I have had a very exciting past few days where I completely experienced myself stepping into my vision of living a life of no regrets, seeking possibilities, and choosing from a place of love every single moment. In doing so, I definitely let go of the path I would have planned for myself to embrace something new filling me with purpose, passion, and gratitude.
My past few days were spent in Orlando at the FORCE (Facing Our Risk Cancer Empowered) annual conference. I kept on pinching myself, thinking what a difference a year makes! Last year, my husband had to convince me to go to this conference with my cousins. I really didn’t see the point in going just to spend more time (and money) talking about what I just wanted to get over with, (i.e., ”cutting them off”) after having multiple scares from biopsies and MRIs that came back with suspicious malignancies in the previous 6 months. I thank Mike for being so direct during a heated counseling session over the issue and saying, “If you are really thinking about a mastectomy, I don’t know why you wouldn’t go to this conference in Florida.”
I left the FORCE conference last year feeling like I had been divinely guided. Upon arriving in Orlando, I shared a shuttle bus and chatted the whole way about everything but breasts and cancer with a surgeon from the same group that I ultimately chose for surgery. One writer’s session during the conference helped me make sense of my feeling all over the place – (grateful for not having cancer and knowing my genetic risk to do something beforehand, mixed with fear, grief, and lots of frustration) which led to an entire year of writing about this topic and a book on the way(!). But one of the greatest gifts that I got last year was an event that my cousins and I nearly skipped out on, thinking it was a little bit “too much” to partake in. It was the mysterious “show and tell” room – a room where you had permission to take a good look at the results of womens’ mastectomies in the flesh. The whole idea was pretty creepy to me initially, thinking about how I had never even seen my mother’s breasts following her own mastectomy and reconstruction 16 years before, yet I’d be walking around a room of strangers who were virtually part of an all-girls’ topless cocktail party.
Even before the show and tell began that night, one woman from Chicago gave me her own show and tell in the ladies’ room following one of our programs that morning. “You’ve got to see mine! I love them!” she raved unbuttoning her blouse before we reached the stall. She was right. They were stunning – from the size, shape, and just being so…. upright. “You’ve got to come to the show and tell room tonight! My doctor will be there!”
As the show and tell time approached, I had an acute sense of deja vu. It was the same feeling of ambiguity I got just before going to a house party of someone I didn’t know well from high school, wondering, do I really want to leave my comfort and go to this party or will there be a great night ahead? Something great was on the other side of the door: a low-country assortment of treats with the best collard greens I have ever eaten, along with champagne cocktails. I downed one immediately. I was pleasantly surprised by the goodies from the southern plastic surgeons who knew the key to making women feel comfortable with a little dose of southern hospitality.
Upstairs was where the action was. As we walked up the steps, I knew I was about to go into some unknown territory. Sure enough, about 1/3 of the women upstairs were showing and telling, with the other 2/3 of us looking and listening. I went up to the woman from the bathroom earlier that day. She had a crowd around her that was asking permission to feel her reconstructed breast. “Do you want to touch?” she asked me. Again, feeling totally out of place wondering when the show and tell became a mini-petting zoo, I responded by “politely” poking rather than grasping.
In retrospect, the show and tell room was one of the most comforting things about the conference to help me wrap my brain around my own preventative mastectomy. Seeing what real women looked like following their procedures, (and many of them looked amazing), I was able to feel a bit safer with the unknown journey ahead. The chance meeting of the woman from Chicago inspired me in ways that she will never know. I took action, and literally let go and let God for the choice that I was going to make. So much so, that I chose to return to the conference this year as an attendee and exhibitor in the show and tell room.
Prior to going back to the same suite we had journeyed into the year before, I gave my cousin a personal viewing in the hotel room since she had yet to see the results of my surgery.
“You look wonderful!” she said. ”You know who you look like? Your breasts look like the woman’s from Chicago that we met last year!”
And they just might have. So I was fully prepared before going back into the same show and tell suite that there would be requests to show and tell, (and possibly feel). Rather than feel, most women are curious as to how they feel. Here is where I can share that there are some things you never imagine yourself doing until you are in that situation. For example, never in my life would I think that I’d be standing in front of a group of women touching my own breasts and saying, “I have some sensation. I definitely feel hot and cold (pause while I’m trying to rediscover how much sensation I have), but there’s definitely some.”
And I would not have come full circle, if I didn’t have a ladies’ room moment of my own this year. While sitting at the pool, I shared my experience with another woman who was contemplating surgery. ”If you want to see them, I’d be happy to show you,” I said.
So into the ladies’ locker room we went. And after our own mini show and tell, I think that she might have been able to wrap her head around the whole idea of a prophylactic mastectomy knowing that she could still look pretty good afterwards too. That life after a mastectomy isn’t necessarily a loss, but there is also beauty (and a great relief) on the other side.
[...] piece I had written was about my experience in the show and tell room. I should clarify (if you didn’t/don’t read the post)- this was a room of women [...]