Kris Jenner . . . And All Things Kardashian (37 page)

Then, in the summer of 2011, I went back to Garth’s office.

“Okay, I’m ready to have my boobs done again,” I told him. “I think that they make me look matronly. They’re too big. Now what do I do with these implants?”

My self-esteem was taking a beating because I was aging and I didn’t feel as good about myself as I once did. I was also an absolute workaholic, obsessed with work, addicted to my office, and traveling like crazy. I was working hard all the time, not taking any time for myself, and I felt like doing something like this—just for me—might just give me a boost of confidence and make me feel better. I also knew that if I was ever going to be put to sleep again for surgery, I needed a surgeon I trusted 150 percent. That surgeon was Garth. I knew I could give my control over to Garth and be okay with it.

“You don’t need your boobs done,” he told me. “Why in the world would you mess with them? They look great.”

Then he added, “But I will do your neck.”

“What?!” I said. “You’ve been telling me all these years you would never touch my face.”

“It’s time,” he said. “It’s the perfect time. We can fix your neck. It’s been bothering you for a while. So let’s do it.”

I was, like,
What
? Here I had just gotten up the nerve to redo my boobs after thirty years, and now he was telling me, “No, your boobs look great, but let’s do your neck.”

I walked out that day still in a fog. It was finally time. Then the fear took over: all I could think about was what would happen during the surgery. I would be put to sleep. I would lose control. I would be OUT. It was a visual I just could not get out of my head. I debated with myself for days, worried about something going wrong. I spent weeks preparing for the worst. It wasn’t a medical procedure; it was elective surgery, something I didn’t really
have
to do. Something I said I would
never
do.

I kept berating myself:

How selfish are you to do this for yourself when you are everyone else’s manager?

What if, God forbid, you don’t awake from the anesthesia? Who will take care of everybody? Who will be their manager? Who will drive the ship of
Keeping Up with the Kardashians?
Who will take care of the brand?

It was very hard for me to let things go. Fear became my enemy. Fear was overwhelming and powerful.

Finally, I scheduled the surgery. By then it had become a challenge that I couldn’t deny. Yes, it was something that I really wanted for myself. Still, it was something that also scared me to death. I had done my homework on the subject, and I had decided
that I wanted to do it. I looked around. Lots of people have plastic surgery. So, yes, I wanted the surgery, and it just became a challenge for me to overcome my fear and do it.

Then something amazing happened: my children, family, and friends wrapped me in their arms and made me feel so loved.

As I was contemplating the surgery, I was also thinking about my relationships, both past and present. Even after all these years, I was still suffering from the loss of some of my closest friends during my divorce from Robert. That was very, very painful. Not only did I lose a spouse in my divorce, but I also found I could not replace or fix all the relationships I had undone in the process. There were people I let down, people I disappointed, and in the twenty years I have been remarried to Bruce, there were still wounds that never seemed to heal. Despite everything I had, there were still people missing in my life.

When I married Bruce, it took some time for me to reconnect with friends like Joyce and Larry Kraines and Sheila and Randy Kolker. After Robert passed away in 2003, we seemed to find one another again, and it has been one of the most amazing joys. A true awakening, and I feel blessed to have them in my life again.

When I had my boobs done in 1988, the two faces that were there to greet me when I woke up from surgery were Sheila’s and Joyce’s. They were the ones who drove me home from the hospital and put me into bed, who took care of me at the moment when I truly felt the worst I ever had. Making plans for this neck-lift reminded me again how important these girls, as well as my other friends, were and are to me, and I knew I needed them to be there for me again.

The morning of the surgery, the most spectacular thing happened: all of my best friends and all of my children surrounded
me when I got to the hospital. I had asked a few of my girlfriends to be with me when I went into surgery since Bruce couldn’t be there. So when I sat there in the waiting room, waiting for the nurse to call me in for the surgery, I looked around and I saw Shelli Azoff, Joyce Kraines, Sheila Kolker, and Lisa Miles, along with Kimberly, Kourtney, Khloé, and Rob. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world, blessed by love and friendship. I suddenly realized that this was the same group of girls who sat with me so many years ago, waiting for Rob to be born. I burst into tears, overcome with emotion. I almost forgot about being petrified.

With everyone standing around me in the operating room, most in scrubs, I was able to find a complete peace. I was so grateful for where I had been and how far I had come in my life, through drive, ambition, focus. Now I was able to let go, for the first time in twenty years, because I realized in that moment the power of friendship, the power of love, and the power of feeling complete.

There was another essential group of friends in that operating room: the entire camera crew from
Keeping Up with the Kardashians
. They were all in scrubs, too, doing their best to be invisible. A camera crew in the operating room? Absolutely. There is no way I would have had the operation without them. They had been through the last six years of my life, documenting every second. Although most people would cringe at the thought of having a surgery filmed, for me it wouldn’t have been the same without them. This crew are members of my family now. They laugh with me and they cry with me. They have been with me every moment for the last six years. Why in the world would they miss this? As I promised in the beginning:
the cameras roll no matter what.

I looked over at Farnaz Farjam, our wonderful and beautiful producer and now one of my best friends. She was in scrubs, too, and I thought she was going to cry. I looked over at all of my girlfriends,
and I could see the love in their faces. I looked over at my kids; they were holding my hands.

As the anesthesiologist prepped me, I thought about the people in my life I had lost. I thought about how Robert Kardashian would surely get a good laugh out of all of us being together again in a room like this under these circumstances. He would have also surely loved to see us being silly and loving one another and being there for one another.

I thought about Cici, Robert’s cousin and my longtime and ever-loving friend and closest confidante, who was in Houston and couldn’t be there, and how much she was missed. I thought about her parents, Auntie Dorothy and Jack, who had been such a big part of my life. I thought about my girlfriend Mary Frann, and my girlfriend Stephanie Schiller. I thought about my grandparents, Lou and Jim and Mary Lee and True. I thought about Nicole, about how much I loved and missed her and how she would have loved to be there, to go through something like that with all of us. I thought about my stepfather who became my dad, Harry Shannon, and how much I loved him, and how excited I was that my mom was coming up to be with me right after the surgery.

I thought about everyone I’d loved, everyone I’d lost, and everyone who was there in the room with me that day. My whole life seemed to flash before my eyes as I thought about all the people who had joined me on the journey of my lifetime.

I was thinking about all of this as the nurses wheeled me into the operating room. They let me recline while the anesthesiologist administered the IV. Now my biggest fear—going under, losing control—was now my biggest challenge, and I was going to accept it, embrace it, and conquer it. I took a deep breath and exhaled.

“You’ve got about thirty seconds,” said the anesthesiologist. “Then you will really start to feel this.”

I looked back at my family and friends.

“Oh, I love you guys so much,” I said.

I acknowledged everyone individually:

“I love you, Kourtney.”

“I love you, Kim.”

“I love you, Khloé.”

“I love you, Rob.”

I went through the entire list. Love, love, love, love, love, love, love. Six incredible kids, one incredible husband, a world of wonderful friends, an amazing life.

I took people for granted the first time around, in my first life. In my second life, I realized what I had missed so much and how special the people in my life are to me. Although I have always had so many girlfriends, it was this original little group being together again that was so powerful that day. We were all there, and we had all gone through so much. We had all lost a lot, but in spite of those losses, I couldn’t help but think:
Wow, look at what we still have to look forward to. Even though we’re getting older—we’re in our fifties, not our twenties or thirties or forties anymore—life is going to be as fabulous as we make it. How lucky we all are to have each other!

As I lost consciousness, I exhaled and, finally, I let go, trusting in God and my doctor that I would emerge from this experience better, stronger, and ready for the next challenge.

The next thing I knew, I opened my eyes. It had been a ten-hour surgery. But it seemed like only a moment had passed. It was midnight by then. Everyone was still there, including the camera crew, but the only faces I saw were those of my daughter Kim and my best friend, Shelli Azoff, standing over me.

“Mom, are you okay?” Kim said. “Mom, you look beautiful.”

“Kris, I love you,” said Shelli. “Everything went great.”

Kim explained that we were going to get into the ambulance to take me to the recovery center, which was a beautiful private hotel.
I was wheeled out of the office. I felt a breeze outside. I remember the sirens starting and then I realized I was waking up in the middle of the night. For a moment I wondered where I was. I looked over and saw Kimberly sleeping on a rollaway bed on the floor, not a stitch of makeup on, in her pajama top, wearing a pair of leggings and these little socks she sleeps in. And I just thought,
Wow, you must have done something right, because here’s your kid at three in the morning—a woman who has a lot of things on her mind today, including planning her own wedding—sleeping on the floor beside you because she doesn’t want to leave your side.

I closed my eyes, and I thought,
We can do anything together—me, my kids, my husband; my family and I—and all that matters in the whole world is being loved. That’s what life is all about.

Once again, I had that familiar feeling:
This is exactly where I’m supposed to be.

Somehow, I made it through everything and ended up right here. I survived adversity and suffered enormous, tremendous personal loss. I grieved loved ones and drifted away from lifelong friends. But somehow, some way, through the grace of God, I made it through and ended up standing on my feet, stronger than ever.

I believe we are all God’s children put here for a very specific reason, and I believe everything happens for a reason. We are here on this journey to help someone else, encourage someone else, and be a blessing to someone else. If I was put here on earth to only give birth to my babies, I would have been so happy and satisfied with that. But I am so grateful that I was able to do that and then so much more, to strive for perfection, to reach for the stars, to grow, nurture, mentor, befriend, advise, learn, admire, experience, and love. Wow, what a life it has been. What blessings I have received. What love I was able to give and to get. What an amazing world it is that has allowed a wife and mother like me to begin again at age fifty.

We all need a passion and a purpose. When I was young, it was having babies and raising kids. Now it’s running my kids’ careers and keeping up with my husband. My days are so full I don’t know what to do, but I love every single second of it. I often listen to my mom tell me about her day at her children’s shop, Shannon & Co., in La Jolla. I sit on the phone and commiserate with her about a long, hard day, while deep inside I am praising God that she has her work because I honestly believe it keeps her young. Our work and our passion light us up. One of my dear friends, Kathie Lee Gifford, tells me often that she remembers what her dad used to tell her: “Figure out what you love to do in life and then figure out a way to get paid for it.” Those words were my mantra for many years and actually encouraged me to soldier on when I felt defeated if something didn’t work out the way I had planned. I would often think to myself,
Okay, well, then, if this isn’t my career path. So NEXT!
I know we will live longer and happier lives with a passion and a purpose. It’s often said that life is a dance, and I am continually learning new steps.

My family and I have a platform. That’s a privilege, and we don’t ever want to abuse the support and love everyone has given us. Now, it will be up to each and everyone of us in my family individually to decide what we want to do with that platform and how we can influence someone else in a positive way. With mine, I hope to encourage someone else to be a better mother, a better wife, a better lover, and a better friend. I hope to show women at
any
age that you can follow your dreams and still become whatever it is you set your mind to, no matter how big the dream. I would like to communicate that hard work and perseverance really do pay off.

As I’ve repeatedly written, all I ever wanted to do in my life was be a wife and mother and have six kids. Well, I’m living my dream, and I’m lucky enough for whatever reason to be living it on life’s biggest stage: television! I love what I do, and I thank God every
single day for these blessings. He obviously has a bigger plan for my life. My job and responsibility now is to pay attention and be a good steward with the gifts I have been given. To surround myself with good, positive energy and be ready for the next stage. One of the most important things I live by is by all means never to take myself too seriously and for goodness’ sake have a sense of humor. I can’t tell you how many times I stop myself cold in my tracks every day and remind myself to laugh . . . and to lighten up! Having a good sense of humor has helped me through so many trying times and honestly helped me with my stress level. My message is to Pay Attention! You never know what you are going to learn. I learned so much when I was young just sitting in on a business meeting, gaining information for my life to come, developing skills I never in a million years thought I would need to use. I am grateful to those who were kind to me, and especially those who have stopped along the way to lend a bit of encouragement or advice or offer even a hug.