This piece was written by one of our dear readers—a woman with something real to say. Each month, we handpick the best submissions for Dear Reader because we’re after that PROVOKED bite: truth, intelligence, and heart. These stories come from women our age—women who’ve lived enough to know better and still care enough to tell it anyway. Because being seen and heard matters. Because storytelling is how we stitch ourselves to one another. And because when one woman speaks her truth, another finally recognizes her own. — Susan Dabbar, Editor-in-Chief
Days after surgery, I posted the wrong photo to my hospital update page. Turns out the topless picture revealed less about me than about everyone who saw it.
I was in my rehab room at Swedish Hospital, in a Denver suburb, four days after surgery to remove a mass that had been pressing on my brainstem, trying to update my CaringBridge profile picture. My left hand wasn’t cooperating—it never cooperates anymore—so I was fumbling through my phone’s photo library with my right hand, squinting at the screen through double vision.
I wanted to look good in my profile picture. Not like a patient. Not like someone to pity. I found a photo I look strong in. I tapped it, uploaded it, and moved on to writing my update about how physical therapy went today.
The photo was of me topless.
I didn’t notice this for 12 hours.
I’d taken that photo two months before surgery. I was in a relationship and we exchanged photos sometimes. The kind of photos people in relationships exchange, meant to turn each other on. I liked how I looked in that one. Powerful. Sexy. Like a person who existed beyond medical appointments and PT.
That’s what the photo was: evidence that I was still a whole person, still someone who felt desire and was desired.
I’m disabled. I use a cane some days. I have low vision. My left hand flops around like a wet paddle. I’m also sexual. I feel desire. I date and have relationships. I take photos for people I’m intimate with.
To me, there’s no contradiction.
To everyone else, apparently, there is.
The Photo That Revealed Everything
I came back from physical therapy, exhausted but pleased with my progress. I checked my phone. So many notifications from CaringBridge! I opened the app to see what everyone was saying.
And there I was. Topless. At the top of a medical update website. Above posts about learning to walk again, managing brain swelling, and thanking people for their prayers.
“Oh s*it,” I said out loud.
My adult daughter, there to visit me, looked up from her own phone.
“What’s wrong?”
My first thought: Wrong photo. Wrong context. That was supposed to be private.
My second thought: But also … I look good in that photo.
I tried to take the photo down, but I couldn’t. CaringBridge had locked me out for posting indecent content. My hands were shaking—the right one from adrenaline, the left one because it always shakes now.
“I accidentally posted the wrong photo on CaringBridge,” I told her. “And now I’m locked out. Can you change it for me?” Luckily, I had given her author access before my surgery.
“Sure, which photo did you—” She pulled up CaringBridge on her phone. Paused. “Oh. Oh my god.”
“I know. I know. Can you just change it, please?”
She changed it without another word. We didn’t mention it again.
I started laughing. Because what else can I do?
The Questions No One Asks
I had a follow-up appointment with my neurosurgeon a month after I got home. On the ride there, I wondered if he would ask about sex. I suspected he wouldn’t.
The relationship with the man I’d sent the photos to had ended by then. I was starting to date again, tentatively, still not sure what my body was capable of. I felt uncomfortable in it. I had tried my vibrator a few times, but my body’s response had been underwhelming in a way that unsettled me. I didn’t know if it was the heavy cocktail of anticonvulsants and other drugs I was on, the surgery itself, or just the strangeness of inhabiting a body I was still getting to know again.
The doctor asked about sleep, diet, exercise, headaches, vision, fatigue. I asked about side effects of the drugs I’m on, if there were activities I should avoid. Neither of us said the word sex.
I had hoped one of my questions might open a door. None of them did, and I didn’t push through on my own. I’m not sure what stopped me—embarrassment, maybe, or the sense that I already knew he wouldn’t go there and had talked myself into accepting that before I arrived. I was a body to be fixed, not a person who might want to know if she’ll ever feel like herself again.
Around that time, I mentioned a recent date to a friend. She looked surprised. “I guess I just didn’t think about that,” she said. A few months later, I posted a sarcastic note on Substack about the whole incident. “Brain damage: keeping life interesting since 2025.” That kind of thing.
Someone commented: “Why do you have topless photos?”
I stared at that comment for a long time. They weren’t asking why I posted it by accident. They were asking why I had it at all.
Why would a disabled person take sexy photos? Why would someone who needs help with daily tasks, who uses mobility aids, who has brain damage—why would that person have photos that acknowledge they have a body they feel good about?
Desire Doesn’t Disappear After Disability
Recently I got dressed for a lover.
I wore a black fishnet dress. Getting dressed by myself with an errant left side has taken lots of occupational therapy. It took longer than it used to. That’s true of most things now. But I got it on. I stood in front of the mirror and looked at myself, the cane leaning against the wall behind me.
I looked good.
