what helped me, whether they took it or not. But we still had kids at home, and there was no time to make it. So I told my husband, I’m like, you know what, I’m going to have a lipstick company. And he at first thought I was joking. And then I made all the calls, took all the notes, got all the phone numbers found on cosmetic chemists, got the pricing, got a business plan. And probably two days later I’m like, okay, here’s where I called. And then he was like, oh, you’re serious? Like, yes. He’s like, you actually made the calls like I did. And so, that’s when the Lipstick Journey Lipstick Company was born. Now, when I called different manufacturers, I still did not know how long I was going to be around.  So when I called, I would say, how long is this going to take? Because I need it fast. So I found one out of Utah and they told me three months, a year and a half later.

Andi Simon: They didn’t tell you which? Three months.

Anna Warner-Mayes: A year and a half later, the Lipstick Journey Lipstick Company was launched in January of 2019 and fortunately my cancer I was getting scans every three months, was stable, stayed stable and I think the creation of the company was bringing me joy and purpose and excitement. Like, this is so fun. I chose colors, I chose the formula, I named the colors after the moods that I would be feeling while wearing it. And so I chose colors that I thought would look great on any skin tone. But really, I chose them thinking that if everyone hates these or no one likes them, I will have a lifetime supply of colors that I like that look good on me.

Andi Simon:  A joyful and kind. But it’s okay. I can use them all.

Anna Warner-Mayes:  That’s right. So now is 16 months since I launched the Lipstick Journey Lipstick Company in 2019, initially with the intent of giving back partial proceeds to three smaller cancer organizations, cancer support organizations that I had personally worked with and remained angels without cancer and fighting pretty. So that’s how it started. And it was going well. I was at every pop up; I was doing all the things. And then 2020 happened. The pandemic masks. No one was leaving and I’m trying to sell lipstick. So what 2020 afforded me was time. Time to sit in front of a camera on social media. Talk about it. Talk about my heart. Be vulnerable. Talk. Because I was still having to get scanned, you know. I still had stage four cancer. and because of that, the visibility online, the lipstick company grew. I mean, people were shopping online during 2020. People were just buying and buying. But somewhere in towards I think it was about October of 2020, I decided, wouldn’t it be amazing if at the end of the year I gave away 2020 lipsticks? It’s already October. I was about a thousand in. So I’m like, how am I going to sell 1020 to do the buy one, give one? And that’s kind of where the buy one give one kind of started. And I did this big bang kind of thing saying, I’m going to do a buy one, get one. If you know anybody, I will give one to your friend, your family member, your nurse, cancer fighter, cancer survivor. Yeah. oncology nurse, whoever. I will send it to them for free, and it will have a right. I’ll handwrite a card. It’ll be from you. And so it was going well. And then sometime at the end of October, I was on a Zoom with other entrepreneurs, and I happened to meet the founder of Olive in June, Nail Polish, Sarah Tuttle. And she loved the mission. And she said, let’s do this. She goes, Ii’s almost Black Friday. How about if people buy two? They get a nail polish from me.  By January 5th of 2021, I gave away 2050 lipsticks. I surpassed my goal. So all that to say, the company has been amazing. But what the most amazing part for me was all the letters that I got, all the emails, all the private messages on Instagram from not just the people who received the lipstick, but from their family members telling me the stories of the people. So hearing other people’s stories. And that’s really when I realized I created this for them not to feel alone, but it was really also helping me feel a lot less alone. So it’s just this beautiful community, of like, women, you know, just spread. And unfortunately, it is cancer. And so I also get the emails when somebody passes. But when I get those, I do cry because it is heartbreaking. Because it is real, but what brings me joy is their friend or family member that nominated them in the first place will say, she was so excited to get your lipstick and to wear it and that someone even thought of her. And so, you know, that to me is what it was all about. So moving forward with the company, my heart, because that’s what it was about. My heart is nonprofit. So I am currently in the moves to possibly merge or move underneath one of those initial nonprofits that I’ve been supporting with a similar mission. So I’m very excited about that. It’s been a whirlwind of an experience. It’s taught me a lot of things, and I’m still here and it’s seven years later and my cancer is still stable. I don’t know how long it’ll be stable for. I’m just living. I’m trying to live every day to the fullest. I have my voice. I still don’t sing. I kind of haven’t written consistently on the blog because life still happens. But that youngest child in eighth grade who I said, just get me to his graduation, he’s going to start his senior year of college. So it’s been amazing.

Andi Simon: I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes with joy for the fact that you’ve taken something quite awful, and you have woken up every day smiling with a gift to give. You never talk here about you or me or I. It’s about how do I share something with someone else so that together we can smile at something really difficult. The purpose? The mission. but those aren’t words. This is an effort to take and give a gift. It’s like you’re thanking them for giving you purpose and meaning.

Anna Warner-Mayes:  It’s so true. And I think any time you can look outside of yourself, it’s a gift to yourself.

Andi Simon:  Yeah.

Anna Warner-Mayes:  Because you realize, truly, that’s what hope is. You know, it’s not going to come. It’s just going to come from a saying or a poem that talks about the mirror. The mirror is back.  You know you’re lighting the mirror. Use the mirror If you’re putting light out there.

Andi Simon:  It comes back to you.

Anna Warner-Mayes:  It comes back to you. It’s. You’re mirroring it back.

Andi Simon: And so I often I’ve had a whole series of podcasts lately about women entrepreneurs who are building businesses with purpose. They’re at times different than yours are coming to the epiphany that That their corporate life has been less than, has been satisfactory and lots of success and accomplishment, but not, not giving them much meaning and, and, and has sort of almost delayed their ability to be strong women. They’ve done good jobs and they’ve been profitable for whatever division or whatever job they had, but they’re now on the next part of their own journey. It isn’t identical to yours, but your voice sounds like theirs. Where it is no longer about me, it’s about them. How can I give through kindness and something to somebody else? And in the process of doing so, they get elevated themselves. It’s true. And the celebration changes their own lives from I grew a business with good profits, to something that has significance. and I’ve been doing research about it. And women see the world differently.  Some women, it’s less about this business. It’s a lipstick company and all the meaning you have imparted to it. Now humans are meaning makers. So lipstick, and I could say it’s a nice lipstick and you could say all the facts and features of it, but it has little to do with that. It’s exactly right. It’s how this music expressed for me, how I felt then, and gave me a way of looking in the mirror and seeing beauty.

Anna Warner-Mayes:  That’s true. And what’s interesting is I feel like in our day and age currently our current culture is divided. I’m talking about how business culture is divided between businesses with purpose and like influencer culture. Like popularity, use what I use. And I think when you’re toggling between the two, I have to say because it’s a cosmetic, different business coaches would say you need to find influencers who will promote. And I’m thinking I’ve always thought this is not what that’s about. Because it’s too much of my heart. It’s not just a lipstick I made to go to Sephora and $1 million sales. It’s my heart that I’m throwing out there.

Andi Simon:  But you’ve also built a community of folks who are coming together not because of any ethnicity or race or gender, it’s about a common shared human experience. Not pretty ones, not beautiful ones, turning them into integrated meaning. I’ve had several friends who have been diagnosed with cancer recently. I’m going to share with them your story because the radiation and the weight loss, and going on pills afterwards, there’s got to be hope. But hope has to be expressed through something other than a word.

Anna Warner-Mayes: Yes. It’s true. And that’s honestly something that I’ve learned, there’s always these messages of hope and trying to find hope here and hope there. And what I learned over the years is that the hope, at least the hope that I get comes from the people that surround me, the people that encourage. Or if somebody does something nice.

Andi Simon: Yes, hold the door open.

Anna Warner-Mayes:  That for me is hope. I’m like, this is a beautiful world. There’s hope here, you know?

Andi Simon: Well, it also is a beautiful world. I mean, there are times where humans do some ugly things, but at the end of the day, you and I both know that every day is a gift. And I preach to some of the folks I coach, gratitude is not just for you saying thank you to someone else, but it elevates you as well and it changes their day right out. 3 or 5 gratitude notes at the end of the day, and you’ll see how you wake up in the morning happy. Thank you, thank you. It’s not hard. And it’s a wonderful way to do that. but expressing kindness elevates fitness.

Anna Warner-Mayes:  It’s true. And I think that’s why I’ve never really asked. Well, why is this me? Why just me? Because it’s never just me. Everyone has something. Whether it’s something you see or something you don’t.

Andi Simon: Yeah. You know.

Anna Warner-Mayes: And that’s the people that I have sent lipstick to. The letters I get. They saw a lot of them have beautiful presences on social media. And you would never know. Could you talk a little bit about your family? Because I do think and I say this personally sometimes that I’ve been a wonderful mother and my daughters have grown into beautiful young women, and they have great marriages with great guys and great grandkids. I was a professional from the time they were three weeks old. And I often look back and I said, you did a good job growing up, guys. You knew. Yeah, I was, and you did good, but I have to remind myself that that’s a great thing to be. At the same time that you have other roles that the purpose is their multiple purposes and yours, you speak of your children and wanting to be there for their graduation. You didn’t say whether it was high school, or it was college high school. But there’s a desire to be part of them, you know, how have you navigated how the kids navigated your husband? Can you share some of them?

Anna Warner-Mayes:  Yes. I think that was probably the hardest part because they were so young. My first diagnosis, they were five, eight and ten. So all in elementary. And as a matter of fact, my youngest, who was entering kindergarten, was about the time that I was starting to not feel well, but my parents were here. I had help, but as a mother, all I could think during that time was, they’re too young. I’m not leaving. There’s no way I’m leaving. So I couldn’t even picture myself out of their lives. and even now, I do have feelings of guilt thinking, especially the youngest from kindergarten until now, he’s had a mom that has battled cancer the whole time. I think feel like it’s built them to understand that life is beautiful and broken at the same time, that they are just as resilient as people call me resilient.  I mean that to navigate that. And unfortunately, my first husband wasn’t super supportive in my cancer journey. I was driving myself to treatments, even the radiation, every day for seven weeks. So they also experienced divorce and then remarriage to an angel later on and a blended family. But I feel like even that creates resilience and I encourage them to live their passions. And they struggled through, well, what am I supposed to do with my life? What am I going to do? I don’t know what I’m going to college for. And I’m like, nothing’s ever final, nothing. No decision. And my oldest, he’s a physical therapist, and sometimes he has those days. And I’m like, you’re not stuck. Oh, he has a doctorate. I’m like, you’re not stuck.

Andi Simon: No, no, no. And every day it’s a gift, I mean, and myself into somebody else.  There’s no easy way through and there’s no way of knowing what the destination is. This is a beautiful story. I’m so glad you came on to share. I do think it’s time that we wrap up, because I do think that I’ve learned with podcasts that this is about as long as people’s patients are. Tell me, what’s the last couple of things you’d like to leave them with, so they walk away with? Hope is certainly here by certainly, but I think you had some other things to reflect on that they would learn from.

Anna Warner-Mayes:   Yes. I think life can change in a single moment, in a single second. Life can change. So I think an important thing is to never just settle in, just always kind of look around. Enjoy each moment because it can change the next moment because that’s the other thing. Life is beautiful and broken. I said it earlier and but in the broken is where the light comes in. So in between those moments, like I said earlier as well, when I said, get me to graduation now, get me to the wedding and I’ll get me to the first grandchild.  I think human nature is like the landmark retirement, the landmark. But life happens in between.

Andi Simon: Yes.

Anna Warner-Mayes:  So each day is a gift. And if we can find at least one magical moment and focus on that, I think that’s what hope is. Hope is seeing those magic moments in the mundane.

Andi Simon: Yes, In the little things, the lipsticks that you put on your lips to make me smile. The red to show your boldness. The raising to show. Strong arm to be expressive. Humans are absolutely delicious creatures. They have this great ability to be. You can be creative. It’s not an end, it’s really a journey. Then we one way or another, we’re all on and those have benefited, have expressed their appreciation. I cannot thank you enough.

Andi Simon: If they’d like to reach you, can they still buy your lipstick?

Anna Warner-Mayes:  They currently can still buy my lipstick. You can go to theLipstickjourney.com, see a little snippet of the story and purchase the lipstick. What I have left actually, before I transition. and you can go if you’re on Instagram, it’s the lipstick journey, and then you can message me from there. you can email me at Anna@theLipstickjourney.com.

Andi Simon: Perfect. We’ll put that all into the blog post so people can find it. For those of you who join us all the time, I can’t thank you enough for giving me the gift of giving you wisdom, ideas, insights from others. And I do think that the whole series that we have about women who have purpose has expanded well beyond where I thought the women are doing something quite transformative. So are the men. And I do think that I can’t see one without the other. But I do think with something to learn about how to sustain hope, even when things look horrible, how they sustain every day. It’s a gift. Wake up happy. End your day with gratitude and thanks, and you will improve your own sense of well-being and those around you.  You can control this in a way that can lift you and lift others two. And today I’ve been lifted by Anna Warner Mayes, who has given us quite a gift today about her journey and ours. For those of you who come, remember, take the observations you have and turn them into innovations and make sure there’s a reason for doing them, because you have a gift to give somebody else, and it’s a wonderful time to do it. The books all share other people’s stories. Women mean Business, my most recent book with Eddie Frazier and Robin Spaceman, is available on Amazon and is selling like gangbusters. It’s the wisdom of women who want you to see, feel, and think in new ways. We celebrate them, elevate them, and help to educate you and Rethink and On the Brink, the names of my books are all helping you change. I’m going to say goodbye. Thank you for coming. Send us all of your ideas at info at SimonAssociates.net and we’ll be here for you.

Bye now. Take care. Goodbye.

Anna Warner-Mayes:  Thank you.