The SCAR Project documentary “Baring It All” On Style Network this Saturday at 9 pm.

Tune in this Saturday at 9 pm to the Style Network’s world premiere of “Baring It All”—Patricia Zagarella’s groundbreaking documentary about the Pulitzer nominated SCAR Project.

“Baring It All” follows fashion photographer David Jay, into the worlds of four young breast cancer survivors, exploring their journeys and being photographed for the SCAR Project. “Baring It All” portrays what: “Surviving Cancer. Absolute Reality.” Is really all about, for them (and for the more than 10,000 young women like them, who are diagnosed each year).

“Baring It All” uncovers what’s beneath the pink ribbons.

In the rolling out of the red carpet for Saturday night’s premiere, I interviewed “Baring It All” filmmaker Patricia Zagarella. So without further ado, how about some lights, camera…and action (cue up the first question, enter Patricia Zagarella for the answer parts):

Q: How did you find out about The SCAR Project?

A: David Jay and I have a mutual friend, who was visiting NY from Australia. She randomly bumped into David while on her visit and he told her about the Scar Project. She then sent me a link and my co-producer, Nicola and I, were blown away by the photographs – the beauty and the pain, every image and every woman’s eyes screamed a different story we wanted to learn more.

Q: What inspired you to start filming the documentary?

A: When I first saw the SCAR Project I was captivated by the raw reality conveyed by his photos. Striking and beautiful, yet confronting and almost brutal, they pushed me to a place I normally contentedly avoided. I was both shocked and saddened, but drawn to the images like a magnet. Despite that the photos spoke volumes, I had a barrage of questions screaming in my head, not only about the young women in the photographs but also about the photographer: Who was he? Why was a successful fashion and beauty photographer photographing young breast cancer survivors? Why did he embark on this journey and what motivates him to continue?

Fascinated, I reached out to David Jay – who reached back with enthusiasm and warmth. I then met a genuinely kind and caring man, whose world had been turned upside down when confronted by a close friend’s body after a mastectomy. He told me that he dealt with it the only way he knew how, by taking her picture. And the rest is history.

Q: Can you describe the process, and the emotions of filming such painful images? (ones that most breast cancer patients haven’t seen before they have a mastectomy–hopefully The SCAR Project will change that.)

A: We were an all female team during the photo shoot sessions, our goal was to be unobtrusive and document the event, what we experienced was a palpable transformation taking place before us. Women would come to the door broken and nervous and by the time they left, they had a renewed sense of pride, hope and strength. Every single woman exuded beauty that came from her resolve and attitude, which David captured perfectly.

It was a very special experience, albeit a tough one, being able to capture this transformation, to be able to share in the anguish, the pain, the tears and the laughter.

Q: What were some of the hi-los of filming this project? What surprised you most about filming “Baring It All”?

A: Meeting and spending time with these amazing, strong young women has been an incredible high. I have been touched in a profound way by all the women we met, and I’ve learned so much from them – celebrate life and live in the moment. I remind myself of that daily.

The lows have obviously come when confronted with beautiful young girls struggling to beat this horrible disease.

What surprised me most was the enlightened attitude of such young women and their strength in the face of their mortality.

Q: How did you get into filming?

A: I started working in TV & film in Australia after graduating from University. My first job was working at a TV station and it just went from there.

Q: What do you consider your particular calling in the film industry to be?

A: I enjoy producing, finding compelling stories and character, and then finding the right team to execute that story. I really love meeting people and learning about them, and under the pretense of filmmaking I get to ask lots of questions most people are afraid to.

Q: What other film work have you done?

A: I started working in narrative features, but then about 7 years ago I was presented with the opportunity to co-produce a documentary, and from that point on I was hooked. I loved telling real stories by real people. Who needs a script, real life is far more compelling, heart-warming, and heartbreaking.

Q: The doc was originally titled “Don’t look away”? How did it go from there to “Baring It All?”

A: The doc was originally titled “Don’t Look Away”, a title Nicola my co-producer came up with. We decided on that title early on because people’s initial reaction at hearing about the subject and photos was to look away. The entire message and point of the project was to remove the stigma and normalize something that so many women undergo but no one ever sees or talks about. We wanted people to look at the photos, look at the women, at the scars, and at their eyes. The name was changed when the Style Network came on board as they felt that “Don’t Look Away” didn’t adequately describe what the film was about. After much back and forth, we settled on “Baring It All” as the new title.

Q: How did the Style Network come on board to air the documentary?

A: Two great women, Beth and Andrea from Remarkable Content took my trailer to the Style Network about a year before they actually came on board. The VPs at Style thought it was an important story to tell and one that their viewers could connect with, however one-off documentaries were completely out of the realm of their usual programming that it just didn’t work. They came back to me about a year after our initial conversation and the VPs had come up with an over-brand series called Style Exposed, which would include one-off documentaries. “Baring It All” is the first in the Style Exposed series. Hopefully it’s a success for Style and they continue to produce one-off documentaries with heart.

Q: Who/what/where are you going to watch the premiere?!

A: I will be watching the premiere with David, Joanie, Nicola and my crew at David’s studio on Saturday night.

Q: When/how will the dvds be available?

A: The DVDs will be available on July 25^th through Amazon. The SCAR Project, Volume 1 book is also available on Amazon.

Q: How would you articulate the message you hope people get when they view your doc and the SCAR Project?

A: I want people to see that there is true beauty in strength and hope in the face of despair. There’s power in optimism and it’s ok to have scars and to look at them and let people see them.

In line with the SCAR Project message, the goal is to raise awareness and let people know that young women can and do get breast cancer. Early detection is the best prevention, therefore the more people who see the film or the SCAR Project photos the bigger the impact.

Q: How can people follow you, support the amazing things you are doing like this documentary?

A: People can keep up to date with my work via my website atwww.lostinvision.com or via Facebook.

Q: What are you doing next?

A: I’m developing a project that deals with alternatives to incarceration, with a focus on young women who are at risk, and we hope to help transform their lives before it’s too late.

Q: Not really a question, but I’d just like to thank Patricia for a brilliant interview and also say “go break a leg!” in re: the “Baring It All” premiere this Saturday night. And I’ll just go ahead and say BRAVO! because I know it’s going to, as The SCAR Project intends: Raise public consciousness of early-onset breast cancer, raise funds for breast cancer research/outreach programs and help young survivors see their scars, faces, figures and experiences through a new, honest and ultimately empowering lens. So kudos Patricia. Cheers and kudos.

Blustery Day

[this article is cross-posted at thescarprojectcincy blog.]

When Cincinnati SCAR Project subject Vanessa Tiemeier was talking about her Blustery Day Design business on Fox 19's June "Think Pink"segment, you might have found yourself channeling a little Winnie the Pooh and humming along with this classic.

But then again maybe that's just me. Anyway. I don't know if Vanessa and her sisters, Jessica and Christina, were channeling Winnie the Pooh when they began their Blustery Day Design business, after Vanessa was diagnosed with breast cancer, but they definitely weren't channeling Eeyore.

Vanessa did not sitting around sulking, like Eeyore always did whenever Christopher Robin would put his tail back on, saying "No matter. Most likely lose it again anyway."

Like she told Fox 19's Katie Morgan, "I know for a lot of people, their world just empties out. But for me, I was always: Well, what can I do about it?"

Vanessa credits her positive outlook and upbeat perspective to the incredible support she receives from her family.

Not many lifetime marriages are tested on the "in sickness" vows like Billy and Vanessa have been ever since Vanessa was diagnosed with breast cancer nine months after they said "I do." (Happy anniversary to Billy and Vanessa, btw, who celebrated their 5th anniversary last week! Cheers to you both, and to both of your health, and here's to MANY more anniversaries!)

And then there are Vanessa's sisters, Jessica Yeager and Christina Blust.

"My sisters mean the world to me. They are my best friends," says Vanessa, the sister in the middle.

Like bookends, Vanessa's sisters were by her side, supporting her.

"Besides the obvious actions that were now immediately needed, to learn about her cancer and treatment plan and how we could best support Vanessa in this new, crappy situation..." Jessica explained in a recent interview. "...we also found we all felt like we needed to act, immediately, in another way, too, to make our dream to start a future business together 'real'.

"I think we were destined to have a business together. Our different strengths and preferences complement each other, and we are best friends who truly love working together. Despite the obvious desire we had to do this, we felt no rush towards action on it, since we were each still finishing our degrees, getting married, buying houses, and enjoying young adulthood. Our business plans seemed like something we’d do 'once we grew up' still, and we meanwhile relished our casual chats as young twenty-somethings talking about this sister business we’d certainly have, one day, and just how great it will be.

"Until Vanessa was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer at age 25. That just made us rethink our whole timeline.

"Finding out about her cancer was a major wake up call. We realized that waiting for the 'perfect' time to start just resulted in lots of waiting… and we no longer had the luxury of time in which to wait. The time, perfect or not, was now.

"While Vanessa had her first chemo treatments, we sat next to her in the visitor chairs and talked through our business plan. We took trips to try on wigs together and then followed that up with visits to paper shops. We’d google 'Adriamycin side effects' and then google 'small business web hosting'. It became a joint project, this cancer and this business. Together they formed a strange partnership of slowing things down and speeding things up, all at once.

"The company name that we settled on for our business was Blustery Day Design. This is something of a play on our maiden names of 'Blust', but we also saw including a 'blustery day' in our name as a fitting testimony to both the good and the bad parts of life, the ups and the downs, the happy and the sad. We believe all parts, all days, and all moments, are worth celebrating, acknowledging and supporting. Our business is founded in part on a desire to assist people in really being there for each other, in small but meaningful ways, through everything life contains.

"Once we got 'real', our cancer greeting cards were an obvious first product line for Blustery Day Design to develop. Who better than Vanessa, with her insider perspective, to create authentic and heartfelt cards that said exactly what she wanted to have said to her, exactly what she knew would cheer up someone else who was in just her shoes.

"When she got overloaded by the many very supportive but very pink cards and gifts, Vanessa came up with the 'no pink' card. When she felt her most low from treatments and surgeries that left her bald, boobless, and puffy, she created the 'still beautiful' card. As she weathered the storm that is chemo and all its side effects, Vanessa made the 'chemo brain' card. When we all joked about how many times we just wished there was an actual 'cancer card' you could pull out of your wallet to get special treatment at needed times, our wallet-sized 'cancer card' was born.

"The creation of the different cancer cards is therapeutic for us, but the feedback we hear back from customers who have sent on our cards is truly the most rewarding part. To hear how Vanessa’s insight and experiences have brightened the day of someone else dealing with cancer, or to know our simple and small card let someone know they were loved and supported, gives us such a sense of making a difference in the lives of others in the world wide community – and this is a key part of what our goals are for our business.

"Currently, when I think of my sisters and our business, I am overwhelmed with a feeling of gratitude and hope. Seems rather odd to feel or say, seeing as Vanessa is now more recently diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer, which means her cancer has spread throughout her body, will never be gone, and she will never be 'cured'. She has cancer as a terminal disease now, and the stats that go along with it are both sobering and horrible. We have sister cry sessions over the fact that cancer has taken from us what we each imagined our futures containing – different paths that still end with the three of us, with our own families, old and wrinkly and getting together for ice cream and marathon gab sessions at the ripe age of 96. Life, it’s clear, is not fair, and the privilege of a limitless future is too often taken for granted.

"I’d rather go back to the boring, normal life where our business dreams were slow moving and Vanessa didn’t have cancer, any day. But she has cancer, and we had the business in us all along, and now we’re running with them both – and we have resolved to use the business to defy the cancer.

"We have already made a difference in the lives of people around the world, and have so many ideas to do even more. We are able to make a real contribution towards stopping this awful thing that is cancer, by choosing a promising local cancer research foundation to donate a portion of our cancer cards’ proceeds to.

"We have taken something ugly, and found the beauty there still. We love, and live, sincerely. Life is good."

Not too shabby a mantra.

Vanessa's younger sister, Christina adds, "I am so grateful, every day, that I get to be part of this with two of my favorite people in the world. Stationery makes sense for us — it's all about reaching out in a meaningful way to the people in each of our lives, creating true communication and strengthening relationships no matter if the circumstance is a joyous event or a tough bit of news."

"Being able to reach people with our cards has been amazing," Vanessa sums up, harmonizing with the gratitude her sisters have so eloquently articulated. "I am grateful to be able to share my talent in a positive way and spread peace. Receiving feedback from our customers who give our cards to a friend is the best part. It reaffirms that what we are doing is really touching others. And isn't that what our purpose in life is? -- To spread hope?

"Although I wasn't aware of it at the time, I have come to realize that me creating cancer cards for others to share has been my way of dealing with and expressing myself after my diagnosis. Some people write in a journal, or paint a picture, but for me, it was to use my graphic design talent to outwardly express my thoughts and emotions. And for Christina, it was through her music. She coped by writing songs. She is so gifted with words and melodies, and in way, paints pictures with her songs. I'll never forget the first time I heard 'Tumor' which she wrote after finding out that our Mom had a brain tumor and I had breast cancer all in the same week. She writes eloquently, 'Tumor, you are mistaken: you are actually a small, frenzied moth. I will watch you from the front door. You will kiss the light on my porch, find in its brilliance fatal joy — you will not spread. You will die for love instead.'

"And in the song 'Sudden Amaryllis' she writes 'Sudden amaryllis! In dead fields reach lilies to the sky, to the sky. Hope is dancing in the sky. (Hope is staring right at you.)'. Christina was stricken with the fact that these flowers survive and thrive in the most barren places...in a gravel lot with otherwise no signs of life, these amaryllis flowers stand tall. I think this is a great analogy to my life now," explains Vanessa. "Although there is all this ugliness an misfortune around me, I keep my head up and live sincerely."

Live Sincerely. Now those are two words that'll turn "The End" upside down. It's never too early to start.

Introducing SCAR Project SuperSURVIVORmodel Vanessa Tiemeier

I’d like to introduce my friend, local SCAR Project SuperSURVIVORmodel Vanessa. She and I are on the SCAR Project Cincinnati Exhibit Planning Committe to bring the SCAR Project Exhibit, which premiered in New York City last October. That’s the when and where I met Vanessa. SCAR Project photographer David Jay was giving a private gallery tour and as we approached Vanessa’s portrait she was standing right next to hers.

I was just about as beside myself as she was, literally, standing beside herself, to run into a fellow Cincinnati Survivor in the Big Apple.

Vanessa was diagnosed when she was only 25 years old. Yes, young women get breast cancer. That’s a point The SCAR Project is out to make. The stats are out there for anyone to clearly see, but everyone knows a picture is worth a 1000 words.

A picture also puts a face to the sad reality. I hope it also puts some traction in our race for a cure. Look at these pictures. Please, look at these pictures and I’m sure you’ll agree with me that we’ve had enough breast cancer. I know I’ve had too much breast cancer. And I have way too many friends living with breast cancer and way too many friends I’ve lost to breast cancer. Breast cancer is a bitch.

While I don’t feel like glorying in anyone’s death on this blog or in my life, the way I figure it, if we here in America can find Bin Ladin, I have to believe if we put some red, white, and blue behind all the PINK, we could do away with breast cancer and give the color pink back to little girls who won’t have to grow up and THINK PINK.

Dedicated to the more than 10,000 women under the age of 40 who will be diagnosed this year alone The SCAR Project is an exercise in awareness, hope, reflection and healing. The mission is three-fold: Raise public consciousness of early-onset breast cancer, raise funds for breast cancer research/outreach programs and help young survivors see their scars, faces, figures and experiences through a new, honest and ultimately empowering lens.

And with that, I’ll just hand the mic over to Vanessa:

"I think sometimes I am so good at putting on a pretty face and acting all put-together that some people don't realize the extent of everything that breast cancer survivors go through."

I heard about The SCAR Project through a post made on the Young Survival Coalition online survivor forums. David Jay put a call out for breast cancer survivors willing to travel to NYC to be photographed. I was intrigued but hesitant. I kept wondering if I would really want to or be able to show my scars to strangers, and expose myself like that. But after I emailed another young woman who had already participated and she urged me to go for it, I was excited to make the trek!

I took a 16-hour Greyhound bus ride from Cincinnati to New York City with my husband and younger sister. I was nervous meeting David in a city I had never been. My husband and family shared my nervousness, but supported my decision to want to take part in the project. My motive being that I don’t want to be part of the mold that breast cancer survivors have been confined to. It’s not always pink ribbons and charity runs. Breast cancer oftentimes is glamorized and commercialized.

I think sometimes I am so good at putting on a pretty face and acting all put-together, that some people don’t realize the extent of everything that breast cancer survivors go through. My outward scars and spoken words are only half of the story. They don’t show the emotional and private struggles that are continuously present. They don’t show the burden that my family has willingly endured. They don’t show the lifestyle changes and limitations that come with breast cancer.

David Jay embraces the everyday, personal, true happenings of life, and through his photographs, beautifully portrays every woman’s unique situation. As part of The SCAR Project, I can “just be me”. No covering up or masking the truth. No pretending that everything is fine.

I am so glad I had the opportunity to be a part of this project, and am honored that my photo is one of the ones selected to be in the exhibition. I am excited to represent Cincinnati when the exhibition comes here on September 29th, and look forward to sharing this ground-breaking exhibit with my home-town. After all, breast cancer is a part of my life but it does not define me. It will never be ALL that I am or ALL that I do. I can’t wait for my friends, my co-workers, my community, and the world to see me…as I really am.

—Vanessa Tiemeier, in her own words.