Tenille Dashwood Opens up About Her Battle With Skin Condition

Back in mid-August, Ring of Honor wrestler Tenille Dashwood (formerly known as Emma from her time in WWE) announced she wouldn’t be taking part in the promotion’s upcoming tour of the United Kingdom.

She was quick to explain that it wasn’t due to injury, but choose not to immediately give a reason for her cancellation. Then two days later on Aug. 17 she returned to social media with a lengthy note, revealing her personal struggle with the skin condition known as psoriasis.

“It’s not easy for me to share something so personal publicly,” Dashwood said at the time. “But, hopefully it’ll help someone else going through a hard time and if so then it’s worth it!”

In an interview with Comicbook.com on Friday, Dashwood revealed why she chose to open up on social media.

“I’m still trying to deal with it now, unfortunately. It’s not an easy fix,” Dashwood said. “But I guess I had like a realization a couple months ago when this all kind of starting coming on again and knowing that I’ve been through it before, and all that I’ve been through in my career. I felt very fortunate to be able to do all I’ve done, and to kind of be where I am today, and I just thought, ‘Maybe this has happened for a reason?’ I just thought maybe I have an opportunity now to use where I am as a platform to share it with the world. To kind of say, ‘You know what, sure I’ve done all of these crazy things that I never thought were possible, but I did these even with struggling through hard times that people probably didn’t know about.’ And I just kind of wanted to let people in on that and letting people in oftentimes helps prevent people from judging or from making harsh comments and instead makes them aware of what people struggle with and what people go through.

“I know that people go through a lot worse than I am, so it’s just kind of a way to say, ‘Hey, I’m human and there’s more people out there going through these really hard times,’” she added. “You know, that’s life and we all go through it, and life isn’t basically as amazing as what you might see on social media, unfortunately.”

Dashwood said her goal with the post was to spread a message of positivity.

“You just got to be positive and work through it and find a way and I was just hoping to share that message with everyone and to kind of encourage myself, motivate myself to keep trying to battle this and to help other people as well,” she said.

That positivity and encouragement was returned to her ten-fold, as Dashwood said she received an enormous amount of comments and messages from fans who shared their own stories with her. She said even a month later people were still coming up to her at wrestling events and thanking her.

“Every time I’m having an appearance now, or a signing, or I’m at a show, I have these fans coming up to me just telling me how they read that and sharing their stories with me,” she said. “So I think it’s just really touching that I feel like it did something. That’s what my aim was, to make sure people saw it and realized that I’m human too and to be able to share that together and talk about things I think is really special.”

Dashwood has been a member of the Ring of Honor roster since February, and is booked for a Women of Honor Championship match at the Death Before Dishonor pay-per-view on Friday night in Las Vegas.

ROH Death Before Dishonor airs LIVE from the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas on Friday, September 28, 2018 at 9 p.m. EDT on traditional cable and satellite Pay-Per-View providers, and streaming free for HonorClub VIP, 50% off for HonorClub Standard members, and through FITE TV.