ABOUT ME

February 2016

Dear readers,

Over the past seven years, Marathon B4 Mastectomy has served as a home to read about life as a BRCA previvor, chronicling my journey through my mastectomy and my oophorectomy. I openly talked about the emotional and physical roller coaster of being BRCA, and I am so thankful you all joined me to learn more about your own experiences and to support others.

As time passed, I also used this blog to write about social issues I cared deeply about — family, identity, body image and the world around us.

I would like to return to the purpose of Marathon B4 Mastectomy. I plan on being more focused on this site writing about BRCA, cancer, health and the intersections of identities.

To do so, I created a site that focuses on issues that are not related to BRCA, cancer, health and intersections of those identities. If you want to keep talking about those issues, stay here! If you want to continue to follow my writings and musings about other issues, please visit me at http://www.lizatalusan.com 

Thank you for your years of readership and engaging with me on so many topics! I’m looking forward to writing more about health and wellness on this site here, and I look forward to continuing my writing about social issues over at http://www.lizatalusan.com

Peace and love,

Liza

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Marathon B4 Mastectomy. It’s about running, health, and cancer. But, through those themes, it’s also about love, inclusion, acceptance, parenting, and honoring how wonderfully different we all are. It’s also about trying, failing, and never giving up. I am a teacher, a musician, a listener and a facilitator. I am a wanna-be writer, a try-to-be woman of faith, and a hope-to-be great mother.

I’m a mother of 3 with a genetic predisposition to cancer (BRCA1).

Woman after woman was developing cancer in my family, and we all tested positive for the BRCA1 mutation. After a few years of figuring out whether or not to get a bilateral prophylactic mastectomy, I decided that 2010 would be my “Year of the Mastectomy.” So, on November 18, 2010, I had a One Step bilateral and reconstruction. In January 2014, I had my bilateral oophorectomy.

I’m a mom of a cancer survivor, a sister of a cancer survivor, a daughter-in-law and a cousin and a niece to cancer survivors. I am the granddaughter of a woman who died of ovarian cancer.