Catherine Gigante-Brown

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

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.

That’s the thing about being a breast cancer survivor — it’s always there: it never goes away. The scars, the fear that lurks in the back of your mind like a boogeyman. You’re going along nicely, living your merry life, and you’re fine, until you’re not.

Candida Royalle pretty much invented couples erotica. She made it socially-acceptable. Respectable. The women in her films looked like real women and had real, comfortable female bodies. And her movies actually had stories. Good stories. She hired her friends—adult legends like Annie Sprinkle, Veronicas Hart and Vera, and Gloria Leonard — to create Femme films too.

When David was about 12, he told me that he wanted to take the train to school alone. My gut reaction was, “No way in hell!” I mean, we live in a safe neighborhood and all, but David has ADHD and was easily distracted. What if he missed his stop? What if someone messed with him?

If the odds of getting cancer are like Powerball, why couldn't I be a scratch-off millionaire?

"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."

It sounded too good to be true: comfortable, attractive bra inserts for breast cancer survivors like me. I got on the computer, checked out their website, and immediately put in for one.

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

"Remember, this isn’t just happening to you, it’s happening to moms everywhere. It’s not your fault — "