Each year on International Flat Day, I try to at least make a social media post to bring awareness to my journey to loving my body as a flattie. This year, I get to show off my brand new mastectomy tattoo!
This masterpiece has been a long time coming. After suffering through the pain and trauma of five surgeries and three sets of breast implants from 2014-2017, I finally learned to love my body the way it was meant to be. I gradually appreciated the strength my scars represented, as well as how nice it is to not have boobs (or fake boobs, aka foobs). And what I’ve often referred to as the wonky, but loved, contour of my chest is now a beautiful, floral work of art that I got to design myself. I still love my fading scars, but feel this artwork was always supposed to be a part of me.
Below is a picture of me several hours after my implants were removed when I became a flattie in 2017. The next two pictures were taken just two days later when I realized how much better I felt. I was still achy from the surgery. But for the first time in 3 years, I didn’t feel the painful weight of the implants. This is the moment that I realized that I didn’t need breasts.
This was the first day of me truly loving my body.
I didn’t need to put myself through the pain and trauma of any more surgeries, nor subject myself to the risks that come with implants or damaging other parts of my body. It must have been around that time, that I read a powerful statement that really stuck with me. An unknown woman on a forum told me that it’s time to love my body the way it was meant to be. I wrote about her, no us…all of us, this morning.
Here’s the video I created last year for International Flat Day that tells my story in more detail.
Even though my mastectomy was preventative due to my BRCA1 genetic mutation, I’ve never regretted having my breasts removed. But, I do regret putting myself and my family through the nightmare of attempting to reconstruct those breasts. I wish I knew what I do now, skipped all of that trauma, and gone straight to flat. I wish I’d seen pictures of the women living their best lives with their beautiful, flat chests!
I’ll always be nervous about sharing these vulnerable photos on the internet. But, I feel like this is an important part of my journey.
I hope that by loving my body out loud, I can prevent other women from suffering the unnecessary trauma that I experienced.
I’ve been the victim of some pretty poor medical choices, and have struggled a lot with being able to trust my doctors to give me the information I need to make educated decisions. We’re expected to believe the experts. But, in my experience, a lot of doctors only seem to talk about anything more than the obvious risks and complications when trying to talk me out of something. So, I learned to take it upon myself to research my options and advocate for my own health.
My advice is twofold. First, be proactive.
Plan on getting more than one medical professional’s opinion for these big decisions. I wish I had done this. I did find that support forums weren’t just about everyone’s trauma and biased opinions. They gave me access to a wide variety of medical advice from doctors across the globe. In addition, the internet gives us easy access to medical journals, not just opinion pieces. While finding the energy and mental strength to weed through it all will likely be a challenge, invaluable information is at our fingertips. One way or the other, learn what the risks are and share your concerns with your doctor. If your doctor isn’t open to discussing those concerns, find a different doctor. Speak up!
My second piece of advice is to delay reconstruction.
Even if you don’t have cancer, a mastectomy is a complicated and very painful surgery. It’s important that your surgeon removes as much of the breast tissue as possible to prevent future cancer. Many of the reconstruction options dramatically increase the short and long-term risks to your health. But, significant nerves and muscles will probably be severed even if you aren’t getting reconstruction. So I encourage you to give your body and mind time to heal before making difficult decisions about reconstruction and inflicting more trauma. Oh! Here’s a fun surprise I faced. Breast tissue includes estrogen and progesterone receptors, so be prepared for a bit of a hormonal roller coaster to add insult to injury.
And there is no rush! The doctors can leave enough skin behind to create breasts later. Or if you know you don’t want them anymore, you can get an AFC (Aesthetic Flat Closure). There’s just so much thrown at us even when not duking it out with cancer. And our society makes boobs seem so dang important to our femininity. I think if I had first gotten used to my flat chest, I would have made very different decisions about reconstruction. And while I’ve genuinely come to love my chest the way it is, I could certainly do without the autoimmune issues that the breast implants are suspected to have caused. Still, here’s proof that you don’t need boobs to be sexy!
A quick shout out to my beautiful sister!
My sister, who is a BRCA2 carrier, was recently diagnosed with Triple Negative Breast Cancer. She underwent several months of chemotherapy, and thankfully appears to be cancer-free going into her mastectomy in nine days. She is well aware of my experience, so I knew that that despite everything I’ve learned, I shouldn’t offer any advice unless asked. Since protecting other women from the hell I went through has become so important to me, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my sister, that’s been even harder than anticipated.
But, with my love for her, there comes respect. Everyone is on their own journey. I will be here to love and support my sister however her story plays out. And I have to say that I don’t think I’ve met anyone going through cancer with a better attitude than my sis. She’s amazing! Thank you for sending prayers and healing thoughts her way.
Okay, now for the fun part of loving my body in 2025.
It’s tattoo time!
Since going flat in November 2017, I’ve known I wanted to get a mastectomy tattoo. I just didn’t know for certain what I wanted! I got a fun tester tattoo on my ankle celebrating my love for the saxophone in March 2024. Since my chest is so bony and scarred, I wanted to get an idea of how painful a tattoo would be. The ankle tat was easy, but I’ve heard chest tattoos are one of the most painful spots even without all of the trauma. Enh, I’ve got this!
Earlier this year, an idea popped into my head to use a compilation of my kids’ and my own birth month flowers. I would have drawn the tattoo myself, but I learned last year that my style of drawing doesn’t translate well into tattoos. Too much shading! So, I put my Photoshop skills to work and created my unique mastectomy tattoo using free images I found online. My son Nathan was born June 2005, which is the honeysuckle flowers. Annika was born December 2007, and is represented by the daffodil. Kaia was born February 2012, and is the iris. And my birth month of May meant the bouquet got to be pulled together with lily of the valley flowers. I added a butterfly left of my heart and a little bit of my sense of humor at the bottom of the design.
I am so happy with the artist I found to turn my chest into a beautiful masterpiece! Carli Roach is new to Manhattan and working at Equilibrium Tattoo. I cannot say enough wonderful things about her. The whole experience was healing. She did the outlining and some of the shading in about five hours. Then a at a second sitting, she finished the shading plus added my “Tit for Tat” in about two hours. Can I say that I felt like such a badass? I didn’t even need numbing cream, just powered right through that sucker without a single flinch. AND I LOVE IT!
Thank you to my two photographer friends in the Little Apple, who showed up and gifted me pictures getting my chest piece.
Photos by Autumn Shoemaker:
Photos by Tony Ridder:
Here are some pictures of me airing out my fresh tats at Acadia National Park in Maine, August 2025.
And at the end of September 2025, I collaborated with the lovely Lacey Carroway, a photographer in Austin, Texas. My completed tattoo was barely three weeks old, so perfect timing. We wandered around downtown Austin taking empowering photos of each other for a solid hour and a half!
This is me loving my body! I feel like this is how I was always meant to be.
Austin is amazing by the way. What a great city! I got nothing but smiles of support for my mastectomy tattoo pictures out in public. Hopefully, that will stand true on the Internet.
Are you facing the overwhelming decisions that come with getting a mastectomy? Feel free to reach out to me directly, but I also highly recommend checking out one of my favorite forums where I first learned about going flat: Fierce, FLAT, and Forward. I only wish I’d found that amazing group sooner!
You can also check out some of my other personal blog posts about my journey.
I’ve gone from living in fear to a living work of art!
