Catherine Gigante-Brown

herbalist. shiatsu practitioner. healer.

raunchy renaissance woman. multimedia artist. probably a slut.

I try. I really do. But whenever I attempt to embrace my husband Peter’s Cuban culture, I always screw up.

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.

To the tattoo artist, I was a flesh canvas that she could transform into something beautiful.

Although America’s “lying in period” fell by the wayside in the 19th century with the disappearance of the frontier, it’s alive and well today in many cultures globally. Seclusion traditions where both mother and child recover and bond are still the norm in many cultures worldwide.

I was 21 –– a Catholic, heterosexual college student, living at home in Brooklyn and still trying to discover who I was. At the crossroads of her life, Lorde knew exactly who she was. She was waging a war against cancer and sharing an old house in Staten Island with her kids and partner. But maybe we weren’t so different after all.

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

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

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