Joy, Always – A Story for Giving Tuesday
On this Giving Tuesday, we want to invite you to participate in this global generosity movement and ask you to consider the Beautifully Flawed Foundation as a recipient of your kindness. As we step out of Thanksgiving Day, family traditions and the commotion of weekend sales, we encourage you to embrace the essence of the holiday season. As a nonprofit organization, we rely on the good heartedness of our supporters that are the backbone to our outreach and our vision to serve young men and women with limb loss and differences. Your tax-deductible dollars are what truly make stories like this one possible:
Meet Emma June
Objectively speaking, Emma June Kent has lost a lot. She’s lost friends, both by circumstance and death. She’s lost time. She’s lost her favorite after-school activities. Even school itself and time with peers, she’s lost. She’s lost her hair and the most obvious is that she lost her leg.
At 13 years old Emma June was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer that usually attacks children in growth spurts. Despite this, what she very clearly has not lost are faith, hope, and joy. Imagine a crown of flowers and whatever face you picture upholding it is the spirit of Emma June – bright, light and certain.
Emma June would describe herself as positive, but there’s a difference between positivity and joy. Positivity can be toxic sometimes – you can feel when it’s forced. There are few things as draining, producing, or entertaining as a false impression of happiness. Joy, on the other hand, looks easy if you truly have it and it carries with a sense of grace. What Emma June really holds is a joy that many people spend a lifetime seeking to acquire. Here’s how she got there:
A Quick Turn of Events
Emma June joined the color guard as she entered middle school, a performing art of dance choreography to accompany the school band. An active and extroverted kid, she loved the hours-long practice time spent with friends. During these practices is when she began to notice a pain in her right knee that led to a significant swelling. Two separate visits to the urgent care suggested a sprained ACL and sent her home to ice and heal. But when the swelling turned “softball-sized,” her parents began to have their doubts.
Within 24 hours of visiting an orthopedist, Emma June had been transferred to two different hospitals and began immediate chemotherapy to target what was, in fact, a massive tumor. The process was so urgent that a dentist made a hospital visit at 8pm to remove her braces so that she could safely undergo the chemotherapy technology. In such a rapid timeline, the Kent family’s life turned seemingly upside down.
Team Unit
When Emma June talks about her diagnosis, therapy and recovery, she often talks about it in the form of “we.” As in, her family. The bonding between herself, her parents and two younger brothers act as a team unit, but she recognizes that it wasn’t always that way. Through a series of life’s arguably most difficult trials, Emma June greatly honors the love of her family.
“My family is the most important thing to me,” she says.
The Challenging Road to Recovery
After more than a year of chemo that failed to significantly reduce the tumor, Emma June underwent a limb salvage surgery in July of 2020. When a portion of the still-cancerous tumor was found to be remaining in her knee, the bones of her leg were replaced with metal – “like a prosthetic, but inside my skin,” she describes. She continued chemo.
In December 2020, Emma June was declared cancer free. She recalls a great celebration of the “we” family-unit to have overcome a more than two year battle. Though in pain as her muscle healed around the foreign metal, life was headed towards “normal.”
It didn’t last long.
Just one month after celebrating her recovery, her doctors discovered cancer on the sciatic nerve that had only two possible outcomes: total paralysis of her leg or amputation. In February of 2021, Emma June lost her leg above the knee. After complications with a persistent infection, further part of her leg was removed shortly after.
Beautifully Flawed
We met Emma June less than two weeks after having been fit for a prosthetic at the Beautifully Flawed Retreat in Del Mar. For the first time in over two years, she was walking again and her smile was one of freedom. There was a lot that happened in the span of a week, but the moment that commemorates in the mind of everyone who witnessed it was Emma June pushing a heavy sled across a parking lot on the conclusive “gym day.” In that moment there was not a smile, but tears – and those spoke a lot about freedom, too.
“My dad has taught me to feel all of my emotions,” said Emma. “You can be sad, but you can’t live in that sadness. You give yourself the time to cry and then you figure it out.”
And figure it out, she has.
She figured out how to hop on one leg for nearly two years. She figured out how to walk on a prosthetic in a week. She figured out how to surf. She figured out how to navigate stairs. She figured out how to cope with losing friends. She figured out how to make new ones. She figured out the power of community. She figured out how to always show up.
“My takeaway from the retreat has been the importance of finding community going through similar circumstances,” she says. “The retreat meant everything to me. We all became a family.”
There’s a line that you cross when you do hard things. Emma June started cancer one way, and now she (and her family) are changed through it. She started the Beautifully Flawed Retreat a certain way and she, literally, walked away differently. When she started a sled push, she was not the same person as she was when she finished it.
Within a week of the publication of this article, Emma June has been declared cancer free. The “again” factor keeps her and her family on reasonable guard about celebration and we hold our breath with them, too. So today we celebrate the principle of joy that Emma June has brought to us in the way she has inevitably done to so many around her. She may have very many iterations of different challenges left in her story and in every step she will surely carry joy through the transformation of it.
Mahalo to Our Sponsors
Thank you to the following corporate sponsors who have already made direct contributions towards our upcoming retreat! We couldn’t do this without the support of:
- Certified Brands Group
- Cobian
- Dukes
- Fjallraven Kanken
- Mae Cargo Jewelry
- Pain Free Kauai
- Primal Kitchen
- Rank Up Academy
- RX Smart Gear
- San Diego Picnic
- YETI
- Feast on This
- Hakus and Love
- Health Ade
- Hoa Kai
- LinkSoul
- Love Handle
- Now Foods
- Point One Vision
- Rustico
- Blender Bombs
- Crossway
- Gnarly Nutrition
- Greenhouse Foods
- Greyston Bakery
- Kokua Suncare
- Mo’s Dough
- Nooty
- PalmDream
- Paper Sunday
- Surfwater
- Palmdream
- Ponyback
- Certified Brands Group
- Cobian
- Dukes
- Fjallraven Kanken
- Mae Cargo Jewelry
- Pain Free Kauai
- Primal Kitchen
- Rank Up Academy
- RX Smart Gear
- San Diego Picnic
- YETI
- Feast on This
- Hakus and Love
- Health Ade
- Hoa Kai
- LinkSoul
- Love Handle
- Now Foods
- Point One Vision
- Rustico
- Blender Bombs
- Crossway
- Gnarly Nutrition
- Greenhouse Foods
- Greyston Bakery
- Kokua Suncare
- Mo’s Dough
- Nooty
- PalmDream
- Paper Sunday
- Surfwater
- Palmdream
- Ponyback
Check out other inspiring stories
Make Incredible Things Happen
Help further our mission and programs that support young people living with limb difference or those who’ve experienced traumatic limb loss by making a tax-deductible donation.
Mahalo to Our Sponsors
Thank you to the following corporate sponsors who have already made direct contributions towards our upcoming retreat! We couldn’t do this without the support of:
- Certified Brands Group
- Cobian
- Dukes
- Fjallraven Kanken
- Mae Cargo Jewelry
- Pain Free Kauai
- Primal Kitchen
- Rank Up Academy
- RX Smart Gear
- San Diego Picnic
- YETI
- Feast on This
- Hakus and Love
- Health Ade
- Hoa Kai
- LinkSoul
- Love Handle
- Now Foods
- Point One Vision
- Rustico
- Blender Bombs
- Crossway
- Gnarly Nutrition
- Greenhouse Foods
- Greyston Bakery
- Kokua Suncare
- Mo’s Dough
- Nooty
- PalmDream
- Paper Sunday
- Surfwater
- Palmdream
- Ponyback
