LL Cool J’s wife, Simone Smith, has been cancer-free for over 20 years.
The jewelry designer recently sat down on the Tamron Hall Show, where she reflected on her Stage 3 bone cancer diagnosis of chondrosarcoma in 2004, how she made it through her illness, and how her diagnosis gave birth to her jewelry brand, Simone I. Smith, in 2011.
“I wake up every morning thankful. I thank God for waking me up in my right mind. You can't take life for granted…because life will throw you some curves,” Smith said.
She explained that at the time of her diagnosis, her and LL’s daughter, Nina, was four years old.
“I was just like, ‘Ain't nobody going to raise these kids with [LL] but me. So you know you wake up and you and you fight, and I trusted God, and I knew that God had me,” Smith added. “My grandmother was still alive at the time, and I was on her 4 a.m. prayer call every single morning while I was going through it.”
She said that she kept her “faith” and instilled a “willpower” within herself to “wake up.”
“You can't surround yourself with negative people,” she continued. “I just woke up, and I was like, ‘Thank you, Jesus, for waking me up this morning. What do I need to do?’”
She also revealed that it took her two and a half years to learn how to walk again. In that time, she created her jewelry brand’s first piece: a lollipop pendant based on a tattoo she had that was disfigured during her surgery.
“I named it a sweet touch of hope. Because the candy represents how sweet life is, the bite represents what cancer does to the person, and then I have my logo that comes out of the bite that just shows my journey from being diagnosed with cancer and living cancer-free.”
Smith and LL have been married since 1995, and in that time, have welcomed four children together: a 36-year-old son named Najee, a 35-year-old daughter named Italia, a 30-year-old daughter named Samaria, and a 25-year-old daughter named Nina.
