It Ain't Over (21 page)

Though the sisters had gone down completely different paths and lived halfway across the country from each other, they were close. So as Kara delivered her bad news, Kristin went cold.

“Stay calm,” Kristin said, moving out to the deck to pull herself together. “Maybe it’s just a cyst. Let’s not get out of whack.” On the other end, Kara wasn’t buying it. She felt condemned, as if she were looking in the mirror and her mother’s image was looking back.

After she hung up with Kristin, she lay awake in bed, cuddling into her sleeping boys. “I don’t want the same thing that happened to me to happen to you,” she softly sobbed. Again, a flashback to second grade: This time, she’s back in school and kids are pointing and whispering:
“That’s her, the girl who doesn’t have a mom anymore.”

Over the coming weeks, the news from Kara’s oncologist was mixed: She had Stage 1 breast cancer, but it was a very aggressive type—and one that she had indeed inherited from her mom. Doctors recommended that both her breasts be removed. Once again, she called Kristin.

“Listen, don’t worry,” said Kristin, still trying to be the reassuring big sister. “I’ll go get a double mastectomy, too. We’ll do this together.” At the
time, it was a pledge of support and solidarity. But then Kristin read up on it and learned that she, too, had a 50 percent chance of what she called “this, this
brokenness
.” She went to a genetic counselor, where tests showed she also had the genetic mutation BRCA1, meaning it was nearly 90 percent certain that she, too, would develop breast cancer someday. Having her breasts removed could save her life as well.

“All of the doctors and even my husband said, ‘Based on your family history, you don’t have a lot of wiggle room here,’ ” Kristin says. “Deciding to have the surgery was easy for me. I had less attachment to my breasts than most women, because of what happened to my mother.”

So here they were, both face-to-face with the disease that had cast a dark shadow over their entire lives. Their worst fear realized. But they also finally knew it wasn’t a random act of nature that had taken their mom so young. This cancer was in their DNA.

“There was so much relief in finally having a reason,” Kristin says. “All those years of my life, I couldn’t understand why my mother died so young. Why, why, why? And now I was learning to deal with life in
what
s. What can I do about this? It was important for me at last to have an answer for
what
.”

That fall and winter, more than 900 miles apart, surgeons removed the sisters’ breasts. (They had hysterectomies, too, as the BRCA1 gene also greatly increases the risk of ovarian cancer.) Kristin had implants put in right away; Kara had to wait until she was through chemotherapy. For a year, she was infused with drugs that damaged the nerves in her hands so badly that she could no longer get her boys dressed or buckle them into their car seats. Her hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes fell out. Some days she was exhausted; others she couldn’t sleep.

Just as she hoped the medications would heal her physically, she knew she needed to heal herself emotionally as well.

She began by poring over her mom’s medical file from the Wichita, Kansas, hospital where she’d been treated. She looked through old black-and-white family photos and reread a book that Kristin had put together years earlier, a collection of letters that family, friends, and coworkers had written about their mom after she died.

Kara also tried to coax every detail she could from her grandmother, her dad, her sister, and other relatives about her mother’s two-year cancer battle.

“I wanted to try to remember my mother’s life and death instead of letting it all be a muddled cloud in my head,” she says. “I needed to accept and understand it and let it be a part of me.”

Through it all, Kara and Kristin’s bond deepened. They were on the phone at least once a day, and sometimes three or four. “We cried—and laughed—more during that fall than anything else,” Kristin says.

In one conversation in the summer of 2011, Kristin complained that she couldn’t find a bra that fit well anymore. Surgeons had cut out all of her breast tissue and then put in round, flat-as-a-pancake implants. Her breasts no longer filled out regular bra cups; she had two craters where her nipples used to be. Underwire bras looked better but, with no breast tissue providing cushioning, were painful to wear. Another option was a mastectomy bra: to create a more natural-looking breast shape, each cup had a pocket for holding a heavy prosthetic. “I did not have these implants put in to then have to put explants on top of them!” Kristin ranted.

Until one morning when Kara woke up at four a.m. and thought:
Why can’t we just design and market this bra? If we put our minds to it, we can do it.
She got out of bed and shot off an email to Kristin with a to-do list. “Then we started jumping into action,” Kristin says.

For six months, they tossed around ideas for how to create a comfortable, lightweight, pretty bra that would give them a filled-out look. “We just wanted something we could put on every day, smile, and keep going,” Kristin says. They even came up with a name: braGGs, the word “bra,” Gs for each of their last names, and S for sisters. “Not only because we’re sisters but because of the sisterhood of the breast cancer community,” Kristin says. “We also want women to feel like they can brag again.” It sounded like a great idea, but taking steps to start their own business was another story. So it simmered.

First, they conducted an online survey with a breast cancer support group, and when the 50 respondents came back with the same complaints they had, the sisters knew they were on the right track.

After a months-long search, they hired a designer who had worked for Jockey and other major undergarment companies and who spent about eight months finding just the right soft, stretchy fabric and creating a prototype.
“To correct those indentations, we made an insert that’s built in so there’s no prosthetic,” Kara says. “It’s super comfortable and wire-free.”

Then Kara, with her background in intellectual property litigation, applied for a patent. Next, the sisters contracted with a small manufacturer in Pennsylvania, all the while drumming up interest in the bras on their website,
braGGsonline.com
, and Facebook page and by networking with boutique owners, doctors, and breast cancer survivors.

Still living halfway across the country from each other, they relied on phone calls, emails, texts, Facetime chats, and video conferences. A phone conversation could go from “Which color elastic would be best?” to “You will not believe what happened at school today with the kids.”

“People often ask, ‘How do you work with your sister?’ ” Kara says. “Truth is, I couldn’t do this with anyone but her.”

To date, Kara and Kristin have poured $40,000 of their savings into their creation, plus $10,000 they raised on the crowdfunding website MedStartr. When the first batch of braGGs came off the factory line in the summer of 2013, a D.C.-area boutique had already placed its order and e-customers were awaiting their shipments.

There have been starts and stops along the way, but Kara and Kristin always stick to the M.O. they learned as little girls, the same thing that kept them strong through their mother’s death, Kara’s cancer, and both of their surgeries: Just put one foot in front of the other.

They work a lot, but not the all-consuming hours of many entrepreneurs. Healthy meals, sleep, and exercise get equal time. “There’s no point in working hard if I’m not going to be here,” says Kara, who currently has no signs of cancer in her body and who is participating in a clinical trial testing a drug to prevent recurrence. “Most people who knew me before wouldn’t recognize me. I have slowed down.”

Always on their minds are their testers: women like them, who had their breasts removed and rebuilt, then cried tears of joy after trying on the braGGs bras because they felt “normal” again.

“It’s been a wonderful experience coming up with something that helps so many women, including ourselves,” Kristin says. “But we have to laugh sometimes. My teenage boys are like, ‘Do we have to talk about
bras
?’ ”

Kara and Kristin always remember the silent partner in their business as well. The one in the 1970s black-and-white photo on the braGGs Facebook page. The one who Kara believes sent her the sign that Sunday afternoon that saved her life.

“Our mom is definitely on this journey with us,” Kara says. “It’s the three of us.”

Kristine Brennen, 63

Duxbury, Massachusetts

I
f you’ve ever soldered a circuit board—and most of us haven’t—you know that it takes two skills: good hands and a tolerance for boredom. Kristine Brennen had both.

For years, Kristine worked from sunup to sundown in a sterile Massachusetts factory, assembling the electronic components for guidance systems used in space shuttles and missiles. “I was good at my job because I had good hands,” she says, “but it killed me being inside all those years, especially working with chemicals, which gave me migraines. I wanted to be outdoors, listening to the birds and seeing all the colors. The outdoors is like a big garden to me. So as I worked in the factory, my mind would often drift back to my grandfather. Every night, he’d come home from work, carrying his tools, covered in dust. I envied that. He’d been outside all day.”

Kristine’s grandfather, who had come to America from Sweden, worked
for New England Cut Stone, shaping limestone and bluestone into libraries and memorials and churches. His work still stands today.

“He lived on the third floor of our house,” Kristine recalls, “and I saw him every day until he died, when I was about 20. You could tell by looking at him how satisfying his work was. He just loved the stone.”

Life was decidedly different for Kristine. “I had to commute to my job every morning—be there at six and not leave until five. And by then, the day was already gone. I’d look at the setting sun and think,
Oh, no, I missed it again
.”

Despite her longing to do something different, Kristine made a good salary at the company, and she was eventually promoted to a desk job. And that was the dilemma: With more than 20 years’ seniority, she had the kind of benefits a woman in her forties couldn’t just walk away from.

But then the company was sold. Kristine could have continued under the new management, but when veteran workers were offered a buyout, she jumped at the chance. It wasn’t like she had won the lottery, but for the first time in her life, she realized she would have enough money to stop, take a breath, and figure out what she wanted to do with her life.

“It was the best feeling—total freedom,” Kristine says. “The buyout gave me the opportunity to take a big step.”

Kristine had always dreamed of becoming an artist, but never had enough confidence in her abilities to believe she could make a living at it. So over the years, she had indulged her artistic bent as a hobby, taking up needlepoint and painting. She also enrolled in adult-ed classes at the community college, where weaving and still-life painting classes were a welcome outlet. “But when I took the classes,” she says, “I felt like, ‘Why am I doing this? Where am I going with this?’ ” It was frustrating knowing that a richer life might lie outside the factory.

Now, thanks to her $17,000 severance, Kristine had the resources to finally try to connect with her artistic aspirations. So at age 50, she enrolled at a college of art and design, pursuing a degree in architecture (“I figured, I eventually have to make a living,” she says), and she was accepted.

“It was like a dream fulfilled,” she notes. “I was walking on a cloud every day.” In 2006, she was awarded her degree, and her triumph was celebrated by all those who knew her. “My mom lived to see me graduate,” she says, “and she was thrilled.”

As Kristine surveyed the employment landscape after her graduation, what she couldn’t get out of her head was the advice of a favorite professor: “Whatever you do, make sure to have a good time and play.”

So play she did. Out in her backyard, Kristine set up large canvases and splattered them with acrylic paint and dirt (yes, dirt), incorporating the soil of the yard into her abstract vision. She loved the results. “In art, you have to find out who you are inside,” she says. It might have taken her nearly 40 years, but Kristine felt she was finally making the discovery.

As her artistic spirit emerged, Kristine decided to try her hand at sculpture. While in school, she had taken a part-time job with a landscaper, who taught her how to cut natural stone for patios. She liked visualizing the interplay between shape and texture.

“I began to look at rocks differently,” she says. “It’s like they were communicating to me. The little round ones I saw as frogs, so I sculpted them that way; the long and thin ones presented whole other opportunities. Rocks have been around forever, and through their shapes, I think they’re telling us their stories.”

Her yard was the perfect workshop: From the moment she and her husband had begun digging the foundation of their home, they’d unearthed chunks of New England granite. They layered small pieces into garden walls and placed larger ones around the property as decoration.