10/19/2026
DAY 18 OF BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH:�Know your risk.
This is a portrait of a mother and her two daughters… at a glance you only see one… but then you see the mother holding a book close to her heart. Photographs of the daughter she lost to breast cancer.
Beside this mother stands her living daughter, who chose a prophylactic mastectomy to reduce her own risk of developing breast cancer. A deeply personal decision, made with the understanding of what this disease had already taken from her family.
Breast cancer reaches far beyond the person diagnosed. It enters the lives of parents, children, siblings, and partners and for some families with a history of breast cancer, it comes with another difficult question: What does this mean for me?
Inherited gene changes that increase breast cancer risk can come from either side of the family, including through fathers. Knowing your family history, and discussing it with your healthcare provider, can help you understand whether genetic counseling and testing are appropriate.
Knowing your risk can open up choices. These could include closer screening, medication, or risk-reducing surgery. A prophylactic mastectomy greatly reduces breast cancer risk, but cannot eliminate it entirely. None the less, a person who has tested positive for an inherited gene change that increases breast cancer risk deserves information, support, space to make the decision that feels right for them and respect for that decision.
People sometimes describe preventive surgery as a decision made out of fear. But fear and careful reasoning can exist together. Someone who had chosen a prophylactic mastectomy once explained their decision to me this way: If you were told a plane had an 80% chance of crashing, would you get on it?
That number is not everyone’s risk. But the comparison helped me understand the weight of being told that you face a significantly increased risk of breast cancer.
We cannot change what has already happened to the people we love. But sometimes, what we learn from our family’s story gives us choices about our own.
P.S. The ribbons cover surgical scars because this platform’s automated moderation has removed me before, unable to recognize the difference between a breast cancer portrait and inappropriate content.
