This loss, however painful, initiated a monumental shift in my life. It required that I reimagine the female body, and learn to live with my own that is scarred and imperfect. Whether we’ve had breast amputations or not, people socialized as women experience tremendous body pressure throughout our lives. In the months recovering, it amplified the bodily pressure that I had always felt.

I discovered pleasure was the medicine that kept me healthy.

I had no idea how profoundly the Somatica Training would transform my life. It really helped me through my transition, to realize that it isn’t going to affect my sex life just because I am scarred in this way.

I spoke to my scars, taught myself how to relax into my new body. I continued to make love through months of breast reconstruction surgeries. Even with drains coming out of my body, I still somehow managed to focus on pleasure.

Somatica taught me to deepen into sensation and let go of shame.

More than anything, Somatica gave me a language to speak with my partner about what I was going through. It gave me the courage to be really honest with my lover.

1 in 8 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in this country. We are starting to see themes of breast cancer in television—these stories are becoming more commonplace. But I think it is important to show different kinds of relating to the word cancer.

Emma is written as a young survivor of breast cancer, experiencing what it is like to be a mother, a business woman, and a sexual being coping with breast cancer.

Naturally, breast cancer made its way into the storyline of Here She Comes. Deep in the drafts, it became Emma’s story. For Emma, sex and sexual expression are her ways of dealing with her anxiety and her fears around death. She comes to peace not only with her own mortality, but also with the fragility of all humanity. She plants the seeds of the next sexual revolution, while keeping her own fears of cancer and waves of anxiety at bay.

You are not off limits. Even when scarred. Even when sick.

I hope Emma will be an example of a woman who is really empowered in her choices around her medical care. She is really curious about the connection between her pleasure, her body, and her recurrences. I hope it will be a unique, expanded and inspiring portrayal of a woman who faces this unfortunately very common problem, and redefines how one can move through it bravely.

May Here She Comes inspire you to keep that sexy part of yourselves alive. Pleasure can heal. You are not off limits, even when scarred, even when “sick.”

Jessica Habie
Writer/Director
Here She Comes