Courageous Women Who Wear Mastectomy Art from Their Battles with Breast Cancer
It’s hard to imagine the concept of literally losing an entire portion of your anatomy – particularly when that portion is one of the things that’s most representative of your gender. But when a mastectomy means the difference between breast cancer and surviving breast cancer, it’s a worthy sacrifice.
A recent NewMediaRockStars.com article introduced many of us to Kelly Davidson, a woman who had to undergo a double mastectomy at 28 to win her fight with breast cancer (she has also survived thyroid cancer and Hodgkin’s Lymphoma). But rather than undergoing breast reconstruction surgery to restore her breasts, she chose to leave her chest flat and bare, opting instead to have an immense, beautiful fairy-tale scene tattooed over her scars.
Unlike many tattoos, however, this gesture was totally symbolic. The scene depicts her external metamorphosis, covering up her skin’s scars with something meaningful.
Kelly’s brave choice shows us that it’s more than just our breasts that define us as women and show the world we ourselves are beautiful. It’s so hard – for me, at least! – to imagine what it would be like to have to lose that part of me, to just wake up every morning and look down and suddenly realize there is nothing where there had been something for so long.
We women can tend to identify our bodies as the things that show the world who we are. We dress in certain ways to show off or accentuate the parts of our bodies we like: the feminine curves, the woman-ish hips, the lady-like features. But what happens when we don’t have those? Does it mean we are no longer really women?
Today, this week, this month – anytime in our lives, let’s remember the example Kelly made and both be thankful for our bodies and appreciative of the women who have to have theirs re-shaped by tragedy. Let’s embrace their courage and remember that we are more than just our bodies, and losing some part of them doesn’t mean we lose who we are inside!
Those women who have had to lose their breasts due to cancer can never truly replace what was lost, even with reconstruction. In honor of them and to show some really great body art, please enjoy these photos of some of the women who have chosen to find beauty in tragedy!
There is an awesome cause that caught my attention recently: P-ink. This is an awesome group of tattoo artists in New York have set up a fund scar-coverage tattoos so more women can be free to pursue the same choice Kelly did with more support and without the added financial stress of a potentially large tattoo.
We hope some local Las Vegas tattoo artists will join the P-ink campaign for women right here in Vegas, too, and help spread this incredible alternative. Anything that can help a woman overcome the hardship!
To help support the cause and continue to build awareness for it, check out their fantastic Pinterest page here!
What would you do if you were faced with breast cancer – reconstructive surgery or not?
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