Catherine Gigante-Brown

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

The hell with his elaborate metaphors and rhetorical phrases. Iambic pentameter is cruel and unusual punishment.

To the tattoo artist, I was a flesh canvas that she could transform into something beautiful.

"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."

Even though there’s no shortage of condoms in the Netherlands, it’s easier if you have your own birth control. Even if your trip isn’t a booty call, you never know! And if desire hits, you’ll be ready with your favorite type of BC and brand.

I thought cancer was behind me. Until I had a weird pain near my left ovary which lasted for several days. It felt a lot like ovulation...Only, at 56, that train had left the station a long time ago.

Makeup and I have always had a love/hate relationship: I love it; it hates me.

I immediately developed a hot-and-heavy girlcrush on the wild, wacky, brash, candid, feminist, rubber-faced comedian—and you should too.

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.

Even when I explained to my son that he came from a long line of short people, it didn’t help. David still felt bad about being small. How could a five-year-old possibly get this type of size-shaming message? From other people, mostly insensitive adults. They gave him the idea that bigger was somehow better.