My great grandmother cut herself out of photographs. Grainy black and white family photos from the 1930s and 1940s show a headless body next to her children. She hated her face I’ve been told. She hated her face enough to excise herself from her children’s history. Sometimes a sharp deletion with metal scissors. Sometimes a visceral rip of paper with her fingertips. There aren’t many photographs that survived my great-grandmother’s lack of self-confidence.

My grandma, whether from her own insistence or some coincidence, avoided all audio or video recordings of herself. Since she died from emphysema almost a decade before I was born, I have no idea how my own grandmother sounded. I only have some photographs and my imagination. I assume she must have sounded similar to my mother – the same way I hear my own mother’s voice in mine sometimes.

My mother hid in photographs, hands blocking her face, or strategically standing behind my youthful one. Conveniently always the one taking the picture. Always, “Steph look here.” Always, “Steph, let me take your picture.” Always, “Steph, smile!”

My mom died last year.

I don’t take pictures of myself. My personal photographer gone. My husband steps up to the plate and takes candid photos of me when I least expect it. These tend to be my favorite.

I’ve never been a makeup girl. A-spend-time-on-my-hair girl. A-manicure girl. I don’t post pictures of myself. I tend to avoid my face. An entire year I hid from photos, just like my mother. But there was one picture I couldn’t escape.

My mammogram.

The only photos of me this past month are internal ones, my own grainy black and white x-rays. My left breast with cancer. My enflamed lymph node. My other breast. I don’t want these to be my legacy.

A month after my diagnosis, I had a mastectomy. We cut the bad out of me so that I might live longer. So that I can take more photos with my two-year old daughter. I look at the photos on my phone. They’re mostly all of her. I swipe through each high-definition picture. My daughter – my daughter – my daughter – a flower – my daughter crouching by the flower. I need to teach her she’s allowed to paint her self-portrait, that she’s beautiful.

Perhaps I’d have to correct 100 years of self-confidence in the women I’m descended from, but, perhaps, I don’t. Maybe it starts today, with one photograph of my daughter and me.

Stephanie Provenzale-Furino is a librarian in Northeast Ohio. She holds an MFA from Ashland University, where she finished her book-length memoir. When she isn’t reading or writing, she’s busy jamming out on guitar. You can view her other work at https://www.stephanieprovenzalefurino.com/.