Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Dear 16 Year Old Me

I love this video. Please watch it.





If you have trouble viewing this, click here...I had trouble with the link.

As a girl who grew up on the Gulf coast, I went to the beach multiple times every year. I made sandcastles, collected shells and sand dollars, loved the sand between my toes and the sound of the waves. I even learned to surf! And, I had probably one bad sunburn every year. As an adult, this scares me...after all, the damage you do to your skin growing up can come back to haunt you later. I have several friends and acquaintances who have been diagnosed with skin cancer in their 20's and 30's. Fortunately, they caught it early.

Scary stuff.

And yet, I still feel like I look better with some sun. I still long for that "glow" in the summer and hate seeing the scars and spider veins on my pasty legs in the winter. And while I've grown more diligent with the sunscreen as I grow older, I find myself wanting "a little sun" every year. However, I am also vain and don't want more sun damage, which is the main reason I use sunscreen now - wrinkles!

Skin cancer is preventable. Use sunscreen.

2 comments:

marty said...

Viewing your blog for the first time...........a very timely video for the sun and surf season.
We do need our vitamin D but we just have to be disciplined and smart about how much exposure we allow our bods to get.

Nice blog, Runner Mom.

Marty

Anne said...

Yikes. This should scare everyone into the sunscreen aisle. What's so scary is how young those people were when their cancer was discovered. I sure wish I had known better when I was 16.