A woman who says she is ‘stuck in the body of an eight-year-old’ has explained why she has not revealed her boyfriend’s identity.
Shauna Rae Lesick looks like a child, but she is actually 26 years old. She became well-known after starring in her own TLC reality show, I Am Shauna Rae, which follows her unique life.
In the trailer for the show, which aired in 2022, Shauna Rae described herself as “a 22-year-old woman stuck in the body of an 8-year-old.” When she was 16, doctors told her that she had stopped growing. This news was hard for her to accept.
She told PEOPLE that this period was one of the hardest times in her life. She had always believed she would grow taller, and hearing otherwise felt like “a hammer crashing into glass.”
Shauna Rae decided to focus on herself. She spent time alone to understand who she was and what made her happy. She switched to online school and worked on bettering herself, which helped her come to terms with her condition.
Her growth stopped because of a medical issue. As a child, Shauna Rae was diagnosed with brain cancer. While she survived, the treatment affected her pituitary gland, the part of the body that controls growth. Her condition is officially known as pituitary dwarfism.
Since her show debuted, Shauna Rae has remained in the public eye. She recently appeared on The Unplanned Podcast with Abby and Matt Howard. In the interview, she was asked about her boyfriend and why she keeps his identity private.
She explained that she and her boyfriend don’t mind if people see his face, but she worries about his job. His workplace knows about her and supports her, but she does not want social media to cause problems for him.
She also wants to protect him from labels. She said that unless she is sure she will spend her life with him, she has no plans to share his identity.