Sometimes the Goal Gets Lost in the Shuffle!

So the weeks have continued moving forward and we are now at 16 weeks to the walk in Chicago!  Yes, 16 weeks to go.  I have tried to keep my team motivated and encourage them to continue with walks and fundraising events.  It has not always been easy, and  we now know that it can be true that a team sometimes is only as strong as the weakest member... if they allow it to be so. 

This journey has brought about so many different emotions for all of us, hope, strength, courage, friendship.  Those are the feelings that we would wish to encourage and grow.  However, we have seen a darker side of emotions that have made an appearance.  These emotions were envy, competition, dishonesty, mistrust, lies...this list goes on and on and we, as a team, are trying to get beyond the upsets that have occurred in resent weeks.  I know that many of us have been left wondering how something that was supposed to help bring people together, united in a common goal, has managed to destroy relationships and cause hurt feelings and this feeling of mistrust. 

All I can say to each person on my team is:

"Keep your eye and heart focused on the true reason we started this team.  Find a way to move beyond the hurt and refocus on what this event really represents.  Along the way some lost sight of the goal and we can only wish them well from this point forward.  If they have decided to move on and away from our team, so be it, the idea is to raise funds for Breast Cancer, if they are still doing that....we have won the battle! 

This journey is personal, this is true, but it is not about us!  It is about all the men and women that have had to battle this disease and all the men and women that will still have to battle this disease if we don't find a cure.  It is about the 29 year old woman that lost her battle just this week! It is about the family of that young woman, the father that called us so soon after her death to cancel her next doctors appointment because she would never be able to keep that appointment! It is about the life that she will NEVER GET TO LIVE.  

 It is about the women that we send day in and day out to get mammograms done, or spot compression done, or ultrasounds, or MRI's.  It is about every man and woman that has to sit and wait for results of an ultrasound or MRI that is then told that they need to have a biopsy. It is for the men and women who have those biopsies only to be told that the diagnosis is cancer and surgery and radiation and chemo come next. It is for them that we walk these miles and it is for them that we come together to raise funds.  It is for the hope that each of us can somehow make a difference in just one life by taking one step forward on August 5, 2011. 

This has been a difficult week, an emotional one to say the least...and as I sat in waiting rooms and spoke to different people this week, I felt a very small measure of what our patients live with and I felt insignificant in the big picture.  "Small" because in this wide world, so many things happen on a daily basis that could change your life forever...and yet we can be so arrogant, arrogant enough to feel that personal agendas mean more than the reason behind this walk.  I sat and listened and worried and cried and I thought SHAME, SHAME ON ANYONE WHO HAS LOST SIGHT OF THE GOAL! WE DO NOT WALK FOR OURSELVES... 

THE PINK NINJAS WILL NOT BE A PART OF THE PROBLEM BUT RATHER A STEP IN FINDING THE SOLUTION!  WE ARE COMMITTED TO THIS FOR EACH OTHER AND FOR ANYONE THAT WE CAN HELP WITH OUR SMALL CONTRIBUTION. 

So I would like each of you to brush yourselves off, pick yourselves up,wish the others well and know that you can hold your head up high because none of you have ever lost sight of the true meaning for this walk.  We will do this and we will succeed because to do anything less is unforgivable. 

LADIES, LET'S DO THIS!