Cecilie Flatval was 42 years old, had three children, and a whole life ahead of her when she heard the diagnosis: metastatic, incurable breast cancer. Instead of hiding what was happening to her, she decided to show it.
In Oslo, Norway, sculptor Håkon Anton Fagerås immortalized her in bronze exactly as she was. With a single breast and the scar from her mastectomy visible. No pose to conceal it, no gesture to soften the truth. Pfizer and the Norwegian Breast Cancer Association promoted the project to give a face to the more than 2.3 million women who receive this diagnosis each year, and to the thousands who, like Cecilie, live with the disease without the promise of a cure.
She lived to see the completed statue before dying in 2023. Today it still stands in the center of the city, reminding every person who passes by that survival is not the only story worth telling.
