Catherine Gigante-Brown

A midtown Manhattan studio was recently the site of liberation-both on and offscreen-when Shenshean

8. Educate, don’t fixate.

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

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.

TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) has been around for at least five centuries –– there’s got to be something to it.

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.

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.

"Sometimes David wore his hair spiked like a cockscomb. Others, he wore it feathery like a baby chick. He wore his Mohawk to summer camp (exchanging encouraging head chucks with another older camper who sported one, too) and even to Vacation Bible School—no judgment there."

"Bring over a meal—and leave. Breakfast, lunch or dinner, from soup to nuts. And coffee. Plenty of coffee."

You learn a lot about people when you live in their home. The Taylors seemed to lead a joyless, Spartan existence.