A mum-of-three who once 'planned her own funeral' after a cancer scare has been crowned as one of TikTok's ones to watch this year.
Jen Brady, also known as Charity Shop Girl, has taken the social media channel by storm with her passion for charity shops and shopping sustainably. Jen, 37, from Sandbach, loves nothing more than a browse around a charity shop to bag a bargain and her videos have attracted over 74,000 followers.
But she also makes a point of sharing the "good and bad days" in her life, including her experience of being diagnosed with skin cancer, which has clearly struck a chord with her followers. She feels this enables people to relate to her more, as a busy mum who enjoys styling herself and her home with cheap and sustainable clothes and bric-a-brac from charity stores.
Jen's come a long way from the moment her legs felt "like concrete" and she was barely able to move due to the shock of being told a mole on her leg was cancerous, reports CheshireLive. At one point she was so worried while waiting to hear if the cancer had spread that she even planned her own funeral.
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Jen said: "I was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2012. I had a mole on my leg and it was getting really dark. I did use sunbeds. I went to a dermatology appointment and they said it was melanoma.
"My ex-husband had to come and pick me up because my legs were like concrete. Within a week, I had an appointment at the Christie Hospital and I had a big chunk of my leg removed. There was a period of about six weeks where I was waiting to find out if it had spread. I was so worried that I'd planned my funeral and made all these decisions.
"I ended up having six operations and thankfully they managed to get it all. When I look back at that time I didn't think I was going to get through.
"Thankfully my family and my ex-husband have been so supportive throughout and that's been a huge help."
But throughout all of this she has continued to enjoy getting out to browse around charity shops whenever she can, and this has now grown to become a career for her. TikTok has even named her one of its ones to watch this year, predicting that Jen will become a household name alongside accounts run by comedian @helen_christie, whose account has 1.4 million followers.
Another knockback experienced by Jen along the way was getting made redundant during the Covid pandemic, having managed a barista bar for Land Rover in Knutsford. She freely admits her confidence nosedived and she also lost her identity as a result, suffering from crippling anxiety.
Jen said she had begin to compare herself to others who seemingly had the perfect life on social media, and this has helped drive her quest to make her account "relatable" to most people. In her words, there's no "fancy background" to her social media videos and she's "not all done up".
She hopes that people watching can see how she styles herself and her home with preloved fashion and bric-a-brac and go on to bag themselves a bargain in their local charity shops.
Jen, who also has over 19,000 followers on Instagram, said it was a suggestion by her daughter Stella, 13, that led to her turning her hobby into a career. Stella suggested she start making videos of her purchases and the account just snowballed from there.
The down-to-earth social media sensation says she can't quite believe she has been named as one of TikTok's ones to watch for 2023, alongside a host of others who have millions of followers between them. She said she feels like she has found her dream career and has even been chosen as an ambassador for the Air Ambulance Service as a result.
She's also overcome her confidence and anxiety issues to do public speaking, having been chosen to co-host the Charity Retail Awards last year. As a result of her powerful story and relatable and inspiring content, charities and companies have been clamouring to work with her.
Jen, who also has a son Joe, 15, and daughter Joni, two, is passionate about supporting the various charities running shops and as part of her work is often invited to visit and help out at donation centres. She's also proud to have been appointed an ambassador for the Air Ambulance Service.
A glimpse at her TikTok account shows her doing everything from mooching around her local charity shop, St Luke's in Sandbach to eyeing up cut price designer gear in Elite Dress Agency in Altrincham. She also loves bagging a bargain piece of bric-a-brac for her home.
She said around 99 per cent of the items in her home come from charity shops, and she loves the fact that they are much more likely to be unique finds in a charity store. Jen also praised the stores for offering a range of quality clothing which she said was often better quality than the fast fashion freely available these days.
Explaining her stance when it comes to social media, Jen said: "I set out just to be myself. At first, I gave myself a hard time. There's no fancy background and I'm not all done up and that seems to have really gone in my favour.
"I wanted people to look at what I was wearing and think 'I can achieve that'. This is very slowly becoming a job but I can't get over the fact that I still don't have as many followers as the other people named by TikTok as ones to watch this year.
"It's really quite humbling because it means the right people are watching the videos and I'm reaching the right people. I've got an incredible family of followers who genuinely care about me and I care about them.
"I wouldn't have got to where I am today without them and without TikTok. Getting onto TikTok is one of the best decisions I have made in my life. It's really saved me.
"I'm hoping I can make a real difference for charities and charity shops in terms of getting more younger people to shop in charity shops too."
And looking back at the challenges she has overcome, she added: "I was in a really bad place during Covid, comparing myself to people on social media who looked like they were having a good time while I was struggling and had lost my identity a bit.
"Now people message me and say ' you have inspired me' and that it's ok to shop in charity shops. I talk about different things including having skin cancer. I share bad days and good days."
Jen has also previously used her love of baking to run the Joella's Bakehouse cake shop in Sandbach but said she found it was too much to juggle alongside her family life. She recalled the lightbulb moment she experienced when she had been sorting through some donated items at a charity HQ, saying she suddenly had an intense feeling that this was exactly where she belonged.
She's found her dream career and it seems like her thousands of followers and the charities she works with would wholeheartedly agree. She's even off to the House of Commons to give a speech at a dinner being held there in March.
Praising Jen and her fellow TikTok sensations, James Stafford, general manager for ops and marketing for TikTok UK and Nordics said: "Creators are the lifeblood of TikTok: they entertain us, educate us, and inspire us every single day. This year's TikTok Creators to Watch list shines a light on the new style-makers, foodies and unique educators that are blazing the trial within the TikTok community and beyond.
"We're all proud to celebrate TikTok's role in cultivating the next generation of talent, and really excited to see where the creators go next!"
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