This year is my in-between, or as my best friend said last August, just before my breast cancer diagnosis, the year that changes your life.

The confirmation the Tuesday after Labor Day was followed by multiple appointments, a left, unilateral mastectomy, chemotherapy, and radiation, all sparkled with lymphedema and COVID-19.

June 22, I terrifyingly rang a bell at the radiation center, just as the weather was warm enough, and COVID-19 had given us a break in the New Jersey town where we live. Wanting to jump into a pool, I started looking for a swimsuit even before my treatment was over.

My insta-inspiration after mastectomy came in categories: women with double side mastectomy, whose foobs look magnificent no matter what they wear (from the perspective of this asymmetrical in-between). The flatties, who flaunt their fabulousness with ruffles and beautiful details.

As I went through this, I kept asking, where was my tribe?

Simultaneously, I was surprised that I wasn’t concerned about tummy, thighs, or even scars. I had the pragmatic concern about protecting my left side, and all of my self-consciousness was reduced to aiming for symmetry between the Frankenfoob (with tissue expander) and my actual boob. All those years of trying to hide and enhance were suddenly meaningless.

I was then hit with the insta-browsing realization that everyone who had breast cancer or a preventive mastectomy is in my tribe. Not because I found the #unilateralmastectomy, with gorgeous bodies flaunting all kinds of styles. It was seeing each one of us has to find something within ourselves that brings up the beach body; the one who is happy to be under the sun and jump into the water; the one who has been through dark chapters, whose heart kept beating, whose lungs get air.

This is the in-between year.

Hopefully, next year I will have reconstructed, symmetrical breasts, there won’t be any more procedures that prevent me from jumping into the pool, and maybe, we will find good jobs in Southern California and will have a longer pool season.

Hopefully, next year sunscreen will be enough to protect my left-side chest, and I will get to flaunt one of those two pieces, or a deep-V one piece, hopefully.

In the mean-time, this in-between summer, a sports bra under a long-sleeve rash guard will do. I am still jumping into the water to celebrate that I am here.