I don’t exactly regret it, but still I carry shame about it.

As my tween peers began sprouting breasts, my chest remained boyish, leading to taunts and rejections from those despicable beings known as thirteen year-old boys.  When my breasts eventually emerged, albeit reluctantly, they never grew to a socially acceptable size.  Fitting room ladies repeatedly proffered bras with generously padded cups, conveying without subtlety the message that my barely AA breasts were insufficient as they were. 

My pregnancies gave me a fleeting feeling for what it was like to have real breasts.  As they grew to fulfill their destiny, I began for the first time to tuck my shirts in, proudly displaying my newfound curves.  I’ve never been petite – my mother says that we come from peasant stock – and my milk-filled breasts were finally proportional with the rest of my body. But when they were done feeding my children, my deflated breasts were even worse.  I had always comforted myself thinking that at least my tiny breasts wouldn’t sag.  I was wrong.

But as a working mother, raising two children, building a career, and trying to keep my marriage afloat, the size of my breasts just didn’t cut it as a priority.  By my forties, my body and I had reached a detente of sorts and while I was still self-conscious about my small size, I accepted it.  My husband had always appreciated my body and didn’t complain, so I was satisfied.  Kind of.

My late forties brought with them the toughest years of my life, and my marriage.  Like the spiral at the center of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, we had fallen into a deep and destructive loop that seemingly had no end.  He was in pain, expressed as anger.  His anger made me afraid.  My fear caused him more pain, which translated into more anger, which led to more fear and withdrawal.  And on it went.

It was in this context that his suggestion that I consider breast implants took root.  He theorized that my fears stemmed from a small boob induced insecurity.  If I were to change my breasts, maybe my fears, which he considered the root of our marital discord, would disappear.  He partnered this suggestion with reassurance that he loved my body and that this would be my decision alone, but maybe he was on to something.  I didn’t really buy that changing my cup size was going to eliminate fear from my life, but maybe it would make me feel better about myself.  Our marriage had entered its sixth year of darkness and my self-esteem was shattered.  Here was something tangible I could do that might lift my self-image along with my sagging breasts.  I had thought about it from time to time but had been deterred by the judgments I knew would be coming from my family, my friends, my co-workers.  So attuned was I to the perceptions of others that I never let myself really entertain the idea.

 But now, for the first time, I let myself really consider it.  Why should I be dissuaded from doing something for me because of how it will make others think or feel? Haven’t I spent enough of my precious minutes, days, years shaping my life around the needs of others?  What would it be like to do something just for me and leave other people’s thoughts out of the equation?  Isn’t it time to put myself first?

So, for my fiftieth birthday I gave myself the gift of breasts.  Objectively, they’re lovely and fit proportionally on my frame.  I can wear T-shirts, and bathing suits and blouses with darts – things that previously made me feel awkward and wrong.  I can walk down the street without boob envy, feeling on par with the naturally-breasted.  I relish not having to think about breasts so much. 

But it came at a cost.  The surgery resulted in numbness in places where I used to have sensitivity and at times they feel foreign, like I’ve strapped on an armored breastplate.  I don’t draw as much physical pleasure from them as I used to and going braless is somehow more obscene than before.  But the residual cost that’s the heaviest to bear is the shame.  I know that hundreds of thousands of women get breast implants each year.  I know that it is a personal choice that need not be defended to anyone.  I know that choosing to modify a part of my body that always made me feel less than is a privilege unavailable to many.  I know that I can still maintain my down-to-earth values while enhancing a feature that was causing me pain.

And yet, I am ashamed.  I’m ashamed that I cared enough about my appearance to go through surgery to change it.  I’m ashamed that the pleasure I take in having larger breasts is tied to traditional male views of the ideal woman’s body.  I’m ashamed that I’ve sacrificed physical sensation for visual appeal.  I’m ashamed of the message my choice might send to my daughter or my future granddaughters.

But that shame is all mine.  It’s not about what my mother might think, or my sister might say, or my friends might question.  And that alone is a victory.  I’m willing to live with my shame and choose to have compassion for the woman who made that choice.  If I were deciding today, I’m fairly certain I would choose differently.  But the woman I was as I entered my 50’s needed this.  And while it didn’t erase my fears or save my marriage, just maybe it was the first step in reaching for happiness.  The first step in honoring my wants, desires and needs without regard to what others might think.  The first step in pulling myself out of the muck I was mired in.  The first of many steps to the woman I am today.  And I wouldn’t trade her for the world.

-Beth Holly

Beth Holly is the mother of 2 adult children and recently left a 28-year marriage. She is an attorney and Chief Compliance Officer at a Fortune 500 biotech company and has taken up writing as a way of speaking the truth of her experience with a voice that was too long silenced. She lives in New York with her 2 dogs, Bodhi and Tucker.