Komen Walk

Last Saturday I walked in the Komen Race for the Cure in St. Louis with 71,800 of my closest friends! It was my first time in the walk - we are often out of town when it occurs and last year, I just didn't feel I had the stamina--physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual--to do it because my experience of cancer was still too close. For my first walk, my husband and Daughter joined me (Son #1 was just home from a mission trip and Son#2 had a sprained ankle) and we walked with some close friends as part of their group from work.

It was truly amazing. We enjoyed the Survivor area before starting the walk; I got a free massage, we took a free picture, we drank chocolate milk and orange juice and talked with other survivors. I met a woman who was a 5-year survivor at the age of 28. Survivors came in all shapes, sizes, ages, colors, classes--such diversity. This disease shows no partiality from what I saw.

I wore my bright pink Survivor shirt and received congratulations from many. One man along the route looked like an avid biker with a leather vest full of pins--he dyed his hair pink and cheered us along the path. He looked straight at me and with such sincerity said, "Congratulations on being a survivor, ma'am!" "Touche'," I thought, “I really am a survivor!” He had a way of making me feel so good for having beaten it.

I was on the verge of tears nearly the whole time. I really cried when my husband and Daughter filled out the sign to pin to their shirt that said, “I walk in celebration of my wife,” or “I walk in celebration of my mommy.” When I looked down the street once we turned the first corner of the walk and all I could see was a massive sea of people, I cried. I found out later that my husband, too, was on the verge of tears, especially for the first hour. I was awed and grateful to be alive and to be with such an enormous amount of people all committed to the same the cause. I realized that it doesn’t work to compartmentalize my life and put this experience away, as if in a box on the shelf. I will continue to integrate it into who I am, while not letting it define me or what I can do.