INDIANAPOLIS — Sporting a bright pink mullet and always ready with a joke, Lissa Sears isn't afraid to make a statement.
And the former window salesperson-turned-stand-up-comedian's got one to make about surviving breast cancer.
"I absolutely (expletive) hate cancer, but it was the best thing to ever happen to me," said Sears, who was diagnosed over 10 years ago with stage 2 breast cancer after feeling a lump in her right breast.
"When I felt the node, I was like, it's cancer. I just knew it in my gut," Sears recalled.
Her fears were quickly confirmed through tests and a doctor.
Sears had already spent 14 years living with MS by the time she got her cancer diagnosis. She chose to fight cancer with chemotherapy and a double mastectomy.
"I just said, 'Cut 'em off!'" Sears recalled.
Her next decision, though, was one she says fewer breast cancer survivors make or even hear about as an option from their doctors.
"'Flat' wasn't a word I used. It's now 'termed aesthetic flat closure,'" Sears explained of her decision not to have surgery to reconstruct her breasts.
"With any kind of reconstruction, it's not a fast recovery."
Sears says the decision not to have reconstructive surgery came with pushback and questions.
"'How are you ever going to feel like a woman? How are you going to date again? How are you going to wear a bikini or bathing suit? How? How? How?'" Sears said she was asked by medical professionals.
Her answer: "Very easily."
Five years after her surgery, Sears discovered a group online of others who had made the same choice she had.
"You're talking to people who get it," said Sears.
It was a trip to Colorado three years ago though and a moment there, standing on top of the world's largest flat top mountain, that convinced Sears she could do more to support others walking her same path.
"I called a friend and I was like, 'Let's put on the largest 'flatties' meet-up on the largest flat top mountain in the world,'" Sears says she told her friend.
A year later, that's just what happened, with close to 100 people gathering on The Grand Mesa near Grand Junction, Colorado.
By then, Sears had also created a non-profit called "Flat Out Love," a support group for people who've survived breast cancer and became "flatties," that's what the group's members call themselves.
In just three years, Flat Out Love has close to 5,000 members with more joining every week.
"It just empowers them to be free and be whole," said Sears.
"I still have body images issue but getting better," said Dawn Trader, who's a new member of Flat Out Love.
Trader joined after going to a dinner the group hosted on the night before Trader's double mastectomy this past January.
"I was like, they're happy, they're healthy, like, I want to be them," Trader remembered saying to herself.
Now, eight months later, Trader credits Flat Out Love with helping her heal emotionally and make the decision to live flat and not have reconstructive surgery.
"You do a lot of grieving because you've lost part of your body that you had," said Trader. "I was like, 'What the hell do I do now?'"
It's taken some time to answer that question, but Trader feels like she's reached a place of acceptance and joy after attending a Flat Out Love meet-up in Tennessee this summer.
"I left there a whole different person with some amazing friends," said Trader.
"I learned that breasts don't define who you are."
Breast cancer surgeon Dr. Tara Spivey says she sees more women choosing flat closure after their breast cancer diagnosis.
"Flat is as much of an option as any of the other options that we have on the table," Spivey explained in her office at Community Health in Anderson.
"I think there's more women supporting other women with the decision to go flat," Spivey said, adding that Flat Out Love is an example of that.
"It's really a neat network," said Spivey. "It shouldn't be something that society puts constraints on or anybody should feel bad about their decision."
Lissa Sears hasn't looked back.
When asked if she misses having breasts: "No, not one bit," Sears replied. "I don't. They tried to kill me."
These days, it's all about expanding Flat Out Love, so others across the country who are facing breast cancer and the choices that come with it can feel supported in their choice to go flat.
"Everybody says you only live once." But Lissa Sears isn't everybody. She never has been and for her that's made all the difference.
"You only die once. You live every day. Take all the chances," said Sears.
She's following her own advice.
On Oct. 6, Sears walked the runway in New York in a "Flashion Show," featuring other breast cancer survivors, some who have chosen to live flat.
Sears also hosts a podcast with a former Victoria Secret's model who also had breast cancer and is living flat.
The podcast is called "Flat Out Secrets."