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Women who have been recently diagnosed with breast cancer can learn a tremendous amount from women who have already been treated.

I have experienced firsthand the tremendous impact breast cancer has on the women who fight it and the loved ones who support them. This is a disease that catches you unaware and, without the right resources, leaves you feeling frightened and alone.

For years I heeded the warning: Do monthly breast self-exams. Like most women, I did them on a 'sort of' basis. Every few months I'd sort of do a quick feel, but never as thoroughly as the doctors urged. I didn't want to go looking for trouble. If you look for it, you might find it. Looking for cancer is unsettling. Thank God I looked.

My efforts to join the fight against breast cancer all began around the fact that women were getting short-changed in the medical arena.

With breast cancer, it's all about detection. You have to educate young women and encourage them to do everything they have to do.

That's why I talk about the breast cancer: because I want women - and everyone - to stay on top of things and get checked. I know how scary it can be. When I dealt with it, I was like, 'Oh my God.' And I have so many other friends who have gone through it or have suffered a loss.

I grew up knowing the importance of breast cancer.

Breast cancer is not just a disease that strikes at women. It strikes at the very heart of who we are as women: how others perceive us, how we perceive ourselves, how we live, work and raise our families-or whether we do these things at all.

I feel that between my experience and my mother's, breast cancer is a little bit like someone who lives next door. I know what that person looks like and what their daily habits are.

I had been afraid of breast cancer, as I suspect most women are, from the time I hit adolescence. At that age, when our emerging sexuality is our central preoccupation, the idea of disfigurement of a breast is particularly horrifying.