When Amelia Frahm was first diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy, her daughter Tabitha and son Jordan were only 4 and 2.
Frahm desperately searched for a children’s book to explain why Mommy always seemed to be feeling bad or grumpy. She couldn’t find one, so she decided to write her own story to read to her children.
That was the beginning of “Tickles Tabitha’s Cancer-tankerous Mommy.”
Frahm learned her prognosis was good, and she did not require chemotherapy or radiation. She eventually began to move on in her day-to-day busy life — including playing her daughter’s favorite tickling game, Tickles Tabitha, again.
Five years passed and Frahm didn’t give much thought to the story she had written.
Then her best friend Laura Karlman, another young mom, was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia.
“There still wasn’t a children’s book picturing an irritable, moody — and in Laura’s case, bald — mom with cancer,” Frahm said, so she decided to publish her story.
But she was turned down.
“Companies told me they didn’t think there was a market for children’s books about moms with cancer,” she said. “But that was 15 years ago, and now things have changed.”
Now a 15-year breast cancer survivor, Frahm lives in North Carolina but often spends time in Decatur, where her husband works.
She started the Nutcracker Publishing Co., and dedicated it to her friend, who was 39 when she died in 2000. The title comes from the holiday nutcrackers she used to make by stacking and painting clay flower pots. Frahm included one of her nutcrackers with her book when she sent it to “The Rosie O’Donnell Show.” The book gained popularity when O’Donnell recommended it to her audience.
Frahm, who has a degree in public relations/journalism from the University of Florida, has turned several other goals into realities in the 15 years since she was thought of as a cantankerous mom with cancer.
She did a short stint as an airline flight attendant, and she just finished writing a children’s book about nuclear power. Those have been interests since college days, and her first job was handling public relations for a nuclear power plant in Texas, where she also met her husband, Randy.
He has worked as construction manager for a 3M contractor in Decatur for two years, and she and their children are regular visitors here.
During the school year, they live in Apex, N.C., where Jordan, 17, is starting his senior year. Tabitha, 19, is a student at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
Frahm, who grew up in the Florida panhandle at Walnut Hill, also started a program called “Crack Open a Book,” an educational program designed to inform and educate children about cancer. She speaks to schools, health-care groups, organizations and clubs.
“The main thing is I really want people to know that there is a children’s book and cancer education program out there,” Frahm said.
Frahm usually doesn’t go alone to her talks. She is accompanied by the character of Tabitha, a 3-foot head with blonde hair in pigtails — and sometimes it is worn by the real Tabitha.
“As far as I know, this is the first program offered for schools and organizations that talks about a parent’s cancer, and it fits well with the character education offered in schools.”
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