Catherine Gigante-Brown

Content Notice: Death

BCBs are loud and proud and refuse to go down easy. And quietly. We have things to say. We have things to teach. We still have life to live. And damn it, we are and we will. With one breast. With no breasts. With reconstruction surgery.

Alas, I am the lone female in a house full of men. Only two men, but they take up a lot of space.

I sat obediently in her chair atop four ancient copies of the Yellow Pages. Crossing my fingers, I prayed Catholic schoolgirl prayers.

"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."

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

“It’s almost as though this niche was patiently waiting for us to find it.”

I saw my present mother-in-law in a whole new light the first time she held my newborn son.

A midtown Manhattan studio was recently the site of liberation-both on and offscreen-when Shenshean

What Stephen didn’t know –– what no one knew –– was how weak my knees grew when I pushed through the swinging doors of the ICU.