Catherine Gigante-Brown

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

herbalist. shiatsu practitioner. healer.

I try. I really do. But whenever I attempt to embrace my husband Peter’s Cuban culture, I always screw up.

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.

"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."

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.

After I got over the initial devastation, I pulled myself up by my big-girl panties and got on with it. Chemo was no picnic—but it was do-able.

I know it’s not a politically correct one, but I’ve got a confession to make: earth-friendly hotels stink. There, I said it.

BCBs are loud and proud and refuse to go down easy. And quietly. We have things to say. We have things to teach. We still have life to live. And damn it, we are and we will. With one breast. With no breasts. With reconstruction surgery.

Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions wasn't your typical cutesie baby fare. It was raw, real—and unabashedly funny.