Pink Week

Pink Week is an event put on by the leadership classes at the Kennewick high schools to raise awareness of cancer and money for cancer research. This is a bittersweet week for me. It's really hard, because cancer has touched my life in numerous ways, and at this time of year I always think more about what I have lost. It's hard to be bombarded with pink, always thinking about Mom. I spend a lot of the week feeling like a raw nerve ending, angry that this disease has taken so much from me and people I love and sad because it makes me feel very lonely.



But then I look around, at all these teens wearing pink, and it makes me so happy to be able to be involved with such awesome kids. They are pouring their hearts and souls into raising money, raising awareness. They were at school at 4:30 this morning, kicking off the city-wide events. They were at the park this evening, decked out in their Value Village pink best and their glo sticks, linking the Cable Bridge to the Blue Bridge. They brought their parents, their brothers and sisters, their youth groups. They were proud to be a part of something bigger than themselves. And they were doing it, most of them, for someone else. For a mother, for a father, a grandparent, their best friend's mom, a neighbor. And, though most of them will never know it, they were doing it for a teacher. A teacher who is so hopeful that these kids are helping find a cure.



I have hope.