I’m a pretty positive person. I try to find humor in every situation and I think I have an inner resilience that has served me well. Even when I was a little girl, I was always smiling and happy even though I was not the “picture of health.” I suffered terribly from the croup, had several bouts of pneumonia, ear problems…blah, blah, blah. I was also, EXTREMELY accident-prone. I was the kid who would walk off the top step into mid-air and fall down two flights to the basement floor. I’d walk into the corners of tables, miss the doorway and hit the wall and of course, I was the kid who put her tongue on the frozen railing to see if it actually would stick! I was soooooo bad, that my grandmother sat my Mom down and said “Don’t get too attached to her Marlene, I don’t think she’ll live to see her third birthday!”

The best way to move forward is the let go of the people holding you back. We’ve all had that one ex that we compare every man to, and put on that pedestal when we know full well, he was a complete jerk. We all had that one friend we keep around, even though everything always revolves around her and her drama. We all had that one crazy family member, who is convinced she is a liberal hippie that cares about the environment and helping others in need, except for the big important factor that she is extremely selfish and only cares about how many followers she gets on instagram. Or who can forget that one family friend who is a hypochondriac and always has to one-up you. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why can’t we learn how to let go of someone, even when we know they are no longer good for us?

I am the first to admit that I have been remiss in nurturing my friendships with other women. Over the years other things have always “got in the way”… be it work commitments, family commitments…life commitments. I should have made my girlfriend commitments more of a priority, but I didn’t. But that is all going to change. I hear women talking of their girl’s weekends, spa days, dinners…even girls-only vacations. Whatever the event, I want to participate.

If you google breast reconstruction, you will see photos of very symmetrical, round, shapely “foobs”. Most photos show women with nipples still in tact and scars that are barely visible. That is not my reality, nor will it ever be I’m afraid. I had a bilateral mastectomy with immediate reconstruction. Which is a fallacy as there was nothing immediate about it. During the mastectomy surgery, tissue expanders were inserted under my pectoral muscles. They remained inside me for eight months.