sexuality

Romancing my self

~ Molly Kochan O ~ Leave a comment

lingerie-2

Since my double mastectomy in 2011, I’ve had this obsession with shopping for lingerie online. I wrote about how much I love my new boobs here. And I really do. They feel more like mine than my old ones. And when I’m down or the guest of honor at my own pity party, I wind up online looking at bras and panties. Actually I tend to do it no matter how I feel, but more so when I need a pick me up.

I’ve gotten great at finding sales (Barneys Warehouse is one of my favorite places to go) and there is nothing like getting a matching bra and panty set to make me feel beautiful and frisky and to elevate my mood.

I chalk up these purchases as acts of self love. Ways to pamper myself and remind myself of the femininity that came into question early on in treatment. This was something that was important for me to find again. My body had changed in so many ways. Aside from the obvious loss, I prematurely lost my period, I lost my ability to have children. There was noting gradual about this. It was all of a sudden. And the question was how do I find my womanhood in the context of such a dramatic shift of self?

For me one of the tools is this new joy of lingerie. Every little package is like a love letter to my body. A way of saying I deserve to continue feeling like a sexual being. I deserve to feel pretty. And for that I am grateful.

What I find as I navigate this whole experience is that the more I am able to focus on gratitude and joy, even in things that seem as trivial as underwear, the better the journey is. Every time I look for something pretty to wear, I am shifting the focus from loss to gain. The gaining of a new sense of self, of self confidence and of a little bit of joy that helps get me through that moment.

There are certainly less material tools out there to find acceptance in the now, but I wanted to share this one. I often hear people deny their sexual selves after treatment and I can imagine that some may also deny themselves material pleasures. I wanted to weigh in to say there’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel sexy post surgery and there’s nothing wrong with a little retail therapy now and again. Especially if it helps you romance your new self.

Flirting with IVF

~ Molly Kochan O ~ Leave a comment

wheelchair

Back when I was flirting with IVF, I remember sitting in the waiting room of the fertility office. It was cold and sterile, at least is in my memory. And as I sat there I felt like I had failed as a woman. I was as cold and sterile as the chair I was sitting in.

To make matters worse, the fertility doctor had a giant portrait of his family (wife and two kids) hanging in his office. Now when I say giant, think big and then multiply it about 20 times. They were not there to represent an IVF success story, it was just the doctor’s aesthetic. Their little eyes (giant only because of the size of the picture) looked at me as if to say “you couldn’t do this.”

Needless to say, my IVF journey was short lived for many reasons. I wasn’t that fertile anymore due to chemo, plus taking hormones would have introduced too much risk to my health. But what stood out for me most was the sense that I was no longer a real woman. It was a primal loss of desirability.

To get to the other side I had to grieve my ability to have a biological child. I also had to address my sexuality. Take a look at what made me feel desirable and tap into a part of myself that was all too easy to ignore…until it wasn’t.

I found creative tools to do that – from sexy selfies to flirting with strangers online – the details of which I will share at some point. There was a lot of going from the outside in. Focusing on the external to get to the internal. I had to overcome judgements of vanity and admit that I wanted to be attractive not just to myself but to other people. And as I gained that confidence, the confidence that other people saw me as desirable, it became less important for me to seek that kind of attention. Addressing it head on got it off my plate so I could focus on other things.

Don’t get me wrong, I still struggle with aging and have not completely let go of my desire to be attractive. But it’s not the most prominent issue I deal with anymore. My guess is it’s because I honored it and gave it a voice. When stuffing it would have only made it worse.

As far as IVF goes, I’m glad I stepped away from pursuing that. I applaud anyone who goes down that path. It’s a beautiful thing, creating life. And for those of us who can’t do it in that way, we get to find other ways to create.

I like boobs. I like my own boobs.

~ Molly Kochan O ~ 1 Comment

shaker

It’s strange to lose your breasts, to lose a part of you that makes you a woman. For some people it’s a sensual area. For me it never was,. In fact, I never really liked my breasts that much. They identified me as female, they were objectively sexual but I never found them beautiful. They were small, oddly shaped – at least that’s how I saw them.

Now I actually like my breasts. I think I own them differently. I find them beautiful, sexual. There is not a lot of sensation in them but, regardless, I like the way they feel to the touch. For me, being a woman and feeling sexual – which was an important thing for me to find after a Breast Cancer diagnosis – came with body ownership, feeling integrated in my own skin. I owe much of this sense of ownership to the choices I made pre-surgery and to some of the sexual exploration I wound up doing after surgery (all of which I will write about in time).

I’m sure there were somatic issues, emotions I held in my original breasts, which were somehow walled off from the rest of my body. I’m also sure that some would say that was the root of my cancer. I will never know. But what I do know is that, while this is not a diagnosis I would wish on anyone, the silver lining for me is having a healed relationship with my breasts and a part of my womanhood I had unknowingly denied for so long.

Breast choices

~ Molly Kochan O ~ Leave a comment

flower

In 2011, when I was first diagnosed with breast cancer, I was confronted with choices about what to do in terms of surgery. My tumor was fairly large and even with neoadjuvant chemotherapy (which means chemotherapy to shrink the tumor prior to surgery), it was recommended that I have a mastectomy.

The time and energy I put into the following decisions were pivotal in my body ownership journey. Being my own medical advocate was critical. Making choices based on health and aesthetics got me out of feeling victimized and hopeless. When I look at my breasts, I feel proud. Through something that made me feel so powerless, it was nice to find a way to be present and proactive. It was easy to hear that inner voice that said “I DON’T WANT Cancer” and how fantastic it was to be able to hear “I WANT…” and then do something creative with that desire.

My choices aren’t right for everyone but I am putting them here in case they can be of help to anyone. Because an extra voice may have helped me as I was trying to figure out what to do.

  • Bilateral vs. Single Mastectomy: The cancer was only in one breast and I had to decide whether or not to have both breasts removed or just one. I opted for both with silicon reconstruction.
    • Symmetry: This was important to me. I was grateful to have life saving surgery and I wanted to go after what, for me, would be the most aesthetically pleasing choice.
    • Less Stress: With Cancer there is already a fair amount of poking and prodding that happens on a regular basis. There are frequent scans and the stress that is associated with waiting for the results. I did not want to have to go in for a yearly mammogram and add that to my list of worries. Never mind that the data shows that survival rates don’t necessarily improve when you remove a healthy breast. Tell that to my emotional center!
    • Question of Breastfeeding: Knowing I wouldn’t be able to breastfeed (if and when I did have a baby) wound up being less important than symmetry and less stress. But this was definitely on the list of things I was considering.
  • To Nipple or not to Nipple?: Through research, I learned about nipple sparing mastectomies. It was something I requested and, because of the placement of my tumor, I was able to keep both nipples. The one on the cancer side looks a little different but I am still happy with the result. (As a side note, my keeping my nipples did not have anything to do with my recurrence. Sadly I had lymph node involvement as well, so the cancer had already escaped my ducts.) The process post-surgery was trying because, while they were able to spare the actual nipple, there was no guarantee my body would resume blood flow to that area. So even after surgery, I was at risk of losing them. I’m happy to say that I got to keep them both.