"You Are Whole" with Image Activist Michaela Raes

A Breast Cancer Diary

Whether you're flat or reconstructed, if you've had a mastectomy you have scars on your chest, and the natural tendency for most of us is to hide them. What happens when we encounter someone who isn't as interested in hiding? For me, it's been magic each time a person shows a lack of shame to those around her, and that's all Michaela is doing with her nonprofit, The Breast Cancer Confidence Project, starting with herself. This is one episode you'll want to watch on youtube because the photos Michaela shared with me tell her story best. Listen in to hear Michaela's story of the transition from fear to confidence in her post-mastectomy story of healing through photography. Find full show notes at www.abreastcancerdiary.com by going to this link. Breast Cancer Confidence can be found most easily on facebook and instagram by the same name. Stay tuned there to hear more about the upcoming photo book, You Are Whole, to be published later this year.

Episode Transcript:

K:

Hey, everybody, this is Kathleen Moss and you're listening to a breast cancer diary. Today's guest is Michaela Raes president and co founder of Breast Cancer Confidence Project. She lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York, and she was one of the first women that I considered a role model to myself in the area of body positivity, uh, she did this by showing up on Instagram and sharing photographs of her body as it was changing after mastectomy.

And this was before I had ever found a community of my own, or an example of sharing this in real life, sharing one's body after breast cancer. And so she made a profound impression on me. And then after that, after seeing those pictures, I learned that she was doing this for other women in the world and spreading the message of body positivity after mastectomy through the Breast Cancer Confidence Project.

And just about a month ago, I got to meet Michaela in person. She traveled all the way to the West Coast here in Portland, where I live, and she did a photo shoot with her co founder. Jolana, and I met both of them and it was just such an honor to experience their project in person. So, today, I just want to ask Michaela some personal questions about her breast cancer journey and what brought her to this work of body positivity and in the realm of specifically of photography.

So Michaela you shared these photos of yourself, these really stark, but also very beautiful and tastefully done photos of yourself in studio, studio quality photos, um, with the world and showed the different phases of your reconstruction just so beautifully. What inspired you to start this work with your own body and, and to do this for the rest of us?

M:

Well, first of all, I want to say, thank you for having me here. It was great meeting you last month as well. So it's really an honor to be here and discussing this with you. I would say really what led me to want to start this whole process was my. my internal struggles that I had with my body image being diagnosed at the age of 28.

I was very young. I was recently divorced. I was newly single. And I was already feeling insecure about myself and my body. And then you get this completely unexpected news that you have breast cancer. And that just. totally rocks everything that you thought you knew about your body, right?

And so then that also brought up a lot of questions for me at the time. What will my body look like? Will I ever feel comfortable in my body? Will I ever feel confident and sexy in my body? Well, will I ever feel comfortable around a man in my body after all of this? And then there was a lot of fear and a lot of panic.

And I feel like a lot of what I found out there, I guess, didn't. Didn't really provide me that reassurance. All of the images that I would see looking on Google online, you know, at doctor's offices, it was just this very cold clinical representation of these are your options of what you'll look like.

And you're being faced with all of these different, you know, choices that you have to make too these surgeries that you have to choose from these very extreme decisions. And you have no clue what any of that really means or what you would feel like with that. And then all you see is people that just are, are standing there and not looking very comfortable because it's this stiff standing against a wall for your doctor's office.

So it was just really difficult for me to be going through that emotionally. On top of everything else too, right? As if we don't have enough things that we're dealing with to then have that on top of it. So after all of that, I am going through treatment and I start to realize that all of these things that I'm afraid of, all of these things that I thought were going to change the way that I felt about myself, about my body--I was still okay. And in fact, I was able to, you know, look at myself fighting through all of this and, and really see that my body was strong and it was, it was helping, you know, fight to fight this disease, right. And. I guess I, I was able to recognize that all of these things that I was afraid of did not need to scare me the way that they did.

So I wanted to share that story with the world. Really, I just wanted to be able to show other women that they don't have to have that fear. And I felt like I had a really unique. opportunity in a way with the, just the way that my surgeries fell. It started off with, you know, planning to have to choose just one surgery timing wise, I had to go through a lumpectomy and then I had to go through all of my chemotherapy. And then I had to have my double mastectomy. I had delayed reconstruction. So I went through. pretty much all of these different phases that you could possibly fathom and to be able to show to somebody else who might be faced with similar dramatic decisions like that. That, at baseline, really was what I think I needed to give me that kickstart in my confidence to feel okay. And then to be going through treatment, like I said, I just see myself in this different way after rebuilding that confidence a little bit right before my first surgery was when we did my first photo shoot.

K:

So whose idea was it to sit down and take a photo at that early stage? Like, was it jolana's idea or was it your idea? Like, what made you think to do that?

M:

So I guess, at the time of my diagnosis, when I was faced with all of these insecurities about my body, I felt like I wanted to memorialize my body as I always had been, as I had always known I wanted to just have something to be able to remember what I looked like before everything changed.

So that was really where it all started--I was just looking to have that first photo shoot and not really have anything beyond that. Again, I was afraid that I was not going to feel comfortable in my body that I was not going to feel confident ever again. So having that first photo shoot was just a way to show who I had been and then as I went through treatment.

Everything just seemed to be not as terrifying as I thought it would be at first. Losing my hair wasn't this big deal. I was able to find ways to find silver linings through all of that. And I think that's really what also helped me to build up my confidence and feel comfortable. As I'm going through treatment, to want to go through more boudoir shoots, to then be able to capture what it looked like in every single stage of what I went through.

K:

At what point did you feel ready to share those with the world? Did it take you a while?

M:

It did take me quite a while, actually. After I think my It was after my mastectomy. To be honest with you, I think I was still under the influence of anesthesia when I really just decided I had the guts to just go ahead and put it all out there.

So I think that gave me the little boost that I needed to really be able to put this out there. And. I'm, I'm glad that, that I did because it's been really, it's been really rewarding to see all of these different women like yourself who have really been impacted by this work and who have felt inspired and have felt empowered to, to love their bodies even through all of this.

K:

Yeah. What struck me was that I still have never seen anyone share. the expanders, like you shared the stage of your story where you still had expanders in, and I've heard them described and I've heard people talk about what they feel like, but I've never seen a body with expanders in and you know, breasts with expanders in that are uncovered.

And. I think just the power and the connection probably between you and Jolana, it was so powerful because you have zero shame. You have zero self consciousness in those photos. You are truly self loving in your spirit. And that was powerful. Like just the combination of having that kind of raw representation of what was going on, but also the countenance that you had.

And wow, it was, it was amazing. I'm sorry that this is an audio program because I'd love to be able to share. At the end of the YouTube version of this this podcast episode, we will definitely share these photos so that people can see them, but talk a little bit about how this morphed from just you sharing your body with the world into a project where you're inviting other women in to this invitation to share their bodies with the world.

Well, I mean, really it, It was rewarding to be able to share my own experience and my own story, but I, that's not relatable to every woman that is out there either. My, my experience and my body is not every body that has been through this.

Even beyond that inspiration part, I really wanted to be able to give those women that same experience that I did of having that opportunity to have a confidence boost for themselves as well, and to really learn to fall in love with their bodies again. Jolana is just fantastic. I can't imagine a better person to be working on this project and this organization with, she's just so encouraging and she really knows how to just cheer you on every step of the way and coaches you through it and makes you feel so comfortable. And I think that just the way that she approaches giving women this empowering experience is just a whole other part of what we've been able to offer by sharing this work with the rest of the world and traveling and visiting other survivors like yourself.

K:

So great. Yeah. And so rare. I think I personally was inspired by you and a couple of others that I discovered on Instagram to go and hire my own Boudoir photographer after my first mastectomy. I asked her to do this incredibly personal thing and do this project with me when she had never done anything like it before. She'd only photographed breasted, you know, whole women that had not been scarred in this area. And I was asking her a lot, I realize now! And I've been back to her because we did build a rapport in that.

But that is a huge piece of it--just Jolana's comfort and her confidence in your beauty. So that's such a gift. And I know you guys share these photos both on Instagram and Facebook, right?

M:

Right. Yes.

K:

So, and you've come to a place where you've started--a couple of years ago--started asking women to share their stories along with photos in a kind of short, brief, short form way.

Can you talk a little bit about your latest project you're working on an actual book like a physical publication now for the first time. And what is that going to look like? How are you going to marry it, it sounds like it's going to be photographs taken by Jolana only where the ones on Facebook and Instagram are like mine was taken by my own local boudoir photographer, but the book is going to be just Jolana's photography of women post mastectomy or post Lumpectomy also?

M:

also?

Post lumpectomy... post mastectomy... post reconstruction... flat, without choosing reconstruction.... we're really looking to be able to show all of those different options that can be chosen. Because again, there's really, there's not a lot of information that is out there that is really encouraging or really shows you that you're going to. love your body after all of this, when you first get this diagnosis.

So we just find it really empowering to be able to share all of these different stories from different women to remind survivors that you are whole after all of this, no matter what you choose. You are still beautiful. You're still yourself. You're still whole, and you can still feel comfortable regardless of which of these options that you choose.

K:

And that's the name of the book, right? You are whole? Is that the planned title?

M:

Yes. You are Whole is the name of the book.

K:

So how will you ask the women in the book to share their stories. Is it going to be a longer form, a page and a half or two page story, or is it still going to be kind of a brief short-form one, like it is in your Facebook posts and your Instagram posts?

M:

So we're asking for kind of free form, for women to share their stories about their confidence journeys and how they've learned to accept these changes that they've been through, what they've experienced along the way, what challenges they've run into and really how they've grown from all of this.

Then we're using those words to help other women learn to, to recognize that this is not the terrifying thing that you think it's going to be when you first hear that diagnosis.

K:

So your intended audience is for women that are kind of just getting a diagnosis and, and facing this.

M:

That again was, was my experience. It's something I felt from the beginning, but also we want to help women who are in any stage of their journey. So if they're also still. Struggling with with their own confidence after what they've been through you know, there's, there's not a lot of representation out there in the media or things that, we see that really reinforces that there are women that look like us and they can still feel this way about their bodies. They can still want to love their bodies in this way. They can still look awesome like this. I think that's really the whole goal, is to be able to help anybody. Whether they're still going through it and when they have those decisions to make, or whether those decisions have already been made, and maybe we're just trying to make peace with, you know.

K:

I want to end with just a really personal question that I'm asking all of my guests and hopefully you have an answer for it. Hopefully it's not too personal and that is do you have any regrets? Or do you have anything that you really wish you would have known going into this experience that you didn't know, but you know now and you'd like to share with other women.

M:

The main thing that I wish I would have known early on is that all of, all of these insecurities that I faced at the beginning, these, these fears that were piled on top of the fears that we talked about in the beginning, you know, the, how am I going to feel about my body on top of "is this body going to live?" period. You know, there was no need to be adding that onto what's already a very scary situation. So I think, I wish I would have learned, you know, sooner that maybe that wasn't something that I needed to be afraid of, you know. In hindsight, there's probably a lot of different reasons why I had that experience, but at the end of the day it was pain that didn't really need to be had. It was mostly a, a fear that I had being 28, having my diagnosis and not knowing what my life is going to look like. Right. So it's not only a fear of, of how am I going to feel about my body? It's, it's a fear of: how are potential partners going to feel about my body too.

Seeing the pictures that you would see at the doctor's office, it's just not people feeling that comfortable. So it's just this stiff torso is all you see, and then I feel like that also makes it really hard to choose anything but the thing that looks what we are most accustomed to which is some form of reconstruction... and I feel like that's a disservice as well. Because. there are so many complications that can be had with reconstruction as well.

I think that there needs to be more out there that shows women that all of this can still look beautiful and natural and still, still feel comfortable and still feel like yourself.

I was offered flat as an option. I feel like for me at the stage that I was at in my life, where I was at in my confidence, I didn't feel like, you know, I had any other choice. And I felt like if, I'm going to have to go through all of this, at least get me some boobs out of it. So I mean, it was, I guess, a lame consolation prize.

It felt like, but I mean, no, really in all seriousness it felt like kind of a, a given decision. Like it didn't feel like there was any other decision. You asked what, is something that I wish I knew to begin with. I do wish that, that I had known this because you know, there, there are times that I'm just like, man, these things are so heavy. Like, why did I do this? And then there's you know, different little quirks about having silicone implants that are just, not the most fun thing either.

So, you know, maybe I might've chosen something else. If I had known that I wouldn't necessarily need this to feel comfortable in my skin. Who knows?