The Things We Left Unsaid

I was curious as to how going through such a physically grueling and altering experience like breast cancer could impact these perceptions of self and greater societal ideals. I desperately wanted to learn more about what my mom may have been experiencing through her treatments, hoping it would leave me feeling closer to her if I understood her mind.

So, I asked nine other women. 

Having just completed the “75 Hard Challenge” - 75 days of completing two workouts a day, following a diet, and drinking a gallon of water daily - Katelyn Armstrong was in the best shape of her life. This was the closest she had gotten to achieving her standard of beauty as defined by Baywatch: blonde hair, a tan, big boobs, and a “bangin’ body.”

Too lazy to get a washcloth in the shower, the then 34-year-old felt a hard painful lump in her breast and made an appointment with her OBGYN to get it checked. With most women in the United States not starting biannual mammograms until reaching their 40s, Armstrong was told it was most likely dense breast tissue - something not uncommon for women in their 30s.

A week later her doctor called her - on vacation from a yacht. She recognized that this most likely was not a good sign.

“I was diagnosed December 6^th at 34,” her voice shaking on the phone with me as she recalls. “I blocked everything out other than the word ‘cancer’ for a week, but thought I should probably figure this out.”

On January 5^th Armstrong had a port installed and she began her first of six chemotherapy rounds.

“The dates get cemented in your brain like birthdays,” Ellyn Winters, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022, said.

But unlike a birthday, a cancer diagnosis marks the start of a transition where women lose their old selves to the battle and are forced to reckon with the new person in the mirror.

Like Armstrong, the eight other women I interviewed were all considered healthy when they were diagnosed, with many of them receiving their diagnosis even before reaching the recommended age of 40 for starting mammograms in the United States.

Before the reality of the diagnosis even sets in, women are faced with making a decision about their breasts. Some women, like Winters, don’t have the option to save their breasts and are told by their doctors they need to have a double mastectomy to prevent a likely recurrence. While others like Krisdee Clark chose to have a double mastectomy for peace of mind.

“If I had a lumpectomy, I would be forever worried,” Clark said. “Maybe it was vain, but I wanted the symmetry, and I wanted all the tissue gone.”

But it’s far from vain as Clark and others tried to cling to aspects of their physical appearance that made them feel feminine and confident, trying to find ways to hold onto these parts throughout treatment to preserve even a small sense of self. Cancer treatments strip victims of physical attributes many consider integral to their identity and femininity - such as hair, eyebrows, and breasts - while also robbing individuals of the ability to lead a normal life.

It’s no shock that women want to hold onto any semblance of normalcy and control over their body.

Physical crutches like wigs, cold caps, and tattooed eyebrows have been created to help women feel like they did before treatment, but for many of the women I spoke with, that person is gone.

One afternoon, Armstrong had driven with her young son to a restaurant for a lunch date. In the parking lot, she rummaged around the car, searching for her wig to put on before going inside but it was nowhere in sight.

Tearing up she tells me, “My son said to me, ‘who cares you don’t even look like you with a wig.’ What am I trying to be here? I was trying to blend two identities together.”

It took time for Armstrong to come to terms with the fact that her pre-cancer self was gone, doing everything in her power to try to bring back that person through physical efforts. The moment her hair was long enough, she spent $2000 on extensions. Instead of feeling more like herself, she wanted to rip them out of her head.

In addition to losing her hair, often seen as a symbol of femininity and self-expression, Armstrong opted for a double mastectomy without reconstruction. The option to stay flat after a mastectomy is becoming increasingly popular among women. Reconstruction requires additional surgeries to input expanders, weekly visits to fill the expanders with saline, and then additional visits to place the implants. For cancer survivors, it’s not just a simple boob job. There are risks of complications and infections especially after undergoing chemotherapy.

“I had given so much of my life to cancer,” Armstrong said. “I couldn’t do the things I loved to do. I wanted my life back.”

Ellyn Winters echoed Armstrong’s sentiment of not wanting to spend any more time in surgery or at the doctor after completing her treatment, so she too stayed flat.

Proud of her scars, Winters asked me if I wanted to see her chest. “We have no shame,” she said as she lifted her sweater to reveal a smooth, bare chest with diagonal scars in place of her breasts.

Before her cancer diagnosis, Winters described herself as self-conscious. Never thinking she was pretty enough, skinny enough and didn’t love her D cup boobs. Rather than mourn the loss of her old self, Winters decided to embrace her new body.

“To this day, I am not sad; I feel empowered and badass,” she said. “Since then, I have become a lot less self-conscious. You change - body, mind, spirit. Everything is different. I don’t hide that I am flat.”

In fact, Winters wanted to help change the narrative for flat women. Once she made her decision, she looked into how to dress after a mastectomy and quickly discovered every article pointed towards concealment. As someone who loves fashion and clothes, Winters chose not to hide and instead continued to wear the clothes she wanted like spaghetti straps and backless dresses, despite society telling her otherwise.

“My life isn’t over because I don’t have breasts anymore. I want to wear what I want to wear; I don’t want to buy into a false ideal that I am no longer feminine because I don’t have breasts,” she said. “That’s just stupid to me.”

Of course, there are also women who can’t wait to get their breasts back. After Krisdee Clark’s double mastectomy, she described the decision on whether to get implants as a “no brainer.” She wanted to look good and feel good, but also show other breast cancer survivors they could too.

A year after her reconstruction, Clark took the stage to compete at the Mrs. South Carolina pageant.

“Pageants were never my thing, but I had a platform, and I wanted to show other women that there is life after breast cancer and reconstruction,” Clark said. After being crowned Mrs. South Carolina and Mrs. American, Clark traveled the country sharing her experiences and stories.

“I wanted women to feel that breast cancer doesn’t define you and you can still feel great after,” she said. “The beauty thing for me went up, I wanted to showcase that we are more than just cancer.”

Having undergone treatments themselves, many of the women I spoke with now draw on their own experiences to help other women feel more beautiful and confident.

Carmelina Baccari worked as a makeup artist for 20 years. When she learned about a medical tattoo artist in rural America Baccari felt inspired to switch career paths. Shortly after this awakening, she was diagnosed with breast cancer - a coincidence she took as a sign that medical tattooing was her calling and purpose.

Baccari co-founded the Nipple Sisters with her business partner, offering 3D nipple tattoos to patients who have undergone mastectomies and reconstruction. Baccari and the women she works with feel the job isn’t complete without a nipple, a mark of femininity. 

She understands just how big of a role this body part plays from her own experience, telling me how she: “begged my doctor for nine months to keep my nipple. I was worried about dying, losing my hair, and losing my nipple.”

Dana Danofree chose to undergo reconstruction and couldn’t find bras that fit her breasts during the expander phase. Referring to her breasts as “SpongeBob Square Tits” she became frustrated trying to fit a square boob into the round cup of a bra. Even after the completion of her implants, Danofree struggled to find bras that worked with her implants and was directed to a “beige line of grandma bras.”

“Why is the world telling us that we’re broken?” she said. “Even though we have breast cancer, we still want to be beautiful and sexy.”

And so, AnaOno, her line of bras designed to fit women at every stage of their journey - post lumpectomy, mastectomy, implants, even flat chests, was born.

“Being there to catch people in their darkest moments, they want to feel like a woman and a human,” she said. “They think of us as rats in a lab cage, not as women. This is something I’ve tried to evolve for the lives of other patients.”

Despite enduring the physical and emotional battles of breast cancer, most of the women I spoke with now dedicate much of their time to supporting others who are facing similar challenges. Whether it's sharing their experiences on social media, designing adaptable bras, or perfecting medical tattoo artistry, they’re helping other women feel empowered and embrace a new version of themselves just like they have. 

“My standard of beauty was so distorted before,” Armstrong said. “Cancer strips you of physical things in life. You’re left with who you are as a person.”

Armstrong’s new definition of beauty is simple: how do you make someone feel when you’re with them? It’s how you speak to other people and the confidence you have not just externally, but internally.

On days I feel less confident or catch myself not wanting to do something because I hate the way my favorite pair of jeans look; I think back to my mom and wonder how much of life she missed out on putting herself down in the mirror. 

I never got to see my mom live her life fully recovered from breast cancer. One year after she rang the bell marking the end of her treatment, the cancer spread to her brain, and she was gone in five months.

Over that year, I noticed a shift in how much she cared about others’ opinions. She began focusing on what truly mattered to her, filling her days with what she genuinely enjoyed. She stopped obsessing over fitness classes, let go of strict control of her diet, and prioritized doing the things she loved with the people she cared most about. We never spoke about it, but I appreciated the way she embraced her new self in the ways she could. Somewhat ironic but it's almost as if she got a new lease on life for that final year. 

Speaking with these nine women offered a glimpse into what my mom might have felt and experienced as she fought her cancer. It was even comforting to think that, during that time, she may have softened towards herself and finally recognized the beauty that everyone else had always seen.