I Feel Pretty Again After Cancer

Who knew surviving cancer would be a beauty secret?

BY Laura Yeager

PUBLISHED January 10, 2018

As well as being a cancer blogger, Laura Yeager is a religious essayist and a mental health blogger. A graduate of The Writers’ Workshop at The University of Iowa, she teaches writing at Kent State University and Gotham Writers’ Workshop. Laura survived cancer twice.

"Girls Just Want to Have Fun" was blaring on the radio. We were driving down to Canton to try out a new seafood restaurant. It had been six years since my first bout of breast cancer, and in those six years, I don't remember looking really smashing. I had either lost my hair or was dealing with depression or was a sickening greenish color because of chemo or was approximately 25 pounds over my normal weight because I'd used food to comfort myself during my illness. But in the last four months, I had lost weight – 23 pounds to be specific –and for once in a long, long time, I felt pretty. My face and body weren't bloated. I had done my hair and make-up just right. I was sporting a brand new little black dress. I was back, folks. I was pretty again.

We got to the restaurant, and there was a long wait for a table. Word was out; this place was the place to be, to see and be seen. I noticed people, particularly women, looking at me, kind of checking me out. Women do that to each other. If a female looks particularly nice, other women acknowledge it with furtive glances. Oh, I loved being the object of positive attention. When you don't have any hair, for example, people look at you with sad eyes. But currently, all eyes were energetic and were on me. I was the it girl. Or at least, I thought so.

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