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"Why don't you just be grateful you're alive, instead of focusing on that!"

That was one of many comments from well-meaning loved ones as I grappled with my new mastectomy, following breast cancer.

During the early days of my bionic boob reveal, another well-intentioned tactic to lift my spirits was to downplay the severity of my experience; all in the hopes of helping me come to terms with my new chest bestie.

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"I mean, my boobs already look like I've had a mastectomy, they're so small. It wouldn't bother me if I had to do it. I'd just chop them both off."

"Who's going to see your nipple anyway?"

"It's not like your boobs are amazing. They're kinda saggy. Think of it as an upgrade and get the other one done too." (fun fact: it's actually not medically advised to disrupt the other, supposedly saggy, titty in my case.)

"Looks fade, the man you'll end up with won't care." Said a sea of expressionless faces.

Inside, those comments left me screaming.

I understand the comments came from a well-intentioned place. Image: Supplied.

Staring at my new nipple-less mound of faux flesh, while tossing up between nipple tassels, nipple inserts or a nipple tattoo, I remember feeling like an ungrateful asshole.

I was constantly told I should be "grateful", every time I'd express a lament about being disfigured.

And look, I kind of understand that response. The well-intentioned act of dissuading any emotion, thought or conversation that wasn't overtly "grateful" (and thus conducive to healing) wasn't coming from a bad place.

It's quite the opposite.

I began to wonder if I was the only woman with mixed emotions of the super-happy-I'm-alive-but-finding-it-hard-to-see-me-naked variety.

Apparently, I was supposed to be doing non-stop cartwheels the second I was given my "stable" from the docs.

Thing is, this traumatised tit still had to process, mourn and feel everything that had transpired through her recovery.

What breast cancer taught me.

Healing from breast cancer was the loneliest time of my life.

After my diagnosis, I quickly learnt that processing anger and grief does not remove the existence of gratitude. I'm unsure who started the narrative that if a human feels one way about a thing, that one emotion is suddenly the entirety of their being.

Through the cacophony of never-ending scans and blood tests and life-and-death decisions and financial burdens and restrictive diets and meds with debilitating physical and mental side-effects and nips that were here-one-day-gone-the-next — one may be forgiven for thinking and feeling more than one thing.

Allow me to rephrase that. One will absolutely, 100 per cent, feel a vast array of dichotomous emotions on any given day. At any given time.

In the eye of the mastectomy storm, I didn't have time to let the hospital dust settle long enough for the painful pennies to drop.

The adrenaline of trying to outrun death overrode any mental or emotional recalibration in real time.

Cancer is lonely. Image: Supplied.

It was only months after my boob had faced the chopping block that I was able to pause in safety long enough for my nervous system to exhale. From there, attention turned to starting to making peace with the mastectomy mayhem, which meant losing a tit and a nip. And extracting multiple cancerous lymph nodes. Removing most of my breast skin. Stretching the remaining skin with a metal plate (expander) for six months. Removing more cancer from my chest wall and lymph nodes a second time. Reconstructing a new, nipple-less breast. Being left with zero feeling in the right side of my chest…

Yes. I. Was. Grateful. But. I. Still. Had. Days. I. Was. Pissed. Off. Frustrated. And. Sad.

I needed to be seen and heard. Image: Supplied.

But here is the thing about cancer. My heart desperately needed to be seen and heard. I needed to have the s**t side of my experience validated.

Instead, whenever I expressed dismay at my new body, I felt like I was reprimanded for not being grateful enough.

I've since learnt that feeling this anguish — in all its unapologetic ugly glory — was a necessary precursor that enabled me to live in a space of real gratitude. Not toxic positivity. Not people-pleasing pleasantries.

The road to healing.

My healing took a few years, things became messy before they became clear, and looking back, I can see the people who loved me the most were also the most terrified of losing me.

They were so scared themselves, they needed to make sure I was "OK", so they could be.

But, what exactly did it mean to be "OK" in their eyes?

At the time, it felt like my nearest and dearest thought it meant being immediately ecstatic with my newly modified body, my new (mostly non-existent) energy levels, and ultimately my new upside-down life.

After spending years doing everything and anything I could to help my body heal, it wasn't until I could stop trying to win gold at the Healing Olympics long enough to process my new reality that my perspective began to evolve.

I have a newfound strength. Image: Supplied.

A new reality with a reconstructed, nipple-less C-cup facing far (far) north. A natural nipple-bound D-cup facing south-west. And a body exhausted from years of treatments and surgeries.

Surrounded by love, marred by myriads of misinformed mic-drops, I knew what I had to do. I had to let go of the expectations of others.

Grateful expectations.

It's-not-so-bad-remember-it-could-be-worse expectations. Stop-caring-what-you-look-like expectations.

Freeing myself from the expectations around how I was supposedly meant to feel, I tap-danced right off their titty-reconciliation timeline. I sat with my sorrow long enough to process my experience before arriving at my own acceptance of healing stage three breast cancer.

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With the physical time and space to recombobulate my mental marbles around my mastectomy, I now genuinely wake up every day grateful to God for my life-saving surgery.

It just took me a minute to readjust to my new reality long enough to reset my outlook on what had been, what currently is, and what may lay ahead.

I have my life. I have my bionic boob. I have my newfound gangsta-bish strength.

With the above titty trifecta, what's a nipple between friends? Amirite!

Today, I look in the mirror at my nip-less chest and see the beauty in my strength, resilience and tenacity. My reimagined breast is a reminder not only of my body's ability to heal, but the gift of life that has been generously bestowed upon me.

It simply took this tenacious tit a whole lot of crying, praying, venting, kicking, praying again, F-you-ing and then praying just a little more, for the cancer-healing caterpillar to emerge as the breast-fully gracious butterfly she is today.

And my nip-less tit lived gratefully ever after.

Amen.

Feature Image: Supplied.