This browser does not support the Video element.
Importance of prioritizing physical, mental health
FOX 7's Leslie Rangel speaks with a local Latina business owner who's on a mission to help people slow down for the sake of your physical and mental health. This story shows some medical photos that could be difficult to see.
LEANDER, Texas - Latina business owner Rebekah Jasso-Jenson says her skincare business meant to help women slow down, saved her life as she battled cancer not once, but twice.
"I said Sanara were for those moments when you need to step away and heal and I didn’t realize how many moments I was going to need to step away and heal through all this," Jasso-Jensen says with a slight laugh as she works on a test product in her test kitchen that’s been converted from her home living room.
Jasso-Jenson started the company 4 years ago. Her focus was building a plant-based line of indigenous Latin American botanicals to help manage her psoriasis. She didn’t expect two years later, health complications would escalate.
"I was diagnosed in March 2021 with stage zero ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). What that basically means is that the cancer cells are there, but they haven’t yet formed a mass," Jasso-Jenson explains.
Johns Hopkins Medicine reports DCIS accounts for about 20% of breast cancers and typically has no symptoms.
"I felt like I had cheated breast cancer. I was able to omit chemotherapy and radiation, those things that really are hard on your body, and I went through a mastectomy in 2021 thinking that it was behind me," Jasso-Jenson remembers.
Jasso-Jenson was declared cancer-free and focused again on growing Sanara Skincare, shipping her products to high-end spas and informing her community about clean beauty.
In late 2022, she said things quickly took a turn in her life.
"I had actually been following an area on my left breast where I had had my biopsy that felt like scar tissue and it actually had turned into ductal invasive carcinoma. For it to turn into that from a mastectomy is very rare, which is why we just followed it," Jasso-Jenson says.
Through the business of working as a CEO Jasso-Jenson found herself very busy, but says something told her to slow down and make space to pay attention to her body.
"It was my gut and my nagging spirit that just said I’d had enough. I asked my doctor to take it out, get it tested and we did! [My doctor] literally told me it was my insistence and my persistence that saved my life," Jasso-Jenson explains.
As Jasso-Jenson adds in her secret mixture of essential oils to a lavender scented body scrub, she reflects on what her business mission really is, which is to slow down and listen to your body.
"Our body’s health is everything, not just physical but mental health as well and that’s really what gets me through [life] is, feeling those feelings we can’t deny and we shouldn’t deny but knowing there’s something on the other side and I don’t know where that power comes from, but it’s just the process of healing," Jasso-Jenson says.
Jasso-Jenson finished her last round of chemotherapy on June 1st, she says she’s excited to continue her healing journey and expand her businesses and its mission.
To learn more about her business visit sanaraskincare.com.