“A person’s beauty does not reside in her appearance, face, or hairstyle. A person’s beauty can be seen in her gaze. I suggested that Hélène participate in the contest as a photographer and asked Solène to do my make-up. They didn't hesitate and motivated me again when I was lacking confidence. Hélène knew how to see a beautiful woman in me, despite the disease and the chemo. She touched up and ‘mended’ my mastectomy scar with gold; I was finally able to find it beautiful with this makeup.”— Sophie
—This photo was inspired by Sophie, my model. Without her, this image wouldn’t exist. Sophie is strong, combative, an Amazon with or without that breast, with or without hair. She takes on any challenge; I couldn’t refuse this one and followed her in this adventure. Sophie is beautiful, no matter what challenges she has and will have to face. I wanted to show her like this: a magnificent fighter!

I’ve known Géraldine for about fifteen years. Over this time, a friendship has formed from our professional relationship.
She tells me about the Estée Lauder Pink Ribbon Photo Award contest, more specifically about her fight against cancer, and gives her trust to my photographer's eye.
Together, we exchange about our respective sensibilities, talk about cancer, femininity, the beauty of the fight, resilience, courage... This body that has fought and overcome possesses a singular beauty that must be revealed.
My artistic approach was to create a chiaroscuro portrait of her: through the dark and cold moments of this struggle, light eventually bursts forth like a ray of hope. Confident in front of my lens, Géraldine expresses her femininity freely, in all simplicity.
For her and all her “sisters,” I took up the challenge of bringing my photographic gaze to bear on their beauty.

I already had scars. The ones from childhood. The ones from a life of a little pirate and a rather well-behaved adventurer... Nice scars that grew up with me. Integrated. Absorbed. I guess the pirate life continues when we’ve grown up. But no more games this time. The pirate is called “carcinoma,” the rescuer is called “the surgeon.”.
The heroine in the photo with her war paint is me. These scars I finally dare to show. I find them beautiful, barely visible, symbols of my victory over the disease, over my anger. The latter had been with me for so long. It materialized with this cancer. But today I’m fine, I’m ready to mend, to mend myself again. I can stretch, smile, and take possession of the rest of my life.

A soft morning sun began to illuminate the massif of Provence, devastated just one year ago by the flames. Ravaged, only ashes remained of this beautiful nature.
As always, life found its way back to renewal. The trees, which were thought to be completely charred, started sprouting leaves again.
The ground, which was black with ashes, again welcomed flourishing vegetation.
The scars are still visible but soon nature will be more forceful and lush than ever.
A powerful and symbolic place to photograph Anaïs, who had just undergone her last radiotherapy the day before. Her body, burned by her treatment, is also starting to regain its rights. Her hair is growing back, her energy has returned, and many future projects are blooming in her head and heart.
Like nature confronted by desolation, Anaïs has managed to regain the upper hand over her illness. This auroral light symbolizes the new and hopeful days of the future.

An amateur photographer, I was affected by breast cancer in 2009 and a second time in 2021. With the disease, our body and our femininity elude us. The gaze we cast upon ourselves can be harsh; we must learn to tame it in order to rebuild ourselves. Reclaiming one’s body and intimacy is sometimes a long and delicate phase, but it is essential for healing.
Thank you, Justine for accepting to pose and to show that femininity still exists after cancer. This photo symbolizes the determination in this fight for life, femininity, beauty... An Eye for Beauty

“Mirror, for months, you were my sad companion, reflecting back to me this image of the disease, of its stigma.
You were the privileged witness, in the front row, of this chaos, of my anger.
My bathroom had become the theater of my tragedy, where my battle was performed in the morning and evening. The only audience, you saw panic take hold of me, my punches in the air, my long sobs.
From backstage, I could hear my most fervent admirers, my man and our terrible tribe. Oh mirror, it took a lot of talent for us to accept ourselves and change our repertoire. Now, in front of you, I no longer fear the lights, nor the lenses; I step into the spotlight.
Oh mirror, today, each time I walk on stage, you cheer me, give me a standing ovation, and the orchestra of life plays for me.”
—Cécile

“Beauty, like a lighthouse in a storm.
It guided my life before cancer, it has been at the center since.
Breast cancer took away my feminine attributes, stole my carefree spirit.
So, what is beauty doing in the chaos?
As soon as I was diagnosed, beauty, far from superficiality, far from injunctions, but that of moments, encounters, creativity, took center stage in life again.
It has helped me to know and recognize myself, to dare and be comfortable with who I am, to welcome synchronicities, coincidences, and life’s appointments.
It allowed me to encounter many roses, one of which shone with a thousand lights while illuminating the others.
My Heart of Rose, we promised each other to put beauty in our lives.
You are no more, but you live in my heart.
You see, we did it.
Here we are reunited on glossy paper, in my own way.
Giving thanks to your beauty, to the beauty of precious moments, to the beauty that gives meaning, to the beauty that moves us.”
—Mélanie

“At the end of 2020, after giving birth to my second child a few months earlier, learning I had breast cancer turned my life upside down. Between anger and fear of vanishing, I thought I would never get back up. Beauty loses all its meaning in this fight for life. Treatment protocols follow one after another and I no longer recognize myself. But I realize that beauty is in the eyes of those who love me.
Today, more at peace, I try to regain confidence in my body, and it’s quite natural for me to ask my friend Charlotte, who accompanied her mother in this same fight a few years earlier, to photograph this new outlook that I have on life.”—Elisa
—I wanted to have an overhead shot to support Elisa’s determination and sweetness, giving her body a shape that is reminiscent of that of the eye. A delicate photo that I hope will allow her to take a fresh look at her beauty and her scars.

I started doing portraiture over six years ago, working with Fanny, a seasoned makeup artist.
Affected by breast cancer, Fanny shared with me her project of transforming her naked skull into a canvas of expression of her passion for makeup. A passion that she has decided to share with other sisters in the struggle, transforming their skulls into ephemeral works of art.
Her goal is to make this perilous adventure a positive experience, while accepting this new self-image. Inspired by her energy and courage, I joined her project.
This portrait of Fanny expresses an inner well-being, which places her beyond the ordeal she undergoes. It is the force she draws from to keep smiling and remain feminine despite the loss of her hair. The floral motifs tattooed on her skull seem to spread over her just like this ordeal she and so many women have had or have to face.

Family Portrait

Self-portrait: our daughter, my partner with breast cancer, undergoing chemo treatment, and myself.
A gaze to immortalize a moment, for the memory of an epic life trial, for each of us.
To not let go of anything and to move forward with life armed to the teeth.

This image is part of my passion project, I AM, which turned into a book entitled I AM, celebrating the imperfect perfect. I photographed 121 women, ranging in age from 40 to 99, in their most natural beauty, in their nakedness, which to me represents the truest image of a woman’s body and soul. My goal was to reveal the unretouched beauty of each woman in all her diversity, authenticity, inclusion, to help her love herself and to try to halt all self-criticism and judgment.
I love all these images and all these women, but I felt like choosing Barbara for the Pink Ribbon Award. She is for me the embodiment of a strong woman who decided long ago that she was more than her body and who fully accepts the mastectomy and her scars that saved her life, which she enjoys to the fullest at her age.
The light in her eyes tells her story. She is simply beautiful inside and out.

I’m a physiotherapist specializing in the care of breast cancer patients who’ve undergone surgery. Two of my patients have already participated as models in the Estée Lauder Pink Ribbon Photo Award.
As an amateur photographer, I’m taking part this year in this project with the help of Mariella, who readily agreed to be my subject: “It will provide me with wonderful memories!”
While expecting her third child, Mariella learned that she had cancer of the right breast. She had surgery and at the time of the photo session, she was undergoing chemotherapy.
Her positive energy allows her to manage everything serenely: her family, her illness, her treatments, and her pregnancy. She is a beautiful person. Pregnancy allows her to face the ordeal of cancer as an incident in her life.
The photo selected for the contest reflects, through her sparkling eyes and her bright smile, her "joie de vivre".

The Beauty of the Gaze

The gaze into the distance, full of hope, when suddenly an embrace comes from the sea, an enveloping embrace, this friendly wave that heals wounds.
I love the sea, I’m sensitive to its beauty, it can help us a lot or at least make us feel better. Sometimes it is the only friend we have.
That’s why I chose the beauty of the sea to produce this image.

Three Beauties

Fanny, Marion, and Jen. Three women, three beauties. Beautiful because of the wisdom of their spirits, which were able to transcend unspeakable losses and then transform them into sisterhood. Beautiful because of the strength of their bodies, which have gone through each of the trials of their treatment with dignity. Beautiful because of the precious bond that unites them today, a friendship sealed by scars. They all have a deep desire to support others. The ones following. The women who have just discovered they have the disease, but also to alert the younger ones: breast cancer can occur at a young age too.
“Dear sisters, know that unsuspected resources are awakened in times of struggle. Resources capable of transforming grief into victory. Humor, creativity, pugnacity. Letting go, patience, humility. Hate, fear, and resignation will challenge you sometimes too, but hold on, dear sisters, you are capable of it.”

“My sons, my men,
Together we have weathered so many storms and won so many battles. Three times we have defeated this enemy from within and you have given me the strength to go forward without ever losing my focus on life. Words were often difficult to say, too much reserve, too much sorrow. Your gazes replaced them with all your love; so tender, they enveloped me with your sweetness. You have taught me to see life differently, to weave this immortal link, to contemplate the essential, to marvel at your side, to simply love each other.
It doesn’t matter that life wasn’t always rosy, we move forward together happily, with our eyes turned towards the infinitely beautiful.
I love you."
—Mom
—This self-portrait doesn’t reveal the wounds made by the disease. It symbolizes harmony, gentleness, hope, and the end of my reconstruction after three cancers and sixteen years of struggle. I wanted this photo in a moment of simplicity, of sharing, me and my sons, the gaze turned toward life.

“Because there are battles we fight blow after blow, places that seem impassable, and yet... I watch her love life and guide me, she leads me into what we call her madness, which has been our survival.
I look at her with admiration; she impresses me. My protective eye rests on her, and I see her spread her wings to find all the drive to create life. Cancer has robbed her of this right, she doesn’t care. ‘I want a surrogacy arrangement!’ I follow her, with my eyes and my heart, to Kyiv.
After the fear of war that she will again overcome as a warrior, here is the encounter, this child who stares at her, as though she knew, the second she came into the world, that her mother was a peaceful force. Capable of anything.
Elodie is my wife. I wish the whole world could meet her, because she has awakened every sense in my life. I capture this moment for a magical eternity: mother-watchwoman.”
—"In Jean-Charles’ Eyes", written by Pauline

The Gun on the Heart

Why this photograph? Because this is the first woman I photographed for the "Women in Turmoil" project, which began almost a year ago. Émilie was still being treated at the Institut Gustave-Roussy. In this symbolic photo, I see the cry that all these women have had to release at one time or another.
In this photograph, Émilie doesn’t cheat, the weapon is real, she utters this cry of truth which she hadn’t dared utter before. She frees herself; I still get chills about it. I click the shutter at the moment when the scream is most intense. This photograph is of course not retouched, nor cropped. It is raw. Raw with this moment so strong and so intense.
—I went to pick up Émilie at the IGR on October 1, 2021, the day of the launch of Pink October. After our session, I took her to a restaurant for dinner and then—she didn’t know it—in front of the Eiffel Tower which was lit up in pink. I think she’d had a very emotional day. It was the beginning of the project and for me a very beautiful memory.
Thank you for what you do for all these women, these women in turmoil.

Marine pushed open the studio door for the first time in October 2020.
She was just emerging from several months of chemotherapy and a mastectomy following the detection of an aggressive form of breast cancer, a “triple negative.”
Sunny, bright, and colorful, she explains that she wants to capture her fight in images to raise awareness about early detection of breast cancer. She also wants to regain her self-confidence with this new amputated body and show that one can remain beautiful while fighting the disease. She wants photos that leave no room for sadness, but on the contrary, images full of hope.
Participating in this contest is the realization of a promise I made to her to continue to use her photos for the cause. The choice of this image stems from the desire to show the body’s beauty and this face full of determination as she prepares to return to battle after yet another relapse.
Marine left us on January 31, 2022.

The Three Graces

Three women, three stories,
In the future we want to believe.
Three women, three ages, three destinies,
Breast cancer unites our paths.
Three women, three crusades,
Our busts dance and wander.

It is together that we wished to express what is, according to us, beauty.
Bodies more than alive, even if imperfect,
The infinite sweetness of a friendship,
Souls moved and united, frozen for eternity.
Reproducing the Three Graces became clear: Beauty, charm, and creativity.

- Karine the beautiful “fashionista,” 42 years old, lumpectomy in 2020.
- Marion the charming dancer, 37 years old, mastectomy in 2019 with reconstruction in 2020.
- Valérie the creative artist, 48 years old, lumpectomy in 2011, then double mastectomy in 2019.

By joining forces with “Keep A Breast”—an organization fighting against breast cancer—I thought about my daughters and the inconceivable statistics: one woman out of eight, and increasingly young, affected by the disease. How can we raise awareness among young people who are more carefree than concerned?
“Keep A Breast” had the brilliant idea of making itself known through art. Casts of breasts of women, whether famous or not, affected by the disease were made and the casts were then entrusted to artists to make unique works.
I took advantage of the 'carte blanche' offered to me to go beyond simple reporting and to tell the story of these committed women.
Hence, while her cast was still damp, I wanted to rapidly photograph the Korean painter Hyunjoung Lee who lives in France, when her sister in Seoul has just informed her of her illness.
Trying to capture the immediate communion with the loved one when danger and anxiety arise. The moment when spirituality sometimes imposes itself.

"When I went to pose, I was pretty comfortable. It wasn’t that difficult after all. Then Jeremy showed me the first photo and emotion began to rise in me. Not sure I could look at myself like that again... It felt like I was looking at the chest of a prepubescent teenager and not the femininity and sensuality that a woman’s chest should have represented.
A few days later, when I received the preview of the first photos, I was moved. Then I found myself beautiful. It was magical. They exuded a certain power. I even thought that the same photos with my two breasts would have been less beautiful.
And then it became real. I cried. It was ‘easy’ to see them in the privacy of my home. But knowing that they would be out in the open, it didn’t feel the same. I find that they still exude a certain strength. I find myself beautiful and that is priceless! It helps me accept this new image, even if it will take time.”
—Myriam

“The dawn of my second spring. A long-awaited recovery is taking shape.
Staying positive, I won this battle.
Rebuilding myself and moving forward to a new perception of life.
Yes, I live... I breathe...
I am confidently leading my fight. I will win!
To live my dreams.
To transcend and transform myself in that direction.
Yes, I live... I breathe...
I follow the path. I am reborn!
Illuminating the darkness.”
— Sophie

“2-0 for me!
Another battle won! Even if I know that it’s still lurking and that a great cold war with immunotherapy is being prepared.
Now I have to rebuild myself once again. I’m over 40 years old, am bald, with a body that I have trouble accepting even though I know that everything will get better in the end. My ‘self-confidence’ has taken a big hit.
I met Lina a year ago, before the second round. One thing led to another and we came to this moment. This photo session did me a world of good! Lina’s gaze, her gentleness, her kindness, made me feel confident again as soon as I saw the result.
I wasn’t a sick woman, but me, Julie, a woman with her tattoos, her piercings, her visible and invisible scars.
I finally face this reflection that I thought I would never look at again and I find myself strong, proud, and beautiful."
— Julie

“I’ve been so self-conscious in the past!
Too much weight, big feet, saddlebags, sagging breasts. Standing in front of the mirror was not a pleasure!
Two cancers later, taking away my breasts and leaving about twenty kilos, scars, side effects full of vices, I take the time to face my reflection, and the image reflected today pleases me.
I hated my body so much that I didn’t want to look at it anymore, but it didn’t abandon me, it fought to save me! I fought to save myself because finally this body is me.
Today I love myself more than ever, I know who I am and why, but there is still so much to discover and to experience!
No more complexes! Behind the scars today appears the person I am!”
—Anne

After suffering from breast cancer in 2010, I sought professional retraining following post-cancer treatment at La Roche-Posay thermal center. A magical place where I could recharge my batteries and rebuild my life. I met a lot of women in my situation there; I needed to do something to help. Passionate about photography since the age of 13, while volunteering at the center, I photographed several women undergoing treatment, in order to give them new hope, through photography, when confronted by this disease. I quickly realized the benefit engendered by this gesture and I settled in the city, as a photographer.
Every October, I offer a photo session to any woman who would like one. Together, it bolsters us and heals us! The photograph I am presenting in the contest is from Pink October 2021. It captures wonderful Jacky expressing the harshness of the disease, along with hope, joie de vivre, and a woman’s beauty in all her states.

“I am here!
After the doubts, the fears,
The anxieties and uncertainties,
The cold isolation of a hospital room:
I am here.
More woman, more serene, more combative, more alive, more vibrant.
Filled with a gentle gratitude toward those who have reached out to me throughout my battle, those who have lifted me up. As if to say to me at every moment and untiringly: not without you!
Deep inside of me, a new beauty has blossomed: I am once again gathering the nectar of life.
Thanks to you.
I am here!”
—Sophie
—Her smile, her outstretched hand, and especially her gaze... These are the emotions that I liked to capture and convey. Through my lens, Sophie freely confided in me, and it is this beautiful sincerity, about her rebirth as well as her ordeals, that I wish to share with all those who need it.

Culturally, women are judged, measured, through the prism of their beauty. As though women’s bodies belong to the public space. It’s not uncommon, whether on networks or in the street, to see oneself through the mirror of the critical eye of the passer-by. The disease brings, with its lot of physical suffering, emotional suffering related to bodily changes. Mourning the body as it was before the disease is accompanied by the work of becoming accustomed to and learning to recognize oneself in this new body, the cancer scars underlining this warrior, this “alpha” woman test.
My series Woman is an Alpha Male like the Others questions gender stereotypes, here placing the woman in a position of power.
I wanted to put into images this movement of reconciliation with one’s body, casting off the wig and the importance of casting a kind gaze on oneself. An eye for beauty begins by looking at oneself with love.

“Thirty years of love together, then an unexpected detour in our path: accepting a thingamagig, our thingamagig that veils our life together like a mist that imposes itself.
It would aim to take lives, and why not two at a time.
We chose to turn it into resilience, a rebirth, a resource.
Fatality is not a means of transportation; love allows us to escape and travel together.
An eternal, inexhaustible, indestructible love, which holds the helm, without being pushed around by a simple thingamagig.
Our strength lies in thanking it, dismissing it, moving on again, and letting it burn itself out.
This thingamagig has obviously taken a wrong turn, it will definitely leave our life like this mist, which imposes itself and leaves again.
Life is beautiful!”— Marie-Hélène & Guy
—An inspiring couple who together go through, and at the same moment, their encounter with their thingamagig. An image that enhances their love, strength, and determination, as well as the photographic beauty that intersects with the mist and their love.

The Grenade, 2022.

“Beware, under my breast, the grenade!”—Clara Luciani / Benjamin Lebeau / Ambroise Willaume
Hélène and Florence, mother and daughter. Hélène had breast cancer and underwent treatment with radiation, surgery, then removal of her left breast. Hélène talks about it with ease, always dignified and coquettish. Her daughter admires her.
Florence has regular check-ups but is not really afraid. Such experiences can be terrifying for many or, on the contrary, revealing for some: women’s courage is infinite.
These two women embody joie de vivre.
Under the breast, the grenade, courage, and life ready to explode. From mother to daughter.

The Malignant One and the Artist

“26 years ago you crossed my path, violently attacking one of my breasts. Dismay to lose this breast that gave me pleasure, fed my daughter, gave shape to a lovely cleavage. They were beautiful these twins. I only understand this when one of them is torn off me. The fight is painful, the mutilation, grueling.
Then one day I met a photographer who was involved in the struggle against breast cancer. Until then I’d hidden my bruise. Her warmth and kindness, her finesse inspire confidence. I accept to reveal my chest for her, the time of a photography session. It becomes something that can be looked at.
Through the magic of the lens, this dented body changes its image in my eyes. It is me, freed from my restraints, who faces what I am today. I halt sometimes, in front of the mirror, looking at this arrogant scar. The memory of you comes back to me. As if to remind me that I’m alive.
Thanks to you the malignant one, thanks to you Nathalie the artist, for this reprieve, this brilliant life lesson."
—Mado

“Three years that I’ve been cohabiting with this ‘other,’ which appeared in my body without warning, without force, without fracas. It slipped in, slowly, like a squatter.
My meeting with Frédérique was pleasantly surprising. I’m a reserved person, only showing my scar to the medical profession. But, with Frédérique, I dared to do so! With her kind gaze, she knew how to enhance this little part of me, while proving that it doesn’t define me.
Frédérique understood who I am, optimistic and determined, and that I hold my head high.
When I look at myself, I’m not sad to have lost a part of me, this part nevertheless said to be the ‘most representative’ of femininity, in this world where appearance is an obsession.
This scar is the mark of a fight: I fully stand my ground and find myself beautiful and strong!”
—Manuella

It gave her a good slap. The kind of slap you get from someone kind when you pass out. That’s literally what was happening. She was losing consciousness. Of herself above all. And having to give up a part of her flesh, it was as though she were exiting from chaos. Hairless as a child, in pain, hers, mine and that of all those who love and cared for her. She came back to life. She resisted it; this battle saved her. Monsieur Jean d’Ormesson said it so beautifully: “Life is not a perpetual celebration. Thank you for the roses, thank you also for the thorns.”
Today this absent areola, like a torn-off button, she doesn’t necessarily want to sew it back on. This reconstruction is hers, the one she chose at this stage of her life; perfectible and incomplete, some would say.
This is my view of beauty as a father and photographer.

Each of us asked the universe for this meeting. And we found each other: Marie-Noëlle the model and Charlotte the photographer.
Each moment shared together was filled with emotion, from our first words exchanged to this day.
Immersing ourselves was a given for both of us. For Marie-Noëlle, a return to the fetal, placental state. An enveloping and reassuring sensation, faced by this evil which touches her deeply maternal organ. Being in water induces a primitive wellbeing and brings us back to the sweetness of our first days. To this innocence.
A face-to-face encounter between her child state and her mother state, battered by the disease.

A photo, a story, an identity...

June 2022, Amandine writes to me: “I’m Amandine, I’m 38 years old.
I’m a hypersensitive person. While my priority was to laugh as often as possible, to have fun... I became sick in 2017: breast cancer.
Accepting sick leave was complicated but I finally had some time for myself and I loved it! In fact, that’s what life is all about! It’s about enjoying it to the fullest!
In 2019, I had a recurrence and my left breast was removed. My femininity took a hit...
Sometimes it’s still hard for me to look at myself. But it’s me, this is part of my story. So, I decided to accept it, this ‘flatness.’”
— To be able to listen to these intimate stories, these life journeys that have been difficult and the daily struggles for each of these women.
Their pasts are their identities: stories to be exalted rather than suffered as an alienation. We are all different and this difference is our strength and our success.

"Dear body, this letter is for you,
For I didn't understand what took hold of you
To cast us into this setting,
That of the chemotherapy corridors.

But know that today I forgive you,
Because I have learned so much from our fight,
That the rage in me resounds even louder,
Aware that I have come out of a long coma.

Yesterday, you suffered a lot, and so did I.
Today, you are bruised, and I too.
Tomorrow you will be rebuilt, and so will I.
I'm ready to live life to the full, and so are you
—Virginie
— Virginie contacted me to take her picture, specifically
for the ,Estée Lauder Pink Ribbon Photo Award following her breast cancer.
As my work focuses on the daily lives of these women who fight, get up, live, I naturally accepted to participate in this fine contest.
This photo is intended to be soothing. The calm after the storm.

Beauty is in her eyes when she looks at me. The diagnosis of her cancer, a mastectomy, and a reconstruction later... Camille poses for the third consecutive year, two of which with me. Fighter and combatant, she reveals herself with this new body, bold posture, and confident gaze. A remission that could give way to a new life. In spite of this newfound femininity, life puts Camille to the test a second time. The arrival of a second cancer urges her to redouble her efforts, courage, and strength.
A page is turned, another story is written.

“When the disease diagnosis was announced, we realized that our daily life would vanish.
Hunting down cancer the crab became our project.

I piloted you aboard a boat taken years earlier.
Wandering in a storm of elements, the stream pushed you into the water.
Face to face with your tormentor, you made short work of him.

Despite the loss of your breast by this assassin,
Your face seemed serene,
Without rage, you took us out of this frenzy.

In the distance, we glimpsed the light like a flash.
Like a lighthouse, we glimpsed hope.
I saw your gaze indicating our victory.

And it was after this barbarity that I understood Saint-Exupéry:
‘To love is not to look at one another,
It is to look, together, in the same direction.’

This photo to immortalize your success.
Your beauty to testify to it.
May this photograph inspire every woman,
So they can see what a superheroine is.”
—Antoine, partner of Eva, the model

“Because for you, my baby, I will always fight...You were nestled in my belly when my life was turned upside down. You are this little joyful being who suffered from inside my first chemotherapy treatments and my darkest anxieties. Yes, the end of my pregnancy was filled with fears and challenges. Your birth took place in the middle of a storm, but you lit up everything. After several months of the classical medical protocol, the disease took its toll and I began a therapeutic trial. To live, to be there during all the stages of your life, for these stolen moments that are worth all the gold in the world, for your smile that makes me forget everything and fills me with an indescribable joy.
You are my present and my future. I see in your eyes the reasons to fight the greatest battle of my life. To you Nino, my son. I love you.”
—Pauline

“And sometimes I no longer know who I am
I may have a great destiny
I have holes all over my body
The gaps
I have scars all over my body
The experiences
I have the eye
I have all the pieces to rebuild everything.”
—Clémentine

“Inasmuch as love grows in you, in so much beauty grows; for love is itself the beauty of the soul.”— Saint Augustine, The Confessions
In 2015, Elodie was battling her “lump,” that’s what she calls it.
In 2016, she participated in this same contest, with the theme of “Loving Ourselves.” And that’s what she did! She loved herself, intensely, deeply, with difficulty sometimes, but always with this hope of life! Yes, life! To live, to love, to share, to heal, and to renew. To believe passionately, madly... until giving life!
In 2021, she gave birth to her little boy.
She dared to dream and now she has the beauty of her soul in her arms.