Breast cancer is even more devastating when you loose a breast due to mastectomy.
You look in the mirror and do not recognize yourself with one breast or none.
Now, you are in a dilemma and ask yourself "What can you do about it"? Where do I go from here? Fear settles in. All legitimate questions and concerns.
Here is what I learned from my breast cancer and mastectomy that, I would like to impart them to you.
1. Be selfish and love yourself.
2. Accept your new image.
3. Fall in love with your new image.
You say, "I wish I could do that. But I can't." Sometimes the thing you desire seems most evasive and elusive to you. You may seem to think that you need something else that is external to you for you to be able to achieve self-love. Moreover, because this external thing is away from you and you do not have it, you think that you are doomed because even that seems elusive. Therefore, you are stuck in a vicious circle. You accept that, you fear it.
However, before you accept something that has absolutely no value to you, take another look. Fear is a thing we are conditioned to accept without question, yet it has absolutely no value. Next time you accept fear, ask yourself what value it really has for you. Escape is not a value. There is nowhere to run.
Eventually, you will have to face yourself. Running away from a problem is an idea that stems from the illusion that you are the problem, and you can escape the "you" with the problem. The first step to getting out of a problem is knowing and accepting that you are the problem, and then you become the solution.
Nothing outside changes, but as you change, a new outside replaces the old.
For now, let us see what you can do.
Everyone has things that can do now that they could not do before. You can now walk while as a child you could not. The ground never changed, but you did. You can now read while you once could not. The English language never changed, but you did.
Do you get the picture? A person can do a million things now that they could not do years ago.
Why?
It is never those things that changed. What changed was the idea that the person had of himself or herself.
So what can you do? It is nothing more than a shift in what you think you are. What You Really Are is a being with infinite abilities. Everyone is. We are all literally an idea. We become those persons by changing the idea of what we think we are.
Here is to you for loving yourselves just the way you are with one breast or none!
I love you,
Lea Yekutiel
Lea Yekutiel - author
Making the Breast of It:
Overcoming Fear of Intimacy After Breast Cancer
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