The woman I was before cancer had just started to come into her own.

My self-confidence was sky-high as I hit my 40s. I was making career moves, planning adventures, loving my role as a mom, and walking around with a little wiggle in my hips. I felt good and looked good. All the body issues I had in my 20s and 30s didn’t seem to matter anymore, I was a queen in my own mind.

Then breast cancer happened.

How could it be that once I had finally accepted and come to love myself, that then my body would betray me?

I could barely recognize myself at the end of my active treatment.

My body was carved up like you cut the moldy bits off a piece of cheese or the gristle off a cheap steak. Looking at my chest, it was not flat. It was concave. The skin on my right side was discolored and tight from radiation treatments. I was bald, traumatized, and self-love was the last thing I could feel.

As my physical wounds healed, I find myself counting my scars, and tracing them with my fingers. But, rather than seeing mutilation, I see new lifelines and possibilities in those scars. I see myself as a sort of living sculpture that is both a monument to what my body has been through and a guidepost for my path into the future.

My body shape doesn’t fit the mold of traditional femininity but dwelling on that thought will not bring my sexy back. I decided to reject the images of boobs and curves as the be all end all of what makes a woman and define myself on my own terms.

Falling so widely outside society’s expectation of what a woman should look like has set me free.

Why try to cram myself into a mold that I would inevitably fall short of filling? Why not display my scars proudly and refuse to hide under layers and prosthetics?

I would be lying if I said I don’t get boob envy on occasion, or that sometimes I don’t get a little sad when I see a dress that would look spectacular on me – if I had the breasts to fill it out.

But for the most part, I feel good about my body.

I dress to please myself and have fun with colors and styles I never would have tried before my cancer diagnosis.

I’ve learned that sexiness is an attitude and breasts don’t have anything to do with it!