Skyler Bouchard Poses With 2 Slices of Pizza to Talk Breast Cancer and Body Positivity

By Jenny Sugar

Celebrating my pizza twins as I'm going into surgery to have a breast tumor removed today. 🍕Thankfully, it's benign. I can't stress my thanks to that enough. 🙏 But I must say these past few weeks have been a whirlwind for me. As a 23-year old woman struggling with this, I've learned so much about how body image and self acceptance can be changed in an instant. Upon learning that part of my natural feminine identity was going to be chiseled away, torn apart, and sewn back together like a stuffed animal, I was devastated. Like many women, I had worked so hard to practice 100% body positivity and build "unbreakable" self confidence (of course, to some extent.. we all have our off days). I was at a point in my life where I truly looked in the mirror and loved what I saw. So that's why I was shocked to feel that sense of comfort fade away when my doctor told me I had to have a lumpectomy for a 5 cm tumor. He told me there is no telling for what I will look like after the removal, but it is a large mass. And after mourning over this "loss/change/all the terrible outcomes that could happen from a breast surgery," I realized that what I'm going through isn't even a sliver of what most women who face breast cancer (or any form of cancer) are going through. My tumor is benign. I have to pinch my arm to remind myself that I am not going through a crisis. Cancer is a crisis. This makes me insecure and scared, but it's not a crisis. Going under the knife and having no idea what my body will look like after terrifies me, but if I want unbreakable self confidence, I have to come to terms with whatever I will look like after this. It may take some time, but luckily I have that. ❤

A post shared by Dining with Skyler (@nycdining) on

Creating awareness about breast cancer and doing monthly breast exams (check out these lemons to see if your breasts are normal) is so important. And that's part of the reason 23-year-old Skyler Bouchard of Dining With Skyler is posing with two slices of pizza.

Skyler captions her Instagram photo, "Celebrating my pizza twins as I'm going into surgery to have a breast tumor removed today. 🍕Thankfully, it's benign. I can't stress my thanks to that enough." She goes on to talk about how this struggle has affected her body image, how she's worked so hard to "practice 100-percent body positivity and build 'unbreakable' self confidence," and was finally at a point where she "looked in the mirror and loved what I saw."

Then her doctor told her that she'd have to have a lumpectamy to remove a five-centimeter tumor. "He told me there is no telling for what I will look like after the removal, but it is a large mass," and at first Skyler mourned over what this loss of her feminine identity would mean. But then she realized that what she's going through hardly compares to what many women face with breast cancer. "My tumor is benign. I have to pinch my arm to remind myself that I am not going through a crisis. Cancer is a crisis."

This doesn't take away from the fact that surgery is serious and her body will change. Skyler says, "This makes me insecure and scared, but it's not a crisis. Going under the knife and having no idea what my body will look like after terrifies me, but if I want unbreakable self-confidence, I have to come to terms with whatever I will look like after this. It may take some time, but luckily I have that. ❤"