“Congratulations. When are you due?” a woman asked me as I pumped gas.
“Oh, I’m not,” I said.
She gave me a confused look.
“I had breast cancer,” I told her.
“Oh, my God! I’m so sorry,” she said, shocked. “God bless you.”
I’m not sure why I offered her an explanation. I think I was also in shock. That was the first time since I’d had a double mastectomy that someone mistook me for being pregnant.
A wave of grief came over me as I remembered the twins I lost nearly a decade earlier. I was over 35 when I conceived, and my pregnancy was considered high-risk. Still, no matter the odds, I wanted to celebrate, and I told everyone I was expecting.
The pregnancy was difficult, and I miscarried at 14 weeks. Before I lost the babies, other parents shared lots of advice and stories about their own pregnancies and kids, and I was thrilled to be a part of that world.
After the pregnancy loss, I learned I would never be able to have children. I seriously considered adoption, but it wasn’t an option due to my financial situation at that point in my life. It made me wish I had given more thought to family planning in my 20s. Now it was too late, and the sorrow from losing the twins and from being told I would never be a mother hit me hard.
I found a therapist who helped me work through my grief, and, with the help of a mindfulness practice, I began to find joy in spending time with and giving to the children who were in my life. I started to enjoy how things were instead of how I wished they were.
Eight years later, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and my world changed again. I moved back to Florida, where I had not lived for 15 years, to be closer to my family. I underwent a double mastectomy, and it took a year and a half for the wounds to fully heal.
It wasn’t long after my surgery that strangers began to assume I was pregnant due to the combination of my now flat chest and the shape of my stomach. Some, like the woman at the gas station, asked…
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