More on Mourning

I feel the need to clarify something, as I may have offended some... particularly those who have had a mastectomy and opted against reconstruction.

This weekend, I got an email from a friend of mine who, after reading my last blog entry, encouraged me to find images and artwork that show the beauty of women who have lost their breasts in spite of the loss. That made me realize that when I said, "And frankly, after surgery, they're ugly," in my previous entry, that it might not have been clear to what I was referring.

I'm not saying that not having breasts (or nipples) is ugly or makes the women who lost them somehow ugly. That's not at all what I meant. In fact, I know some of those women. They're not ugly, and when I look at them, I never even notice whether they have breasts or not. And, as my close friends will already know, I don't think a person's beauty can be defined only in physical terms.

What I was referring to in my last entry was waking up the day after surgery and seeing my breasts replaced by angry red incision scars. I saw the pictures, and it's not pretty. And that's what I'm going to see the first time I wake up after surgery. Yes, those scars will eventually fade, but I need to be able to cope with the ugliness too. And it's not about whether I have breasts or not, because I need to be able to cope with that same ugliness when I wake up after reconstruction surgery too. So, it's not about whether or not I have breasts or nipples. It's about feeling like your breasts were operated on by Dr. Frankenstein.

Note: I have a very good plastic surgeon and I completely trust his abilities. I'm not at all concerned about this for the long-term. As I said in my previous entry, this is about learning to live with the temporary side of this. It takes several months for the scars to begin to fade.

Mourning my loss and being able to deal with the change and the ugliness of the scars when I wake up from surgery is really important. In fact, it's not just important, it's critical. I need to be able to face this and accept it for what it is. And every single woman who's ever gone through this or ever will, regardless of the beauty they find and create later, had to or will have to face and accept the ugliness of it. It's part of the healing process. And, if you don't go through it, you can never find the beauty in it.

So, that's what my previous entry was about. It was about facing something difficult and exploring my emotions about it. In order for me to be able to come to terms with all of this, it is really important that I honor those emotions and give myself time to grieve this loss. So, I hope no one out there that has opted against reconstruction in this situation feels like I am calling her ugly for making that choice. Regardless of the choice you make, it's not an easy one, and I respect whatever choice any woman makes. However, I feel extremely confident, that no matter what choice each woman has made in this situation, she has shed her share of tears over the loss.