When Michaela Raes was diagnosed with breast cancer at 28 years old, it was unexpected. She knew from her doctoral training in the healthcare field that breast cancer could happen in women her age, but she felt falsely reassured – she was an otherwise healthy young woman with no family history of the disease. She found her tumor by luck – it wasn’t self-monitoring, but rather her cat named Schrö that discovered the lump. One night as the cat was kneading at her side, Michaela felt the animal’s paw press against something that felt hard. She frantically pushed the animal away, and it was then that she first felt the big ugly lump on the outside of her breast.

Along with her diagnosis, Michaela experienced a surge of insecurity and fears – “What will I look like? Will I ever feel confident or sexy again? Will breast cancer prevent me from loving my body?”

How the project was born
Not knowing what the future would hold for her body, Michaela wanted to capture her natural born body with a boudoir photoshoot before treatment began. With the help of a mutual friend & board member Maria Janda, Michaela first met co-founder JolanaHollister(owner of The Photography Experience, LLC) just days before her first of many surgeries when Jolana photographed her boudoir session. Her only intention at the time had been to memorialize her body she had always known, and she hadn’t been planning to take this any further. Two days later, Michaela had her lumpectomy surgery, and within a few more weeks, she had started chemotherapy.

As treatment progressed, Michaela noticed a shift in her mindset – she began to find herself in awe of the strength and resilience of her body. She had undergone major surgeries, highly lethal chemicals had been pulsing through her bloodstream, all of her hair had fallen out – eyebrows and eyelashes included (with the exception of three rebels that rode out the chemo with her). Despite all that she had been through, every single day, her body showed up for her and carried her through. She began to see the beauty in every inch and ounce of this vessel that kept her alive, and she wanted to celebrate that strength. To begin her own emotional healing from the trauma of breast cancer, and learn to accept the changes in her body, Michaela had boudoir portraits taken by Jolana at major milestones during and after treatment.

Once the shock and intensity of her experience had died down, and she was able to appreciate the beauty of all that she had gone through, she decided to share her story and her approach with the rest of the world. This was when Breast Cancer Confidence Project* first went live on social media, to show the newly diagnosed that they do not need to be afraid of what the future may hold for their body. *at the time of initial launch, the Project went by the name “Breast Cancer Boudoir”