Meet Hil Moss - you can follow her @hilmoss

This past fall, my body felt the best it ever had. In June, I had left my round-the-clock job in NYC to travel the world prior to starting an MBA program.

By the time I arrived on campus, I had spent months away from a desk, and instead had spent my time hiking, swimming... even doing a triathlon. I was in the best shape I'd ever been in. I felt amazing.

I felt HEALTHY.

Within a matter of weeks, in the middle of a lecture, I received *the call*.

The lump I had found the week prior—the one everyone assured me I shouldn’t worry about, the one that “definitely wouldn’t be anything bad at age 28” —had been diagnosed as breast cancer.

By the next morning, I'd be back home in Boston, starting treatment at Dana Farber.

It's an ongoing journey, and one that's included everything from chemo to a failed round of fertility preservation to a DIEP flap reconstruction with an emergency complication. Never a dull moment!

Are there days when I vent and cry and curse this godforsaken diagnosis?

Absolutely. But in truth, I’m grateful for what it’s taught me.

It’s taught me what I’m made of.

It’s taught perspective (something tells me my Statistics exam isn’t going to seem quite so scary this Fall….)

It’s taught me what an extraordinary tribe of family & friends I have.

And it’s taught me about my BODY.

I recently became obsessed with the phrase "body literacy." My relationship with my body has been complicated since being diagnosed: some days, I feel such anger toward it for betraying me, or discomfort with the ways that it's changed (weight gain, etc.); others (and I'm trying to make this more frequent), I couldn't love it more for all it's doing to save my life.

Regardless, I've come to know and understand it in a way that I never did before. I hope we can start arming young women with that type of knowledge waaaaay earlier in their lives, and I'm so grateful to organizations like the Breasties for breaking down barriers and helping to do just that!