Celebrating my pizza twins as I'm going into surgery to have a breast tumor removed today. ?Thankfully, it's benign. I can't stress my thanks to that enough. ? But I must say these past few weeks have been a whirlwind for me. As a 23-year old woman struggling with this, I've learned so much about how body image and self acceptance can be changed in an instant. Upon learning that part of my natural feminine identity was going to be chiseled away, torn apart, and sewn back together like a stuffed animal, I was devastated. Like many women, I had worked so hard to practice 100% body positivity and build "unbreakable" self confidence (of course, to some extent.. we all have our off days). I was at a point in my life where I truly looked in the mirror and loved what I saw. So that's why I was shocked to feel that sense of comfort fade away when my doctor told me I had to have a lumpectomy for a 5 cm tumor. He told me there is no telling for what I will look like after the removal, but it is a large mass. And after mourning over this "loss/change/all the terrible outcomes that could happen from a breast surgery," I realized that what I'm going through isn't even a sliver of what women who face breast cancer (or any form of cancer) are going through. My tumor is benign. I have to pinch my arm to remind myself that I am not going through a crisis. Cancer is a crisis. This makes me insecure and scared, but it's not a crisis. Going under the knife and having no idea what my body will look like after terrifies me, but if I want unbreakable self confidence, I have to come to terms with whatever I will look like after this. It may take some time, but luckily I have that. ❤

A post shared by Dining with Skyler (@nycdining) on May 19, 2017 at 5:45am PDT