NEW ORLEANS — For Ashley O'Bryan, they’re more than just decorated bras.
“I think this one is so fun and festive. This one was kind of like front and center on the Mardi Gras tree,” said O’Bryan as she holds up a white bra decorated with purple, green and gold sequins and two plastic king cake babies glued on the front.
Last year, while 19 weeks pregnant with twins, O'Bryan was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, which she's still battling. Already having a 2-year-old at home, once her twins were born, O'Bryan wanted to catch a parade this past carnival season. Luckily, the all-female Krewe of Isis was set to roll behind her Kenner home Feb. 22.
“This was the only parade I actually got to go to with having newborns at home,” O’Bryan said.
Before the parade O'Bryan says her mom showed her an article about the krewe decorating bras as signature throws to spotlight breast cancer awareness.
"I'm like, 'Oh that's really neat,' so that's when I was like ‘OK, I'm going to make a sign and see if we can catch some,’” O’Bryan said.
Her sign worked so well, she caught seven.
“It was really fun and the women who did throw to me, they were all really encouraging, like, you got it, so I was like, ‘I can do this, I'm in my final stretch,’" O’Bryan said.
From there, a simple photo was posted of O’Bryan with her sign and the seven bras she caught that night.
“When I saw that photo of Ashley it really hit home and for a lot of the members it did as well," Krewe of Isis Captain Sherrell Gorman said.
As captain, Gorman is also the woman in charge of all those bras. With krewe members, including herself, personally connected to breast cancer, she says one of those members suggested decorating bras last year. So, this was the first year it happened.
“If we can brighten someone's day by them catching a bra, as a reminder and also heighten awareness of the community, we want to do it,” Gorman said.
That's exactly what happened when O'Bryan held up her sign.
“That made her day and she was so proud to have those seven bras,” Gorman said. “It was almost like a flag, you know, to raise her flag of her survival.”
With a handful of chemo treatments left, O'Bryan is already looking forward to next year's parade, new bras and a new sign.
“Hopefully my sign next year will say cancer free,” she said.
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