I have loved my girls ever since I got them, maybe because I don’t have beautiful legs or a JLo butt. I’d like to declare my feelings of femininity come solely from my character, but I am not that evolved. When my girls arrived around the age of thirteen, they felt wonderfully womanly. I’ve loved them ever since.

When the nurse called and said, “Your biopsy results show malignant ductal carcinoma in situ,” I was shocked. Did she say, “carcinoma?”

“What?” I sat down. “What do you mean, ‘malignant?’”

She said a few more words and I interrupted, “Wait a minute. Are you saying that I have CANCER?”

At first, they were nothing but trouble.

“I want her to wear a shirt from now on,” my father barked at my mother. He refused to address me now that I had the smallest hint of breast development.

A short time later, as my tops clung to my chest and my flat torso became round and foreign, I felt weird and ugly.

The Charles River Esplanade, a green and flowering oasis in the heart of Boston, is a popular place for cyclists, picnickers, parents pushing strollers, and college kids looking to rent kayaks and sailboats. But on a September Sunday I spent there, the majority of park visitors had a different activity in mind: a 5-mile fundraising walk while wearing lots of pink.

It's been a year since I haven't had breasts, and I think I’m pretty well adjusted. At first, I thought that I was going to have new breasts made from fat taken off somewhere else on my body, but it turns out that I lack “the right kind of fat,” so, at the last moment, I opted to forgo reconstruction.  

“Why me” never crosses your mind. Maybe you feel it’s inevitable; after all, your best friend and first boyfriend both died from cancer—not breast like you, but cancer nonetheless. And your favorite grandfather and most of his brothers and sisters—except the sister who died in the influenza epidemic—died of cancer.