A Gutsy Guide to Getting Your Mojo Back

Hi Pinkies, and happy Healthy Thursday. This week, I thought I’d talk about breast cancer – not from the perspective of a doctor, but rather an artist. A passion project of mine, The Woman Inside Project, has been evolving for the past five years, and I have begun to reach out for sponsorship to take the show on tour. In writing the proposal, I realized that I simply must share these extraordinary stories with my Pinkies, who continue to floor me every day with the generous way you open your hearts and share your stories. Thank you for giving me this gift, and know that your beautiful bodies, souls, and stories are precious to me.

We Care About Breasts

Breasts in bikinis on the beach. Breasts in beer commercials.  Breasts in movies, on television, on billboards and buses, and in magazines.  Breast implants to make your breasts bigger.  Breasts peeking out of the Playboy behind the counter at the 7-11.  If you were an alien assessing our society for what we care about, breasts would be way up there. When you have breast cancer, you lose a piece of you that society really cares about. Which can make you wind up feeling less than whole.

The Woman Inside

As an OB/GYN physician, artist, and writer, my aim in creating The Woman Inside Project is to shine a light on the beautiful woman that lies within each breast cancer survivor.  When I began this project five years ago, I was arrogant enough to think I could hand-pick the women with the “interesting” stories, but I was quickly humbled to realize that every woman is beautiful when you take the time to see her.

For this project, I spent the past five years casting with medical plaster the torsos of women with breast cancer. When I complete the cast, I hold it up and say to the woman, “So this is what the world sees. Now tell me about the rest of you.” I then listen for as long as it takes her to unveil the breathtaking woman inside.

When the woman goes home, I paint her cast with encaustic, pigmented beeswax, the medium about which I wrote my first book Encaustic: A Guide To Creating Fine Art With Wax (Random House, 2010).  I also transcribe her story into a first-person narrative of the beauty I see within each woman.  Women I have cast describe it as a spiritual healing of sorts, during which I touch their bodies, cast their pain, then remove it and transform it into a work of art.  The stories I write are gifts to each woman, revealing to her the way I see her, letting her know she is heard and witnessed.

Every Woman Is Beautiful

Every woman’s story demonstrates a different type of beauty.  Nancy was 32 years old and 8 weeks pregnant with her second child when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  She had to make the agonizing decision of whether to terminate her pregnancy so she could undergo treatment. She opted to abort her child because she had a “prior commitment”- her 3 year old son, Wiley, waiting for her at home. Now, 14 years and a bilateral mastectomy later, she thrives, having just returned from leading a group of breast cancer survivors on a Harley Davidson ride around Australia, spreading awareness about young women with breast cancer.  Nancy glows – a glow that shows up in the way she abstractly photographs nude women. She chooses not to make her work about breast cancer. After a decade of resisting, she finally accepts her life’s work, which is to advocate for young women with breast cancer and tell the truth about bilateral mastectomy in this at-risk group. Though  breast cancer tried to take her life, it doesn’t own her. Nancy walks next to breast cancer now, but her path is her own.

Cancer caught up with Jo a little later in life. When she was diagnosed, Jo was a busy OB/GYN physician and holistic healer helping women with diseases such as breast cancer. Chemotherapy left her unable to use her hands, so she had to leave the practice she loved. Chemo is now long behind her and the wounds have scarred over, but she admits that she still feels wounded. However, I have a feeling her healing work in the world is not over.  The healer within her radiates like a lighthouse from a cliff, and I have no doubt it is her big heart that women need, not her hands.

Pam didn’t wait around for cancer.  Adopted as a child, Pam knew nothing about her family history until her adoptive mother died and the biological sister she never knew existed called with bad news.  In Pam’s biological family, everyone died of breast cancer- her mother and maternal grandmother were already gone.  Pam decided not to take any chances and opted for a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy.  Opting not to reconstruct her flat chest, Pam wears her body like a badge of courage, opting to choose love over fear. When I asked her what she looks like inside, she told me she loved hot rods, sports, and body building, but mostly she loves people.  She said, “I guess I’m like ketchup- Heinz 57, that’s me. All the ingredients all wrapped up in one is what you get.”

Cancer tried to knock Susan over, but she’s a Weeble- she might wobble, but she doesn’t fall down. When Susan was 40, her doctor recommended a routine mammogram.  Just before she put her breasts into the machine, the tech said, “Good luck,” and Susan knew at that moment she had breast cancer.  At every crossroads in her cancer journey, she received more bad news, but she never let it suck out her spirit. She works for the Dr. Seuss foundation, so I asked her favorite book, which she told me is McElligot’s Pool, in which a boy’s unbounded optimism allows his imagination to soar. When fishing in a small crack in the earth, in spite of the discouraging words from the pessimistic farmer,  He imagines a colorful swirl of sea creatures hidden underneath. “Oh, the sea is so full of a number of fish. If a fellow is patient, he might get his wish! And that’s why I think that I’m not such a fool, when I sit here and fish in McElligot’s pool.” Susan is like that boy. Even when facing unfavorable circumstances, when negative outcomes pile up and many would lose hope, when fear and doubt might plague those less optimistic, Susan grabs hold of her family, holds her head high, and smiles broadly, braces gleaming, imagining all of the new experiences the future holds, just underneath the crack in her life she is putting behind her.

I could go on (and I do), with story after story, woman after woman.  Not to diminish their pain, but breast cancer survivors are not so different from everyone else.  While traumas such as breast cancer crack us open and force us to grow, we all experience painful wounds that threaten to unravel us.  It’s how we respond to our wounds that truly tests us and gives us the opportunity to blossom. When viewers experience The Woman Inside Project, I hope they realize that each of us has the capacity to be this beautiful.  While I chose to cast breast cancer survivors because their wounds are so visible, I could have cast any group of survivors and the stories would be equally riveting and awe-inspiring.  When people have been to hell and back and you invite them to tell their truth, what emerges is a slender green stalk that, with tending, blossoms into full flower.  The women who participated in this project have created a garden for which I can claim no credit.  All I did was give them a piece of earth, a little water, and a whole lot of love, and they have bloomed.  It has been an honor to be their witness.