“Any changes in the breasts?” My oncologist asked the usual question at my recent check-up.

“Um, I mean, they’re bigger?” I shrug, feigning embarrassment, although honestly, after years in the cancer world, there’s no longer any such thing.

He meant pain or lumps, but my breasts are tumor-free and full of nontoxic boob meat. As far as I know, they are not currently trying to kill me. I’m also not currently trying to kill myself. Brave new world.

A lifetime of eating disorder struggles came to a head after all the cancer stuff. Each surgery and treatment and new drug introduced to my body came with the warning that it could cause weight-gain, so I kept cutting calories and exercising more and cutting and exercising until I was shaky and miserable most of the time.

But I loved my clothes and didn’t want to buy more.
I loved my identity as a skinny girl, but it was killing me.

My bone density test results came back that I had osteopenia, the precursor to osteoporosis and breaking a hip, and that was before they took out all my estrogen for the rest of my life. All the meds and surgeries certainly weren’t helping the situation. According to my various scans, I have too-dense breasts and not-dense-enough bones. Too bad there isn’t a way to swap those. I had to strengthen my muscles to support my bird bones.

The adult woman is the only life form I can think of that isn’t celebrated for growing. I am a plant mom now and when my Pothos gets bigger, I get excited. When it loses leaves and gets smaller, I check to see what’s wrong with its roots and chide myself for overwatering, underwatering, or in some way neglecting its needs. Yeast grows and bread rises. The trees in my yard grow taller and their trunks thicken.

My husband and son go to the gym together and celebrate how big they’re getting. They spend their days discussing whey powders and which exercises help sculpt their muscular shoulders and butts and thighs. I watched them and wondered, Why am I trying to make myself disappear?

I told myself “strong over skinny” and took extra yoga classes. I tried kickboxing and started lifting tiny weights. My husband told me, “You’re stronger than you think you are.”

With curiosity, I approached a new chapter of my story, post-menopausal, pre-death. I knew how to be skinny. What would it look like to let myself grow strong? What if I could re-pot myself and stretch my roots into new places? What if my trunk thickened?

I have a butt now. I first noticed it in yoga class during Viparita Virabhadrasana, reverse warrior pose. One day when I wrapped my arm around my low back, it had a little shelf to rest on instead of sliding down the backs of my legs. My butt protrudeth.

I also noticed that I could hold Utkatasana, chair pose, indefinitely. My butt wasn’t just hanging out back there. It pulled its weight with rock solid strength. I felt steadier. In balance poses when I’d start to wobble, I learned to engage my new butt and feel more stable.

I told some friends, tentatively at first, “I have a butt now.” Like my new butt, they were very supportive.

I said “strong over skinny” and joined the gym with my husband and son. I felt intimidated and ridiculous around athletes and gym rats, but I put on headphones and listened to audio books while pushing and pulling and lifting and bending. When I got home from the gym, my sore muscles begged for sustenance, so I started drinking protein shakes.

Like my ZZ plant stretching in its new pot after I rescued it from the clearance table at the garden center, my body seemed to really like all these changes and grew me bigger biceps. The better to carry more hardcovers at the book shop and boxes from Costco.

One day I realized that my butt was too powerful for my old panties and I went up a size. My shoulders didn’t fit my old skeleton sleeves, so I bought bigger clothes.

Recently I noticed that my ribs don’t grind against each other anymore. I told my husband. He paled and said, “Th-they d-did that before?” “Yeah,” I said. “I thought everybody’s did.” “No, and now I’m going to have nightmares. Ew,” he said.

I’ve been practicing yoga for over twenty years, but the stronger I grew, the more in love with it I fell, and as a 46-year-old cancer survivor, I enrolled in teacher training so I could share yoga with others. I graduated a few months ago and have started teaching. I love it. My husband and son came to my first studio class and there’s a picture of the three of us in black tank tops looking sweaty and strong together.

I’m learning to love this new bigger life, bigger me.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped counting calories and relentlessly weighing myself. I started eating when I was hungry and feeding myself protein and carbs. Sometimes bigger is better. Strong over skinny is much better. I’ve put on thirty pounds, of which about two-thirds is muscle and another third probably peanut butter.

My husband says I’m the happiest he’s ever seen me. We just celebrated twenty-four years of marriage. He loved me as a skeleton and he loved me soft and now he’s loving me as we do hammer curls next to each other at the gym.

In the last month I’ve gone to eleven doctor appointments. This is what surviving looks like. At one of my last appointments, I got good test results. All my strength training and squats and yoga have helped my bone density. I took that to mean my new butt got an A+. In the immortal words of Shakira, “My hips don’t lie.”

Here’s to survival and being brave enough to grow strong. My yoga teacher tells us on our mats, “Take up space.” I remind myself of that all the time. Stop making yourself disappear. Take up space. Strong over skinny.

Melanie Dale is the author of four books, Women Are Scary, It’s Not Fair, Infreakinfertility, and Calm the H*ck Down. She’s a writer for the TV series Creepshow, a monthly contributor for Coffee + Crumbs, and her essays are published in The Magic of Motherhood. She has appeared on Good Morning America and has been featured in articles in Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, The Bump, Working Mother, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Los Angeles Times. To get out of the office, she spent the last few years shambling about as various zombies on The Walking Dead. She and her husband live in the Atlanta area with three kids from three different continents and an anxious Maltipoo named Khaleesi.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.

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