It’s October! And you know what that means…Breast Cancer
Awareness Month. My living location may have changed but my mission has stayed
the same. This fight with this disease is far from over so no rest even for the
weary. It is estimated that in 2015, 231,840 women will be diagnosed with new
cases of invasive breast cancer and there will be 40,290 deaths due to this
disease. We know statistics very well as we became one in 2009 and another in
2011. I think that is what pushes me to work harder. I think that is why I can’t
just walk away. I don’t want someone else to feel the way I fell or have to
live the way we have lived. I am tired of sons not having mothers to dance with
on their wedding day or daughters developing into a woman alone. Breast cancer
has taken too many amazing people from us. It took my mother.
I thought the hardest part of losing her in 2011 was over.
You know the initial shock, the grieving period, the learning how to live
without her. I thought that once I got through that life would be set on cruise
control. Oh little did I know how foolish that was. No one tells you that each
new event in your life would bring you right back to square one. Back to that
spot where you have to learn how to do it without her. A wedding, the birth of
a child, work problems, relationship issues…it doesn’t matter. Whatever makes
you think that she would have the answer brings you back to the beginning.
I am 25 weeks pregnant with my first child. The questions I
have that my friends and google can’t answer, I know that she would know. My
mother had a way of encouraging us through any situation and sometimes I need
that just to make it through each day. I am relearning how to live without her
in an area that I truly need her. But I know she would be happy, she would love
the fact that she is having a granddaughter. And I know that we will get
through this because we made it through before thanks to God, family and
friends. This will be just another journey for this girl with a ponytail.
