Keep Living

By Loreal Chanel "LC" Palmer and Keke Palmer

As long as you’re alive and breathing, you have a say in what direction your life will take. Just keep living.

After seven years of marriage, multiple miscarriages, and three beautiful children, Loreal’s life changed in an instant when she found out that her husband, her first and only love, had a secret. At first, they embraced an untraditional solution, separating romantically but choosing to live in the same house to continue raising their children together. But ultimately, at thirty-two, Loreal would need to start over in life, find herself, and pave her own way forward.

Loreal used to make decisions based on internal fear and arbitrary timelines—until life started making decisions for her. In her inspirational memoir, she decides to step up and start taking control of her own destiny. Choosing to look back and learn from her past, with new insight, Loreal draws from the wisdom of her grandmother and her own personal journey to embolden readers to take control of their futures and turn change into fuel for self-discovery. By remembering her grandmother’s phrase, “keep living,” she realizes that no matter what your past looks like, you are responsible for your own future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Post Hill Press
• Release date: May 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9798888450857

Loreal Chanel "LC" Palmer

Born in Chicago, IL, Loreal Palmer grew up in the small village of Robbins, IL. In 2005, her parents moved the family to Los Angeles, CA, as her younger sister, Lauren “Keke” Palmer’s career took off.  Loreal was homeschooled during high school while simultaneously traveling across the country with her sister writing music and occasionally singing backup during performances. Loreal was recently the breakout star of ABC’s, Claim to Fame, which streams on HULU. The show debuted with the highest ratings across all networks for women and the second highest ratings across all networks for total viewers, following The Bachelorette. Loreal won the competition by winning over the hearts and minds of her housemates and viewers by choosing to be transparent about her experiences growing up and feeling different, as well as the dissolution of her marriage and unconventional friendship that followed.  Since then, she has been flooded with people sharing their stories of being teased, bullied, self-consciousness, and how much it meant to them to watch her journey of self-empowerment. Loreal attended Pasadena City College before transferring to California State University, Northridge, where she is pursuing her degree in English Literature and Creative Writing in hopes of teaching at her alma mater someday. When she’s not busy with academia or her kids, she can be found filming her horror entertainment podcast, Live or Die, with Frank for KeyTV network.

Book preview

cover.jpg

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

Keep Living

© 2024 by Loreal Chanel LC Palmer

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 979-8-88845-084-0

ISBN (eBook): 979-8-88845-085-7

Cover design by Jim Villaflores

Cover photo by Dalvin Adams

Interior design and composition by Greg Johnson, Textbook Perfect

This is a work of nonfiction. All people, locations, events, and situations are portrayed to the best of the author’s memory.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York • Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to my three beautiful children,

who remind me daily that miracles really do happen.

Thank you, Alexander, for being your intelligent little self daily;

your sensitive and sensible nature never ceases to amaze me,

and I know you’ll change the world.

Thank you, Alexandra, for reminding me that seeing things differently is a superpower; you remind me so much of myself,

and I promise to nurture your kindness and curiosity.

Thank you, Aaliyah, for being unapologetically yourself 24/7;

you know what you want and you go for it—keep doing that!

Contents

Foreword by Keke Palmer

Introduction

Chapter 1: Pilot

Chapter 2: Girl Meets World

Chapter 3: Growing Pains

Chapter 4: Family Ties

Chapter 5: Family Matters

Chapter 6: Three’s Company

Chapter 7: Working Title

Chapter 8: The Real World

Chapter 9: Love Island

Chapter 10: Married with Children

Chapter 11: One Day at a Time

Chapter 12: The Good Wife

Chapter 13: Survivor

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Foreword

by Keke Palmer

There is nothing quite like having a big sister; she’s the one who came before you, who was with you from the very beginning, the keeper of countless inside jokes, secrets, and memories and is someone who always has your back…well, if you’re lucky enough to have that kind of big sister, and I am definitely one of the lucky ones.

As you may have already figured out, our family is tight; we love big, work hard, defend one another to the core, and always stick together. Growing up, Loreal and I had different strengths. She was considered quieter and more reserved, and I was considered more extroverted, but the gag is, neither of us fit in one box. My sister is beautifully complex.

I’ve always been inspired by her thirst for knowledge, her passion for great literature and horror films (she’s the one who introduced me to the movie, Candyman and the reason I didn’t sleep for a week—thanks, Sis!). I admire the loyalty and creativity she brings to her family and friends, and into all situations. And now, I particularly admire her ability to step out into the unknown and open up even when it’s really hard. In the midst of a sea of change in circumstances, Loreal chose to live her life to the fullest and to continue to write her own story…the story that she deserves. She went back to school to get her Master’s degree and is now pursuing her PhD. She challenged herself to appear on Claim to Fame, and won the whole damn thing! America got to see what we’ve always known about Loreal and of course, they fell in love with her.

As a new inductee to the most sacred club of motherhood, I’ve been thinking a lot about the women who come before us and the wisdoms they share with each passing generation—a beautiful intergenerational network of knowledge. In this book, Loreal shares many of those powerful wisdoms from our own grandmothers, our spectacular mama, as well as what Loreal has gleaned along the way.

In sharing her story, Loreal gives voice to a lot of beautiful and inspiring revelations, and I can’t wait for you to go on the journey with her.

I’ve witnessed my sister go through fire and come through the other side with grace, strength, and, yes, humor. When many people would lay down, she got up. I know this book will impact lives; inspiring people to change what’s not working in order to live in fulfilled purpose and true happiness. Loreal is a testament to the fact that it is never too late to start fresh and that sometimes unexpected road bumps can be gifts from the universe.

A flood of memories came rushing back when I read this book. I was reminded of the strength of our family, the many memories we’ve made, and of the fact that everything we’ve shared from childhood on has gotten us to who we are and where we are now.

I’ve had a front row seat to Loreal’s transformation from the kind, and sometimes naïve girl (I say it with love) in her twenties to the beautiful, empowered woman in her thirties and you better believe that I’m staying tuned for what’s next and you should too. So, without further ado, Baby, this is Loreal Palmer, and her book Keep Living!

Introduction

"A re you gay?" These three little words would make all the difference to thirty-two-year-old me. They would burst the safe little marital bliss bubble that I had spent the better part of ten years creating, and would thrust me into a place that I had spent my entire life trying to avoid: a place of discomfort. Divorce is stressful enough on its own, listed second only to the death of a spouse as the most stressful life event one can endure. But imagine going through a divorce, and realizing that you don’t really know who you are. You have to deal with emotions and logistics and then you look around and see what you’re left with, and I thought I was left with nothing .

Nothing, metaphorically of course, because our arrangement was actually rather fair and amicable. Mentally and emotionally, however, I was a ball of confusion: Who am I if I’m not a wife? I’m still a mom, but what kind of mom am I? Do I still just do everything exactly the same way I did as a wife? For so long, I had attached my identity to those surrounding me. I was the daughter of Larry and Sharon; the sister of Lauren, Lawrence, and Lawrencia; the mom of Ali, Liyah, and AJ; and my most important role to date, the wife of Frank. I knew who I was to all of these people, but who was I to myself? I didn’t know. I remember sitting there with myself one day after the divorce process had begun, trying to imagine my future, and I couldn’t. I literally could not for the life of me imagine an existence post-divorce. I couldn’t envision what life without Frank would look like, even though I had obviously existed pre-Frank. I just couldn’t see the possibility of an existence post-him.

No one enters a relationship anticipating its end; we’re all expecting a happily ever after, but what happens when your version of happily ever after clashes with your reality? What if your happily ever after had never been rooted in reality to begin with? Frank had been my first kiss, my first sexual experience, my first love, but was that love the kind of love I wanted it to be? These were the questions I’d have to ask myself as I went down the divorce rabbit hole. I slowly came to the realization that what I had been mourning wasn’t necessarily the romantic end of our relationship, but the end of a strong companionship. Who would I watch Food Network with? Who would I watch my B horror movies with? Who would I bother on my road trips? This line of questioning, of course, led me down an entirely new rabbit hole. Did I really ever love Frank? The answer was of course I did, but maybe not like a typical wife loves a husband. Maybe this had just been a platonic love all along.

Frank was and still is my best friend. Over ten years, there wasn’t much I didn’t know about him. The one thing I didn’t know, however, would eventually be our undoing. When Frank came out to me, he asked me to continue our marriage. So I dove into research on mixed-orientation marriages, that’s what they’re called, and found that the ones that were successful usually involved couples well into their sixties. In our early thirties, the odds were not in our favor. The average length of time a mixed-orientation marriage lasted from coming out to divorcing for our age group was two years. Two years? Not knowing who I was without him yet, I was determined to beat those odds. We could make this work; we would make this work.

We couldn’t make this work. The thought of an open marriage seemed okay, given the alternative, but putting it into practice did nothing but convince me that we just weren’t going to work. I downloaded Tinder, while he downloaded Grindr. He went on dates almost every single day of the week. I planned dates, then ghosted the poor men. I couldn’t do this. The more I tried, the lower my self-esteem became. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I go out there and sleep with men who clearly wanted to sleep with me? I was definitely missing that physical aspect of our relationship, so why was I unable to go out there and get it? I was asking the wrong questions. Why couldn’t I see that my husband not wanting to sleep with me was the actual problem here? I don’t mean him being gay. Being gay wasn’t a problem in and of itself. The problem was us thinking that we could be happy in a heterosexual relationship while one of us wasn’t heterosexual. It wasn’t going to work. It was never going to work. But why did I want it to work? Why did I need it to work? That was simple—because I’m the peacemaker.

Anyone with multiple siblings knows that we all play a different role in the family. Keke is the friendly, outgoing empath. Lawrencia is the bossy, spoiled one (we love you Rennie). Lawrence is the stoic, yet ridiculously hilarious one, and I’m the one who everyone counts on to keep the peace when the other personalities clash. I’m the big sister, and apparently I had extended that role outside of my family of origin and into the very way I saw myself existing within the world. I became this peacemaker for everyone and everything, and now I had become the peacemaker in my marriage. The more chaotic it became, the more peace I tried to spread. You know those memes where the world is literally exploding and the caption reads: It’s fine. I’m fine. Those are based on me. I was always okay and always fine…if always actually means never, or if fine and okay mean down bad.

I have never liked stress. No one does, of course, but I would go out of my way to avoid a situation that even hinted at potentially raising my blood pressure (yes, little kid me was worried about her blood pressure). Other kids at the park when I went? Avoid. Raising my hand in class when I absolutely knew the answer? Avoid. And when I couldn’t successfully avoid the discomfort, I would always walk away feeling like this was the absolute worst thing that could ever happen to me in my entire life.

When I was younger, my grandma Mildred had a saying that all her children and grandchildren would hear time and time again. Whenever one of us declared that the worst possible thing ever had happened (all the way from I forgot my line in the play to someone stole my new purse on the bus), her response was always the same: Keep living. That’s it, that was her grand advice. A smirk, maybe a chuckle thrown in, and a keep living. As a kid, I paid it little attention; she was old, and back then old people never made sense when I didn’t want them to. Instead of dissecting what it meant, I would dismiss it as Grandma being Grandma. As I got older, though, it made all the sense in the world. The longer you live, the more you will experience. Some of it will be really good, some of it will be really bad, but you have to keep living in order to find out which one it’ll be.

This book chronicles my many attempts to keep living. There are moments that happen in here that truly felt like the worst thing I could’ve ever imagined happening to me, but things would only go on to get worse! But then they would also get better…and then worse again. I’m told that tragic serenity (thank you Shane) is the term for accepting the unpredictable ebb and flow of life. That it’s this place of being at peace with the fact that life is in constant flux and that at any moment things can go extremely right or extremely wrong, and the only way to find out is to basically keep existing. That’s a scary thought, but I suppose it’s also comforting.

Think about it. The best thing that we can do at any point in our life is to keep living it—that’s it. Whatever the experience may be, you go through it and make it out on the other side. I had gotten really good at navigating around my negative experiences, choosing instead to dance around them in hopes of some magical fairy popping out of the sky and making it all better. I was afraid to accept that whatever was going on was simply my journey; it was a moment in my journey. Yes, some moments were longer than others, and hurt so much worse than others, and often I dealt with back-to-back-to-back worse periods. But they would get better…then worse…then okay…then not too bad— I didn’t die. I just had to keep living.

1

Pilot

You know how on the first day of school, when your teacher says, Okay, boys and girls, we’re going to go around the class and get to know each other, you have to tell everyone your name, age, and one word that describes you ? Well, my name is Loreal, I’m thirty-four, and the word that best describes me is fearful, but I suppose you could also say anxious. I like to psychoanalyze myself from time to time, to attempt to access the most recessive parts of my brain and locate the precise incident that caused my anxiety. It would be awesome if I could now share that moment with you, but I can’t. I haven’t located that file yet, or maybe it doesn’t exist. Maybe it’s genetic.

My grandmother, Mildred Davis, was the most amazing woman to ever exist on planet Earth; I’m ready to argue about it. She grew up in Oxford, Mississippi, during the 1930s. After completing college at the age of sixteen, she moved to Chicago during the great migration of Black people from the South to the North. She opened her own hair salon on Chicago’s West Side that lasted for over forty years. During the race riots, her shop was burned down, and she rebuilt. When she was in her mid-thirties, she was in a horrific car accident in which she severely injured her back. She and the car were thrown into a ditch, and she was afraid that no one would see her down there, so she crawled out just enough that someone, anyone, would see her. The doctors were in awe of the fact that she was even able to move.

When my mom, Sharon, was ten, her father died of lung cancer. When she came home from school that day, my grandmother delivered the news to her and her twin sister, Karen. She hugged them and said, I want you to know that your way of living will not change. It didn’t. Her house was paid off by the time my mother completed high school, and even after my grandmother’s arthritis forced her to close shop, she still did hair from the kitchen of her suburban home for her most loyal customers. I would wake up on Saturday mornings after spending the night and smell the hot comb or perm. I could tell who the customer was based on the smell of the treatment. I was always happiest when it was Miss Lucille—Miss Lucille came bearing gifts. My grandmother had seven children, twenty grandchildren, and too many great-grandchildren to sit here and pretend to count. She was strong, and she was fierce, but she was also scary.

Fearful, anxious, scary. No matter the word, they all have the same meaning in this book. I use fearful because it’s what sounds right to me. Anxiety is what society calls it today, and scary is what my grandmother called it when she saw it in me and made me promise to fight it. I remember in third grade, I wanted to sing in the talent show. Pocahontas was my favorite movie at the time, and although my family identifies solely as Black, I was made aware that we had Native American and Irish roots as well. So my mom made a really big deal out of me performing Colors of the Wind from the Disney movie in the talent show. She was very serious about practice. After school, she would have me sing the song to her over and over again. My voice was fine, but when I performed I resembled a deer in headlights—the rehearsals were for that. She thought that the more I sang, the more familiar it’d become, and the less afraid I’d be. She made me sing that damn song in front of anyone who would listen.

One day after school, she took me to my grandmother’s house to sing it for her. As I stood there in my grandmother’s kitchen, standing as straight as a toothpick, avoiding eye contact, choosing instead to belt my heart out to the microwave, not letting even a fingertip slip out of the invisible box of safety I’d created for myself, my mom started her coaching. You have to look at us when you sing, Lori. Don’t just stand there looking scared. Is you scared? I shook my head no as my eyes were too afraid to even blink. Are. You. Scared? She said it in the softest voice, but it wasn’t sweet. It was that tone every kid knows is a warning, but outsiders wouldn’t be able to pick up on.

She wanted me to answer out loud.

You weren’t allowed to be quiet in my family. Number one, it was disrespectful not to respond verbally when an adult asked you a question. Number two,