I wish someone had said this to me before my mastectomy

I heard a LOT of things before my mastectomy.  Most of them were variations on "however you feel after it is totally valid."

Which is a great message. I'm not knocking it for a moment.

Of course I read a LOT about prosthetics. Silicon vs beany vs about sixteen other types, and which bras to buy to prevent the situation of one's breast going airborne and slinging itself across aisle five in the supermarket. I heard a lot of "it'll take a while to get used to", too.

And I read several stories of people finding their first view of the scar deeply traumatic, or suffering with PTSD as a result of the operation.

 Again, not criticizing any of those reactions. There is no right / wrong here, and it's not a contest. We all cope with things in our own way according to our feelings and unique challenges.

But no one told me there was another option

As helpful as it was to hear that it might take a while, that I might have mixed feelings, that seeing the scar for the first time would be A Lot, no one told me there was another way to approach it.

I didn't find a lot of posts or pages out there telling me "you can decide to be ok with your new body. You can decide to love it and think it's quirky and beautiful." But I knew that's what I wanted to do.

Because you know what, I spent a lot of my younger years hating my body. I had an eating disorder. And in later years I realised I was gender dysphoric, and went through a long, painful process of decided whether to transition, before finally deciding it wasn't the right path for me. I put on a LOT of weight for various health reasons.

It took me a long ass time and a lot of struggle to finally be able to say "you know what, I love my body, in all its plus size curvy, stiff, achy, misbehaving, not at all how I wanted it to be, glory."

And god dammit I was NOT going to let having a mastectomy damage that. 

I found lots of beautiful pictures of post mastectomy people who were at peace with their bodies, and many pictures of gorgeous mastectomy scar tattoos (guess what I'm planning for one of these days.) It helped, but most of the pictures were of people who were perfectly flat. And I wasn't going to be perfectly flat. I was going to be like the flat landscape of East Anglia on one side, and the Alps (or should that be Alp?) on the other.

So I did the only thing I know how to do in tough situations - take charge of what I CAN take charge of, and try to be at peace with the rest (soooo easier said than done.)

Every day before the operation, I visualized myself waking up from it with a spirit of "wow, this is cool. I like this." I told myself that when I came round, I'd be surprised by how much I liked my new form. That I'd think it was quirky and beautiful and different. After all, I've never had one breast before! So why not be curious about how I'd react to it?

I decided that my body deserved all my love 

She's been through so much already. I didn't want to add to that by giving her the message "I hate how you look now."

So I kept up the visualizations, and affirmations, every day, telling myself that my new shape would be awesome and I'd fall in love with it straight away.

Now I'm not going to pretend I woke up, leaped from the table,and ran around the hospital gleefully flashing my asymmetric chest at everyone (I was too busy crying with relief that I was alive, insisting on holding the nurse's hand, and arguing with him).

But I can say truthfully that I couldn't wait to see, and find out if all my work had paid off. It has. I'm intrigued by my new shape and determined to enjoy navigating the world with it. I'm genuinely excited to get the dressing off this week so I can see my actual chest not all the padding. And I'm still in the habit of telling my body every day that I love all its landscapes, the flatlands and the hills!

I know there will be challenges, especially other people's reactions, but it's my intention to go out into the world (with or without a prosthesis) with the attitude "I'm cool with having one breast, so if anyone else isn't, that's their deal and I don't have to buy into it."

Asymmetry is cool. That's my new mantra.