7 minute read
BREAST CANCER CONFIDENCE
{ SHIFT+CONTROL }{ BREAST CANCER CONFIDENCE } YOU ARE ENOUGH. BREAST CANCER CONFIDENCE
BY NICOLE HEROUX WILLIAMS I PHOTOS BY NSP STUDIO BY MICHAELA RAES
It’s hard enough for many women to love the body they were born into unconditionally. When a breast cancer diagnosis comes along and causes unwanted changes to their bodies, this challenge is significantly amplified for many women. Amongst the numerous hardships and losses brought about by a breast cancer diagnosis/treatment, our confidence should not be another casualty of this battle. Unfortunately, many Rochester women are at risk of experiencing these concerns due to the elevated incidence of breast cancer in our region. In Monroe County, the rate of new breast cancer diagnoses is 1.13 times higher than the national average. With an elevated rate of breast cancer in the area, many women in Rochester have either been personally impacted by the disease, or know someone who has.
As a breast cancer survivor, I understand the selfconsciousness that accompanies this disease. With the help of a positive outlook, an incredible support system, and a phenomenal friend and photographer, I developed a sense of security in my changed body, and I want other women to be able to experience this life-changing shift in perspective. For this reason, I partnered with The Photography Experience to create the Breast Cancer Confidence Project, an empowerment campaign and community of support. Our mission is to encourage other women impacted by breast cancer to develop love and appreciation for their bodies.
My name is Michaela, and in March 2020 I was diagnosed with a rare and
aggressive type of breast cancer. I was just 28 years old when I received this completely unexpected news, and it prompted a surge of complex fears and uncertainties. As one would imagine, there was an overwhelming amount of anxiety that my disease could compromise my chances of having a future at all. While survival would seem to be a more pleasant thought to focus on, I often found myself similarly overwhelmed by the unknown physical and emotional challenges that could be awaiting me. Like so many women, I had spent much of my life fighting an uphill battle against my negative self-image, and one of my biggest fears was that my treatments and surgeries would compromise any progress that had been made. I remember worrying that I would never feel sexy or confident in my life – that I would never fully love and embrace my body, all because of my condition.
Unfortunately, far too many women face similar challenges to their confidence or sense of self in the aftermath of a breast cancer diagnosis/treatment. As our bodies begin to change and we start to see the consequences of this disease appear on ourselves, the emotional burden can feel devastating and insurmountable. For some, these struggles may be ongoing and reappear throughout life after treatment.
When we get caught up in this false and negative narrative about our bodies, it can make it difficult for us to recognize our strength. Continuously viewing ourselves with the same cracked lens makes it hard to change that script in our minds. Replacing that lens with a new one helps us see our bodies from a different perspective, which in turn can allow us to realign our
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self-image. When we bring our bodies into focus with this more positive and artistic light, we begin to appreciate our true beauty and radiance. This is how boudoir photography helped me to cope with my body image issues after breast cancer; reimagining my scars in this different light helped me appreciate and admire my new body, which propelled me towards a higher state of self-love. It was this very experience that led me to start this project.
When I first began this journey, I hadn’t planned on sharing my images for the rest of the world to see – I was still feeling vulnerable at the time, too buried in my self-doubts and insecurities. In fact, my first step towards starting this project was a boudoir photography shoot with Jolana (The Photography Experience), which occurred after my diagnosis, but before treatment had started. My motivations at the time were fear-based – that first session was strictly intended to memorialize my body as I had always known it. I had no intentions of documenting my body any farther – with the unknown changes my body was facing, I was certain at the time that I’d never feel comfortable in my skin.
Despite my initial fears, as time went on I was surprised to find myself in awe of the strength of my body. Even though some days were incredibly difficult and painful, every single day I pushed forward. Even though my mirror reflected a different image than I had been used to, I was still standing there fighting
this disease with everything I had in me. With these realizations, I began to see the beauty in every ounce of my being – the scars that were developing on my body marked my resilience, not my weakness. As I grew more comfortable in my new skin, I reached out to The Photography Experience for more boudoir sessions – now with the more powerful and optimistic intentions of celebrating my body, appreciating the changes, and emotionally healing. For each major milestone of my disease/ treatment, Jolana used her talent to reframe my vulnerabilities as something beautiful and worth appreciating. For someone who had never felt like a strong person, it was cathartic to see myself stripped down by the consequences of this illness, yet still exude the strength of someone who continued to push forward every day.
As I began to recover from the disease’s emotional consequences, I recognized the opportunity to help other women through my story. When I first received my diagnosis, I had seen images of women with various types of breast cancer surgeries, but the pictures that I found were very technical and made it difficult to imagine feeling comfortable with any of the potential choices. Those very clinical representations, while helpful, were not so productive when it came to my confidence concerns. But the elegant boudoir portraits showing my body with an array of interventions might be able to help another woman who found herself in the position I had been in months before. This opportunity to illustrate a spectrum of potential interventions to treat breast cancer using one body as a constant variable was unique, and the
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attention Jolana paid to honoring each surgery and portraying the endurance of beauty throughout the process held the potential to be highly influential for another woman in need of reassurance. And so, in Fall 2020, we launched what was then known as the Breast Cancer Boudoir Project, which initially involved sharing photos from my personal boudoir shoots at each milestone of my disease/ treatment through social media.
While I knew that there was value to sharing my own images, I also recognized that there may only be a small group of women who would truly benefit from my personal journey. As I had noticed in my own searches during those early anxiety-filled days, it can be hard to find elegant, non-clinical images that show bodies which look like our own. And while viewing relatable body types cast in such an artistic light can be therapeutic in itself, it’s even more healing to see your own body through the lens of boudoir. For that reason, in October 2020 we started providing opportunities for local breast cancer patients, survivors, and “previvors” to have an affordable and transformative boudoir experience. To date, we have provided 10 local women with the unique opportunity for a “mini” (30 minute) boudoir session, followed by a group photo shoot with other survivors through our annual events. Over time, we have evolved into a support community dedicated to approaching confidence issues after a breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, as well as promoting awareness and early detection techniques.
We believe that every warrior and survivor deserves to love and have a healthy relationship with their body. This is why we provide a community of support and events intended to help women impacted by breast cancer to not only feel comfortable, but confident and sexy. This is especially important for women in our region, as Rochester has one of the highest rates of breast cancer in all U.S. cities. To continue promoting our message of self-love, we will be providing monthly columns on Breast Cancer Confidence and related topics for Rochester Woman Online.
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