Catherine Gigante-Brown

I immediately developed a hot-and-heavy girlcrush on the wild, wacky, brash, candid, feminist, rubber-faced comedian—and you should too.

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.

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.

herbalist. shiatsu practitioner. healer.

I’m boycotting you until you start recognizing breast cancer survivors like me by carrying mastectomy bras.

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.

From New York to LA, this lady knows a good story.

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.

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.

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.