December 2011. The mammogram was suspicious, the biopsy was conclusive. Reeling from the news that I was now the one in the 1-in-8, that I would lose my hair and maybe die anyway, it was necessary to tell the girls. Ever since the days of bang-curling and boy-calling, sleepover-snubs and friendship pins, we gals need each other in the know. For those I find to be kindred spirits (all of you dear readers), I’m a fast friend and you’re IN. I’m a sharer. And now a blogger (ew). But it all started here with this email to my oldest girlfriends, my favorite mommies, the Churchy-do-gooders who also smoke and swear, and the fierce Stockton cousins.

Hi pretty ladies, my dearest friends, the ones who know all of my secrets…

I’ve been incompletely texting/emailing some of you during this stressful week, but here’s the news: I have breast cancer. The high grade already invasive kind. We just told the boys and chemo’s got to be easier than that. I’m a mess. No amount of waterproof mascara can help. But Ativan is getting me through this day so far. I have an amazing husband who is one of the world experts in this exact area, and is still the love of my life. I have local friends who will take my kids at a moment’s notice. I already have casseroles on the doorstep. And the twin grandmas arrive today to be a flurry of cute activity. We’ve prepared the boys for lots of tears.

I plan to be positive, upbeat, witty, and not dead. But I may be texting you at odd hours so I can hear, “it’s OK” again.  And I don’t plan to keep this hush hush… especially when I could be spending Spring Break fashionably bald. So I’d appreciate if you could tell the people I haven’t. So I don’t have to explain why I’m drinking all of this green tea instead of my usual bubbles.

I will call all of you eventually… but right now, doing that makes me cry and I don’t want to terrify the children any more today.

I LOVE ALL OF YOU!

Britt

My willingness to go public was the inspiration for the CarePages which netted me a prayer circle of 200 faithful followers and over a thousand heartfelt and hilarious messages about God and Love, Beauty and Strength, Boobs and Hair. But now that the wigs and hats have been shoved into the back of the closet it makes sense to move my little musings over to a site that doesn’t really insist that you Care in a casserole-cooking, care-package crafting kind of way. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still take those prayers in my steadfastly superstitious need to ward off the evil eye of recurrent cancer. But this site is primarily for fun. And because it’s not edited for content (or filth) it’s open to all sorts of literary shenanigans.

Welcome to East Meets Breast.