Catherine Gigante-Brown

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.

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.

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.

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

Re-imagining the cervix, preserving the earth, facing breast cancer a whole new way…Annie Sprinkle’s wisdom abounds. “Life is a performance art piece,” she said...

"I was afraid this thing was going to do me in. But I took a deep breath and decided very early on that I would face cancer on my own terms."

I dreaded putting him back on Concerta in the fall but I knew I had to. Or did I?

The heartbreaking saga of a 14-year-old Black prostitute who was murdered in cold blood by her (maybe) pimp on Christmas Eve in 1900 Savannah.

I sat obediently in her chair atop four ancient copies of the Yellow Pages. Crossing my fingers, I prayed Catholic schoolgirl prayers.

My husband and I agreed: raising a child with an independent spirit who made decisions for himself was a good thing.