When Trinida­di­an jour­nal­ist Patrice Grell-Yur­sik start­ed her hair and beau­ty blog in 2006, so­cial me­dia was still young. YouTube wasn’t the video archiv­ing be­he­moth it is to­day. If you want­ed to learn how to deal with nat­ur­al afro-tex­tured hair, you were head­ing to a blog host­ed on Word­Press or Blog­ger for in­for­ma­tion.

These blogs host­ed by most­ly am­a­teur hair ex­perts were a god­send then for women who had no clue how to deal with their kinks and coils and peo­ple’s re­ac­tions to them. Afro­bel­la.com launched in Au­gust 2006 and rapid­ly cre­at­ed a last­ing space for it­self. If you were read­ing her blog, you might have al­so read curlynik­ki.dom and Black Girl Long Hair by Leila Noel­liste, and the now de­funct mane­and­chic.dom

Most of the ear­ly blog­gers have long since piv­ot­ed, but Grell-Yur­sik nev­er stopped up­dat­ing her blog. She shared her hair­care jour­ney on her site, tak­ing mil­lions along as she got curly cuts and learnt about pre-poos and why sham­poos with parabens should be avoid­ed.

She start­ed the blog while work­ing full-time at the Mi­a­mi News Times as a cul­tur­al re­porter. Afro­bel­la be­came a space for the sto­ries that would not find a space on the news site.

“I want­ed to tell more ex­pan­sive sto­ries that re­al­ly fo­cused on black beau­ty, plus-sized styles, lov­ing your­self, the peo­ple that I ad­mired, the peo­ple who helped me to fig­ure out who I was in terms of my iden­ti­ty and in terms of how I want­ed to present my­self to the world,” she said.

As the blog evolved, we saw her reach and in­flu­ence grow. Grell-Yur­sik was be­ing in­vit­ed to events that went be­yond her hair and beau­ty reach, like the African Amer­i­can Film Crit­ics As­so­ci­a­tion Awards, a Kay Jew­el­ers spon­sor­ship, and the re­design of her home of­fice. She took us on those trips with her.

Read­ing Afro­bel­la, we shared the highs. But faith­ful read­ers al­so shared the lows, so when she was phys­i­cal­ly ready to do so in ear­ly Oc­to­ber, Grell-Yur­sik shared her can­cer di­ag­no­sis. Mul­ti­ple myelo­ma is a blood can­cer that tar­gets the plas­ma cells, af­fect­ing the bone mar­row and the body’s abil­i­ty to cre­ate func­tion­ing an­ti­bod­ies. The symp­toms are hid­den.

Her path to di­ag­no­sis be­gan dur­ing a trip home in Oc­to­ber 2023. A mis­judged pot­hole on the North Coast Road on the way to Las Cuevas frac­tured her spine in sev­er­al places. Amaz­ing­ly, she was un­aware of the ex­tent of the dam­age; she thought that she had strained her back.

Can­cer and a frac­tured spine were the un­pleas­ant sur­pris­es she re­ceived when she was di­ag­nosed in Jan­u­ary. There are no symp­toms to look for with mul­ti­ple myelo­ma, and di­ag­no­sis can be dif­fi­cult as both doc­tor and pa­tient have to nav­i­gate through a range of vague is­sues to fi­nal­ly land on the tar­get.

Dr Maria­ma Al­leyne, a lo­cal neona­tol­o­gist who was her­self di­ag­nosed with mul­ti­ple myelo­ma in 2018, said pa­tients need a lot of sup­port be­cause the di­ag­no­sis “is ex­pen­sive, it is soul-crush­ing, it is life-chang­ing.” It is al­so not well-known.

For­tu­nate­ly for Dr Al­leyne and Grell-Yur­sik, both are now in re­mis­sion or read­ing neg­a­tive for can­cer cells, which both said was a beau­ti­ful feel­ing. Since her all-clear in Au­gust, Grell-Yur­sik’s world has re­opened. She has been go­ing to every con­cert pos­si­ble. Mis­sy El­liot, Pearl Jam, Beck, and An­der­son Paak—she’s seen them all. And now that doc­tors have giv­en her all-clear, friends and fam­i­ly are com­ing to Chica­go to vis­it her. This means there will be trips to restau­rants and oth­er spaces for get-to­geth­ers.

As a writer, words mean free­dom, but can­cer was so all-en­com­pass­ing that she could not trans­fer the words in her head to the page. Re­turn­ing to health means that de­sire has re­turned.

Grell-Yur­sik is re­turn­ing to work and has fall­en back in love with blog­ging as a re­sult. As the God­moth­er of Brown Beau­ty Blog­ging, Patrice Grell-Yur­sik is still at­tract­ing brand deals. Tracey El­lis-Ross’ Pat­tern Beau­ty reached out to her about their re­cent­ly launched hand-held steam­er. She had to tell them about her health. They lis­tened and cre­at­ed a cute short-haired draw­ing to ac­com­pa­ny her fea­ture in­ter­view on their web­site.

There is al­so a spon­sored post on Afro­bel­la.com

To­day so­cial me­dia is dom­i­nat­ed by video: YouTube, Tik­Tok, and In­sta­gram, un­like in the ear­ly 2000s. Is there still space for blogs? “I sure hope so,” she says. And Grell-Yur­sik is ready for the new chal­lenge.