I've watched these women -- across the country, across the room or next to me at a meeting -- and I've been humbled by how they are living their lives, pushing forward in their professions, raising kids, making dinner, keeping on while they are in a big tug-of-war with the cells in their bodies. I'm amazed to see women singing in the choir, giving presentations and hoisting around tantrumy toddlers when their bodies are multi-tasking intense cancer treatments. Having a port, being pumped full of medication, steadying from nausea, gaining and dropping weight and even having surgery, one friend told me after chemo, were the ways she was healing her body while her mind was fixed on feeling whole, happy and connected to her family.
Erin from Life With Cancer has written honestly and eloquently about how cancer has impacted her relationship with her husband, child and friends. Erin and her guest bloggers have helped me understand some of the evolution that takes place when a woman is diagnosed and treated and then moves into recovery. Reading about re-growing hair touched me as much as reading about the choice to have a surrogate instead of pausing treatment for a pregnancy.
One of the reasons these embodiments of cancer (and of course, healing from cancer) are important because most of us fight their thighs and bellies and flappy arms every single day (which seems even more futile and sad when you consider the bigger picture here). We can all relate to the pull of needing our bodies and being angry at our bodies. But when your body fights back, claiming your breasts or eyelashes or more, how does it change who you are, how you see yourself and how you interact with those loved ones beside you?
Perhaps the most startling example of this is the mastectomy. If treatment goes well and healing happens, most other bodily symptoms seem to resolve. But the breasts are a different story. Whether they are removed or recontructed, the body is changed.
So what happens when a woman has to or chooses to undergo a mastectomy? Most of the time our breasts, although considered to be in the "private parts" category, are out there. They get seen, touched and grazed by other people. This surgery then, is in intimate territory.
How does removing one or both breasts impact a woman's body image? Her sensuality? Her sex life?
I ask because I think I am not alone in wanting to understand more about the journey women we know and love are on when they are moving through breast cancer.
Do you have experience or advice to offer? If so, please speak up so we can all understand a bit better how to get back to all the loveliness, naughtiness, yumminess and intimacy our bodies have to offer -- well, ill or somewhere in transition.
Read more during Breast Cancer Awareness Month:
5 ways to keep your breasts healthy
Healing the whole woman
Fran Drescher on dealing with doctor visits
[photo credit: Getty Images]
