"I tried to explain: reconstruction would mask the truth of what would happen to my body, and the bodies of so many women, most of us women with cancer."

"The dominant message in our culture, so hard to disentangle from our own beliefs, says that to be attractive, to be worthy of love and success, bodies must be female or male and must conform to certain specifications."

"If we are to translate the silence surrounding breast cancer into language and action against this scourge, then the first step is that women with mastectomies must become visible to each other.”