When I removed my breast implants in 2018, I wanted to fully heal from the inside out. I spent years of my life buying into the myth that I could change how I felt on the inside by “fixing” me on the outside. I marveled at advice to “love myself” or “accept myself.” I genuinely had no idea how to do those things and thought everyone but me must have figured it out. Truthfully, I was so confused about what it meant to live with self-acceptance, I feared it would lead to “letting myself go.”
Instead, I pursued perfectionism, people pleasing, and praise-seeking, not out of vanity, but to be sure of my belonging and to avoid painful judgment and disconnection from others.
Trying to navigate our beauty, body, and breast-obsessed society, I was so aware of me on the outside that I disconnected from me on the inside.
While earning a PhD in Genetics and working as a Public Health Scientist at the CDC, I became a mother. After pregnancy and breastfeeding, my breasts no longer looked like the “ideal” shape. Despite having done well at their actual job, I somehow determined my breasts needed to be “fixed.”
Like many millions of women before me, I put breast implants in my body.
I enjoyed their appearance and initially had only minor problems that were easy to tolerate. I continued living from the outside in and downplayed their evolving impacts on my body and life.
Overtime, I knew I didn’t want to keep them for the rest of my life, but my tightly held beliefs around women, breasts, and belonging drove me to avoid “doing anything” about them.
My life changed a lot during my 12 years with breast implants, including a major career change. Though I love science, I also longed to work directly with people. I gravitated toward evidence-based approaches for mindful self-acceptance and values-guided change, which led me to where I am today as an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) practitioner. In my private practice, I help women reclaim their minds and bodies from things that harm them and recover from childhood trauma, grief and loss, people-pleasing, empathy-entrapment, and self-acceptance deficits.
This purpose-giving work changed me from the inside out.
So, when I noticed a concerning shape change in one of my breasts in 2018, I was finally ready to liberate my body from my problematic breast implants. Using helpful online resources, I put together and executed an explant plan. Three months later, they were out.
While that sounds easy and straightforward, it absolutely was NOT. Because, although my body was eager to be implant-free, my mind was still being pushed around by its old, unhelpful beliefs about women, breasts & belonging. But this time, I didn’t try ignoring, downplaying, distracting, or disconnecting from my inner struggle.
I used ACT’s proven-effective inner skills to find my way through it.
I mindfully moved through my explant journey, showing up for myself during even the most overwhelming moments. I reclaimed my body, mind, and heart from the social programming all around me.
I’m not going to lie, my explant journey wasn’t easy. It’s no small thing to remove breast implants in a culture that’s highly objectifying to women. But I’d do it again (and again) because I finally healed from the inside out.
Now my goal is to help other women find their way to true inner healing.
If you got more than you bargained for with your breast implants, and eventually want or urgently need to remove them, or are adjusting to life after explant, I want to share with you the evidence-based inner skills that helped me find my way and have helped so many of my clients as well. My goal is to help you heal from the inside out so you can live with true self-acceptance.
I know you can move through your journey with breast implants in a way that reclaims you. There is a path where you emerge stronger, wiser, and more radiant than ever before. It would be my honor to companion you through it.
