Sirens for Survivors for Breast Cancer Survivors

Posted by Chrissy Dolezal Sep 24, 2009

My mom died from cancer. What started as breast cancer, moved through her body damaging both of her breasts, her liver, bones, brain, and ultimately her heart. After four years of treatments and surgery her body was very different, with no hair, no breasts, and scars all over her body. But I never saw her differently, she was always my mother, and to me she never changed.

I was young then, a preteen girl whose body was changing as well. Maybe I didn’t notice the differences in my mother’s body because all I could see were the differences in my own.

Once I was married I began to think about my mom in a different way. Not as a mother, but as a wife, as a woman. I wondered how womanly she felt after her surgeries. Did she mourn over the differences in her body? Did she mourn over the loss of her breasts? When she was alone with her husband, my father, did she feel like a woman?

My mom never acted like her cancer was a big deal. She didn’t enjoy all the treatments and regular hospital stays, definitely not. But she never showed any real emotion or fear over it. And she definitely didn’t show any reaction to the changes in her body. If she did, it was in laughter, in comedy. But I wonder what emotion was really there and what was for the benefit of her three daughters. How much weight did she bear so we wouldn’t have to?

I hope she still felt loved, still felt like herself, even though her body had changed so much in just four years.

Many people have been affected by breast cancer. Rachel Stephens, a portrait photographer, wants to help women whose bodies and lives changed because of breast cancer. Knowing that all women, no matter the circumstances that surround their lives, have the right and desire to feel sexy; Stephens has opened a time in her regular travel schedule for one woman to have this opportunity. At every travel stop in her schedule, Stephens is giving the chance for a breast cancer patient to tell her story, have a 90 minute photography session and a gift certificate for $295. These women will have the opportunity to be photographed looking their sexiest, with full hair and makeup.

For more information on how you or someone you love can be a part of this wonderful opportunity, please go to Rachel Stephens Photography.