Catherine Gigante-Brown

I was 21 –– a Catholic, heterosexual college student, living at home in Brooklyn and still trying to discover who I was. At the crossroads of her life, Lorde knew exactly who she was. She was waging a war against cancer and sharing an old house in Staten Island with her kids and partner. But maybe we weren’t so different after all.

I go for checkups when I’m supposed to: every three months to the oncologist and every six months to the breast surgeon. I go to SHARE support group meetings to bolster myself. I try to get enough sleep, despite the occasional night spent wide-eyed with dread.

Wrinkles or lifelines? Chunky or curvaceous? The choice is yours.

8. Educate, don’t fixate.

At the New York City release party for Dayna Kurtz’ latest, Rise and Fall, my friend Nadia leaned over to me and whispered, “Why the fuck

I realized my father was from a generation that never said those three little words. He was saying he loved me without them. But I didn't realize it then.

All bets were off after 9/11. In a twisted way, it proved to me that worry was fruitless. No one ever saw the terrorist attacks coming.

The overinflated American work ethic is slowly killing us. It’s constantly pushing us to do more — put in longer hours, check business emails on personal time, take calls from our bosses when we’re chilling in Cancun.

Having someone steal my cancer history and co-opt it for their first-person Facebook blog is unbelievably violating. Somehow, it feels almost as invasive as my mastectomy.

Instead of categorizing people as different colors, I proposed we might begin to think of each other as Earthtones—because our skin colors are based on hues from the earth. Just as the planet is made up of a myriad of shades, it’s still one cohesive entity. We can be thought of as one entity also.