This Breast Cancer Survivor’s Moving Selfie Makes an Important Point About Womanhood

Christi Salcedo, a mother who underwent chemotherapy and a bilateral mastectomy last year, wrote on Facebook that she chose not to have breast reconstruction because her children had already witnessed her go through so many treatments. “I wanted them to see me strong again. I wanted them to have their Mother they knew,” Salcedo said.

“Until recently I have been very comfortable with my decision,” she said. But now, Salcedo says the current debate over whether transgender people can use the bathroom for the gender with which they identify has impacted how she’s seen in public.

“I am personally of the belief that no transgender person wants to cause trouble in a bathroom,” she wrote in a Facebook post, while arguing that “the great bathroom debate of 2016 has hurt more than just the transgender community.”

“Recently I notice more eyes trying to figure me out,” Salcedo wrote underneath a selfie of herself post-bilateral mastectomy. “At the grocery store, restaurants … Walmart was the worst. I want to scream, ‘YES! You are seeing it right! This is Breast Cancer… Please check yourself!’ But instead I let my eyes meet theirs in an almost plea for a change in what has become our society.”

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Salcedo says she wanted help people become more aware of how cancer impacts the body—and that you don’t need breasts to be a woman. “Persons undergoing cancer treatment or post cancer treatment may lack hair & wear a baseball hat,” she wrote. “They may have undergone a mastectomy like myself. Please consider these things.”

Read her full post below: