While writing Previvors, I’ve come across so many brave, inspirational women. And one of them is a 23-year-old woman named  Claudia Gilmore. Claudia has launched a blog and web series called Previve, where she is documenting her experience as a previvor. She is planning on having a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy in January.

On the one hand, it’s sad that women have to make such a choice to prevent a disease they feel they’re destined to get. And experts are desperately trying to find better options. But on the other hand, how lucky are we that we can take charge of our health and fight breast cancer before it strikes.

Years ago, no one even said the word “cancer.” It was a word that was whispered; a topic that was rarely discussed.

Then, thanks to our mother’s generation and women like Nancy Brinker (founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure), breast cancer started receiving the attention it deserved. Women started learning their risk and how to protect themselves; researchers started realizing the importance of finding better treatments and working effortlessly until we find a cure. They started to offer women some hope.

And then we have women like Claudia Gilmore and  the five women in Previvors. Thanks to advances in genetics, such women can learn their risk before cancer strikes. For the first time, we can determine who might be destined to get breast cancer, and then we can beat it to the punch. How far we have come!

I think the whole concept of previvors is something young women today really seem to embrace. Our generation knows we have options and we seize them. Hopefully, our children’s generation won’t even have to consider such difficult options. Hopefully, breast cancer will someday be lumped in the same category as polio (a dreadful thing of the past). But until them, do as Claudia and so many other women do today: Previve!