Catherine Gigante-Brown

I realized my father was from a generation that never said those three little words. He was saying he loved me without them. But I didn't realize it then.

I go for checkups when I’m supposed to: every three months to the oncologist and every six months to the breast surgeon. I go to SHARE support group meetings to bolster myself. I try to get enough sleep, despite the occasional night spent wide-eyed with dread.

Food can be more than nourishing; it can be healing.

Candida Royalle pretty much invented couples erotica. She made it socially-acceptable. Respectable. The women in her films looked like real women and had real, comfortable female bodies. And her movies actually had stories. Good stories. She hired her friends—adult legends like Annie Sprinkle, Veronicas Hart and Vera, and Gloria Leonard — to create Femme films too.

The Daily News quoted one painted lady as saying, “People come up to us sometimes and say what we do is disgusting,” she said. “But what is disgusting about the female body? They shield their kids sometimes, and I think, ‘Kids come from the female body.’”

The overinflated American work ethic is slowly killing us. It’s constantly pushing us to do more — put in longer hours, check business emails on personal time, take calls from our bosses when we’re chilling in Cancun.

Like if she steals from you — cash or a boyfriend. Or does something illegal she wants you to be a part of — or lie about. I draw the line at felonies (sometimes even misdemeanors) and you probably should, too.

"Remember, this isn’t just happening to you, it’s happening to moms everywhere. It’s not your fault — "

I asked a handful of women: why are people so scared of ladyparts?

In the photograph, my great-grandmother, Margarita Cirigliano, is sitting at a small table on the front porch of the family home in Borough Park, Brooklyn.