Catherine Gigante-Brown

That’s the thing about being a breast cancer survivor — it’s always there: it never goes away. The scars, the fear that lurks in the back of your mind like a boogeyman. You’re going along nicely, living your merry life, and you’re fine, until you’re not.

As a breast cancer survivor, the worst day of the year is when I go for my mammogram. True, nobody actually likes mammos, but I’ve been bitten by one. On the way to my annual squishing, I realized that I have a bunch of coping strategies.

erotic. intimate. unapologetic.

“It’s almost as though this niche was patiently waiting for us to find it.”

"Bring over a meal—and leave. Breakfast, lunch or dinner, from soup to nuts. And coffee. Plenty of coffee."

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

I fumbled with my lace bra, hoping my silicone form wouldn't fall out from the left cup. I wasn't exactly ready . . . yet I was.

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.

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

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.