Is You Okay? (20 page)

Now, not everyone wants to break out. A lot of people don't believe they have big things to achieve. Some people prefer just to go along to get along and lead a quiet, humble life. Doing what I have done isn't for everybody, I get it.

Still, there is no reason you can't be one of the people who stands out in whatever you choose to do, whether it's in school or with your dreams, in life, or in your career. I am living proof that it doesn't matter when or where or how you start; all that matters is that you try. And if you stand out long enough, the potential to break out gets closer to 100 percent with each passing day.

When SK and I got married in 2013, we started talking about having a baby right away. I was forty-one years old, which is on the older side to have your first child, but not so old that anyone, least of all SK and I, thought it was impossible.

Our doctors were with us, and we tried everything. Prayers, crystals, diet, massage, shots, vitamins, ointments, acupuncture—the list goes on. There's nothing I didn't try. You name it—if the Internet said it boosted fertility, or aided in conception, we tried it at least once. We went about trying to have a baby like this for several years, with no luck. All we got was pain, and disappointment, and a lot of tears.

I had faith that I was on the right path, that everything happening to us was happening for a reason, but each time it didn't happen, it just felt like a giant slap in the face.
I'd struggled for years—
decades,
really—to achieve what I have in entertainment. I fought and hustled beyond the expectations of nearly everyone I came up against. I made sure to learn from all my mistakes—finally, I had put them in the rearview mirror and forged ahead.

But in my efforts to get pregnant I began wondering if it was all worth it. Does any of this effort mean anything if you don't have someone to pass your legacy on to? All my friends kept telling me that plenty of women had children in their forties: Halle Berry, Gwen Stefani, Celine Dion, Tina Fey. There had to be something we could do.

Finally, SK and I admitted to ourselves that something else had to be done. We needed help beyond what the two of us and our doctors could provide.

We needed a surrogate.

This was not an easy decision. For thirty years, I'd relied almost entirely on myself to get where I was. I had trouble trusting or opening up to more than one person at a time, and now I was supposed to put all my trust and faith in a woman I'd never met? If you'd asked me a year ago, “is you okay?” with this option, I would have said, “is you crazy?!”

In the first months of 2015, SK and I interviewed a handful of wonderful women through an agency called “Gifted Journeys,” with the help of our surrogacy adviser, Wendie Wilson-Miller. As hard as our entire fertility journey had been, these interviews and meetings were some of the most difficult things we faced. This was a huge decision for everyone involved—we were trusting another person to bring our child into the world, and that person was agreeing to basically rent us her body for a year. It's about as intimate a bond as you can create with a perfect stranger.

In April, SK and I found our surrogate. Her name is Shawna. She is amazing. She's more than amazing actually; she's an angel. She's taken such great care of our baby and herself, and she's been so gracious and open about sharing our journey together with all of you.

When Shawna agreed to do this for us and we started the process, something came over me. I felt this irrepressible need to write a book. I didn't know about what yet, but I knew there was a story that had to come out of me before our baby came out of her.

My YouTube channel had taken off in the previous three years in large part because of my challenge videos, so I knew they'd be part of my story. The other, more personal, component of the book was less clear. Then I started thinking about some
of my stories from growing up in Florida. It became apparent pretty quickly, even to me, that I had faced some unique challenges that other people might be able to learn from.

In December, thanks to Dr. Kolb at HRC Pasadena, SK and I got our wish. The implantation procedure had been successful, and Shawna was pregnant. It was the happiest day of our lives. It was the day SK and I had been hoping for and struggling to get to for longer than I can even remember. We were going to bring a new life into this world. I was going to be a mom.

In that moment, I knew what this book needed to be about.

For years, my video creator friends have called me “the mother of the Internet.” Usually I just laughed it off—though I was honored they would think of me that way, it was still a silly title. No one person birthed and raised the Internet. It was a group effort. Like my bestie Hillary Clinton once said, “It takes a village.” Letting the news of our pregnancy sink in, I sat there thinking about the fact that in nine months I would be responsible for raising a child and equipping him or her with the tools to be happy, healthy, and successful. It is a big job, and up until that moment I honestly had no idea how I was going to feel about it. When I learned that I wouldn't
be able to carry our baby, I thought the moment might be difficult. Instead, I felt something completely different: a sense of comfort and familiarity.

I realized that I was already in a very similar position with most of my fans and many of my collaborators on YouTube, Vine, and Snapchat. I was twenty, sometimes thirty years older than many of my “colleagues.” I had so much experience, so much life wisdom, so many lessons learned just sitting inside of me that I was bursting at the seams to share with them, which I never had. That was the book I needed to write.

Writing the book, I realized that the lessons from my life stories weren't just for preteen girls and boys or aspiring YouTubers or new moms like we originally thought. I like to think that they are universal; they apply to everyone. I hope that when you string them together, you'll find that they are like a philosophy that anyone can use to figure out how to accept their true selves, find their path, find their friends, love their family, and be successful in whatever they do, however they define it.

As I sit here, despite all my scared skepticism and early self-doubt, I recognize that my fertility journey was not an exception to the lessons I discovered as I wrote this book—it was the product of them.

I'm different. I made different choices. I had to find my true self to figure out if I really wanted to have a baby. And if I did, I had to accept that there were no excuses. I had to do whatever needed to be done to make it happen, no matter how old I was. As long as I had faith, as long as I was open to the paths that opened themselves to me, as long as I put SK and myself first in our lives, we could overcome every misstep and false start we encountered.

My path has been a bumpy and winding road, with many pitfalls along the way. My hope is that this book will help you avoid some of those obstacles on your journey. My dream is that you can take advantage of its lessons to get a jump on happiness. Because life doesn't have to just be okay. I promise, it can be great.

                                                                          
GloZell Green

                                                                          
February 14, 2016

                                                                          
(Happy Valentine's Day!)

                                                                          
Los Angeles, California

I'd like to acknowledge all the people who contributed to making this book possible. I'm blessed to have so many people in my personal and professional life who share my vision and help turn my ideas into realities.

Kevin “SK” Simon, my husband.

Gloria R Green, my mother.

DeOnzell Green, my sister.

Nidhi Lucky Handa, my manager.

Leslie Miranda, my best friend.

Google/YouTube, my platform.

GloBugZ, my fans.

Byrd Leavell, my literary agent.

Nils Parker, my coauthor.

Christine Aprile, my assistant.

Luke Dempsey and the HarperOne team, my publisher.