Catherine Gigante-Brown

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.

Re-imagining the cervix, preserving the earth, facing breast cancer a whole new way…Annie Sprinkle’s wisdom abounds. “Life is a performance art piece,” she said...

At first, I felt like an abandoned ten-year-old, dropped off at a remote summer camp—with the extra added attraction of no cell phone reception or Wi-Fi. I thought the hardest part of the weekend was going to be picking out a robe. Boy, was I wrong!

I thought cancer was behind me. Until I had a weird pain near my left ovary which lasted for several days. It felt a lot like ovulation...Only, at 56, that train had left the station a long time ago.

8. Educate, don’t fixate.

Once upon a time, it was easier to keep track of gender. Today, not so much — the lines are blurred. For many, gender’s not so much about questioning your own identity as it is about questioning the very nature of identity.

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.

All bets were off after 9/11. In a twisted way, it proved to me that worry was fruitless. No one ever saw the terrorist attacks coming.

I left Cuba in 1949, when I was 11 years old. Back then, I didn't understand why my mother sent me away. I still don't.

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.