Influencer Kay Dudley’s lupus diagnosis is shaping her approach to raising her three children.
“I feel like, even though I have lupus and I feel really bad a lot — my children, I just want them to be proud of me. I want them to see that no matter what I’m going through, I’m still pushing and I’m still fighting like my mom does,” Dudley exclusively told Us Weekly during Lupus Awareness Month, sharing that her mother was also diagnosed with lupus. “It makes me want to try harder as a mother, to be honest.”
Kay, who welcomed her second child with husband Tay Dudley in 2025, shared that it took her six years to receive a lupus diagnosis. During that time, Kay began documenting all of my symptoms for her doctors — and shared with her 6.5 million followers on Instagram earlier this month. (Kay is also mom to 13-year-old daughter Kinsley, whom she welcomed in a previous relationship.)
“I never expected to share those,” she admitted to Us. “I didn’t even like sharing with my doctor, to be honest. It was very vulnerable and uncomfortable pictures of myself. But May is Lupus Awareness Month and up until now, every time we mentioned it casually in [an Instagram] Story or a Reel, I felt like people didn’t understand what lupus was. Like, everybody would say, ‘Well, what is lupus? I don’t know what that is.’ I just felt there was not enough conversation about it.”
She continued, “The biggest misconception with autoimmune — not just lupus, but autoimmune in general — is that you look fine on the outside, so you must feel fine. And that’s so not true.”
Kay shared that she’s hoping to make lupus “more visible” this month and in the future, when she will participate in walks this fall. In Kay’s eyes, it feels like an “honor” to use her platform to spread awareness.
“I feel like, if I’m going to have lupus, the most positive way I can look at it is, I have lupus because there was a purpose,” she said. “I was meant to talk about this, and so I’m just going to use my platform to make others feel not alone.”
While navigating her diagnosis, Kay has also made an effort to “be careful” with what she eats — which has led her to develop her own protein bar, HeyNu.
“I wanted a bar that was so inclusive to everyone — like moms, grandparents, children — really just anybody that wants a healthy, better for you bar. Just something to snack on in the school pickup line or on the airplane or whatever,” she explained. “To make it inclusive, I wanted it to be dairy free, gluten free, vegan, free of the top nine allergens so that anybody can enjoy it, because I think that’s really hard to find these days.”
