Pro skateboarder and model Brooklinn Khoury just updated fans on how she’s looking and feeling following a horrific pit bull attack in 2020.
The 23-year-old has undergone extensive reconstructive surgery in the years since to repair her upper lip and nose, which were torn off by the animal during the mauling. Khoury posted several photos of herself going through that process to social media over the holidays.
“Today I had to remind myself how far I’ve come since the attack,” she wrote. “Looking back at photos and videos makes me feel a way I cannot put into words. But what it does is it shifts my perspective on how precious life is, and also time.”
Most recently, she shared a clip of herself heading to Sephora to get a makeup artist to apply makeup to her upper lip. Khoury shows off her sense of humor about the situation, smiling and making funny faces as the employee draws on her reconstructed facial area.
The model urged fans to always look at the bright side of any situation, no matter how terrible.
“Timing is so unpredictable, but it’s also so divine,” Khoury shared with her fans. “I would have never imagined something like this to happen, but I have learned so much about life, and finding happiness through this whole journey,” she said of the experience.
“Whatever you are going through it will get better, and it will happen the way it needs to,” she wrote.
Khoury explained in another post that her faith in God and support from her family were essential for healing. “When I got into the attack it was so hard to see what the future held for me,” she said. “Thank God for giving me the strength, and the people I have in my life to help me grow, and continue to trust the process.”
The pro athlete previously discussed the attack during a 2021 interview with People.
In November 2020, Khoury was visiting family in Gilbert, Arizona, and bent down to pet her cousin’s 8-year-old pit bull, Diesel. She said she had interacted with the dog several times before and never had any issues.
“I was like, ‘You’re such a good boy.’ He literally sprung from a sitting position like onto my face,” she told the publication. “I was standing, and he was sitting — he literally just sprung up. And he was literally, hanging — literally like arms, legs hanging off of my lip. And my first instinct was like, ‘Oh my God, get on the ground with him, hold his head, go wherever he goes.'”
She tried to follow the dog’s lead at that point to reduce tension on her face. “Finally, I felt a release. And then, something flew and hit the wall,” she said.
“I looked down and my whole shirt was just blood — like blood, blood, blood everywhere,” Khoury recalled. She picked up the piece of her lip from the floor and brought it with her to the emergency room, but doctors were unable to reattach the skin.
Now after years of reconstructive surgery, the model says she’s finding happiness amid the healing process.