Catherine Gigante-Brown

Being a little bit chubby is better than being a lot dead.

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.

Upset you lost your keys? Try losing your breast. Pissed off about missing that train? Try missing your son’s 8th grade graduation because of a horrific infection from fluid buildup in the previously-mentioned missing breast. See what I mean? It kind of puts life into perspective.

The hell with his elaborate metaphors and rhetorical phrases. Iambic pentameter is cruel and unusual punishment.

herbalist. shiatsu practitioner. healer.

Instead of categorizing people as different colors, I proposed we might begin to think of each other as Earthtones—because our skin colors are based on hues from the earth. Just as the planet is made up of a myriad of shades, it’s still one cohesive entity. We can be thought of as one entity also.

After I got over the initial devastation, I pulled myself up by my big-girl panties and got on with it. Chemo was no picnic—but it was do-able.

Why do we venerate individuality in adults but condemn it in children?

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.’”

"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."