Michelle Varga handed her a mirror.

Months earlier, breast cancer had taken both of Meridith Pyle’s breasts, her nipples and, she says, much of the woman she recognized in her reflection. Now, sitting inside the nonprofit where Varga provides medical tattooing, Varga Medical Art Inc., Pyle watched as hyperrealistic areolas emerged over the scar tissue left behind by a double mastectomy.

“I just wanted to feel like me again,” Pyle says.

Looking into the mirror, she cried.

“Not because it hurt,” Pyle says. “But because she gave me a sense of womanhood again.”

For more than a decade, Varga has helped people reclaim parts of themselves altered by illness, injury and trauma. Combining her backgrounds as a nurse and tattoo artist, she restores areolas after mastectomies, and  camouflages scars left by cleft lip repairs, self-harm and gender-affirming surgeries.

The work, done at Varga’s Body Mind Soul Studios, is deeply personal. A six-time cancer survivor herself, Varga understands that healing rarely ends when treatment does. Her own experiences with illness shaped both the technical precision of her work and the compassion she brings to every appointment.

“My trauma validates their trauma,” she says. In 2003, the same year her grandmother died from breast cancer, Varga was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Years of surgeries, radiation and recurring diagnoses followed, giving her firsthand knowledge of how illness can permanently change the way someone sees their own body.

“I remember just crying all the time,” she says. “Every time you go in for another diagnostic, the anxiety you have, when you’re sitting there in your gown, waiting to be scanned, is something that you cannot put into words.”

After a tumultuous marriage and years of nursing burnout, Varga left the profession in 2007. Around that same time, she met her now-husband, Eain Varga, a tattoo artist. While she continued undergoing cancer treatments, the couple kept returning to the same question: How could they combine their artistic talents with Varga’s medical background to help people heal?

In 2013, Varga was diagnosed with cancer again, completing treatment that March. As her health slowly improved and the couple welcomed their daughter, that question evolved into a shared vision.

Eain encouraged her to pursue tattooing professionally. What began as a blend of artistic talent and clinical knowledge gradually evolved.

Varga apprenticed under breast cancer survivor and tattoo artist Judith Culp Pearson at Eugene’s Esthetics NW Services and continues studying with medical tattoo educator Stacie Rae, believing that technical skill alone isn’t enough. “It’s not just laying ink into skin,” Varga says. “You’re actually helping somebody heal.”

Together, Michelle and Eain built Body Mind Soul Studios in 2021 around the belief that survivors deserve care that helps restore both their bodies and their confidence, regardless of financial means.

“Together we realized we could create something that helped survivors heal both physically and emotionally,” Varga says. “Our different backgrounds became our strength.”

Every appointment begins long before the tattoo machine turns on.

Varga reviews medical records, speaks with physicians and studies how each person’s skin has healed after surgery or radiation. She discusses expectations, color matching and placement. Sometimes she sends patients home with temporary areola tattoos so they can decide what feels most like themselves before committing to permanent pigment.

But once the needles touch the skin, the conversation usually changes. “Their story comes out,” Varga says. “It’s a cathartic release.”

Patients often talk about cancer, surgeries, grief and fear, sharing stories they often haven’t shared with anyone else. For many, the appointment becomes as much about emotional healing as physical restoration.

Pyle knows that feeling well.

After being diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer, she spent months navigating a maze of oncologists, surgeons and insurance approvals before finally undergoing a double mastectomy. Initially, doctors believed they could preserve her nipples.

Then came another conversation. To ensure the best chance of removing all of the cancer, they would have to go.

“That crushed me,” Pyle says.

She remembers looking in the mirror after surgery and seeing only scars. “You feel like you’ve lost every piece of your womanhood,” she says. “I’m the one who still has to look at myself in the mirror.”

Pyle’s doctor, Garth Meldrum, recommended she connect with Varga after referring several of his patients to her. At first, Pyle felt embarrassed that she couldn’t afford the procedure. Cancer had already placed an enormous financial burden on her, and her insurance would not cover medical tattooing.

When Varga received Pyle’s call, she recognized a story she had heard many times before.

As she and Eain worked more with breast cancer survivors, another obstacle became impossible to ignore. Insurance companies frequently classified nipple tattooing as cosmetic, even after mastectomy reconstruction, leaving many patients unable to afford the procedure.

Rather than wait for policy to change, Michelle and Eain founded the nonprofit Varga Medical Art in 2023 to help cover the cost of treatment for survivors whose insurance claims are often denied. “I care about the human,” she says. “I don’t care about the bureaucrats.”

Today, Pyle still has more tattoo sessions ahead. She has shown only a handful of people the results. Every one of them thought they were looking at the same body she had before cancer. When she catches her reflection now, she no longer sees what was taken away. She sees herself.

“She gave me my life back,” Pyle says.

This October, Pyle will help organize Varga Medical Art’s third annual Pink Ribbon Gala, raising money so other survivors can receive the same care she once thought she could never afford. “I want to help her as much as I can,” Pyle says. “Because she literally saved my life.”

It’s the kind of full circle Varga hopes every patient finds: leaving not only with restored skin, but with the confidence to help someone else heal.

Varga Medical Art and Body Mind Soul Studios are located at 1720 West 18th Avenue, and more information can be found at VargaMedicalArt.org and BodyMindSoulStudios.com.