SEXUAL HEALING

ROSA NIRAN

An artistic impression of changes to sexual identity during cancer treatment.

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There was a time when you let me knowWhat’s really going on belowBut now you never show me, do you?Leonard Cohen

Lumpectomy and mastectomy create brutal scars. The scars have form and colour that are not natural to the curve of the breast. They also have content and significance, reminding me of the dangerous growth that is still there below the surface.

To me, scars are visible signs of the loss and absences that dominate my life. I no longer have the health or the physical freedom I once had. My body cannot be as attractive as it once was because of these changes. I cannot even make the same movements.

The scars are so close to my heart that I feel they have created a different way for me to survive in order to accommodate and heal them. I have always been thought of, as a ‘boob girl’ and I can no longer feel sexually attractive with my breasts scarred and my libido distorted by cancer medication. Most of all, it is the internal scars that trouble me. I feel there is no time left in my limited life span for them to heal. There is no external salve for them.

What I have tried to do is search for a new intimacy between my partner Michael and me that makes me feel like a whole person again and provides us a full relationship.

~ Rosa Niran, 2012

SEXUAL HEALINGROSA NIRAN

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