In 2004 what would sadly become a marathon of close encounters with breast cancer began with the diagnosis of my close friend, Kosu Boudreau during my pregnancy with Mattea. Shortly thereafter, following Mattea's birth, our mother - only 51 at the time - was diagnosed with breast cancer. This shook me to the core - so deeply that it would in fact take almost two years before I could connect with the rage, grief and fear I had experienced. As a new mother the emotions and concerns it raised were more than I could bear at the time. Shortly after my mother's diagnosis came the diagnosis of breast cancer in my grandfather's wife Pat - one of the healthiest and most active older women I know and a role model to me from a young age. Since then the announcements of breast cancer diagnoses have just kept coming - closer and closer together and women seemingly younger and younger.
Parallel to this journey has been my journey as a mother to navigate and minimize the risk of toxic exposures for my daughter to products and environmental contaminants known to, or suspected of, having negative consequences on health and development. My sister and I have also spent the last three years becoming informed about the lack of health and safety standards in women's personal products, and I have spent nearly three years treating women's reproductive concerns, many of which are unexplained but reflect radical imbalances of the body's natural hormonal system.
My desire to find an outlet for my advocacy efforts with regard to breast cancer, mothering, reproductive health and the environment, has led me to a recent appointment on the board of directors of WHEN - the Women's Healthy Environments Network. This organization - launched a couple of decades ago when all this talk of environment and health was still considered fringe and radical, works at a grassroots level to educate the public and advocates for policy change at a municipal, provincial and national level. Their work speaks to the heart of my desire for a future where we understand that the health of the planet is not separate from the health of our bodies and that it is all of our duties, as citizens of humanity, to work towards a preventative rather than remedial approach to our health and to the health of our planet.
Every year WHEN is the official sponsor for a fundraiser called CPC - the Cancer Prevention Challenge. This fundraiser is unique in that it is not tied to any particular event - like a marathon, but instead allows teams to raise funds in whatever way they choose, and to put their fundraising money toward a project or organization of their choice. As a newly elected member of the board at WHEN, we chose for 100% of our team funds to go towards WHEN and their upcoming breast cancer campaign. We also decided to make the Night Crawler 5-mile race our fundraising activity - feeling that running together would be a fun bonding experience and give us a fitness goal to aspire to at the same time.
We are happy to report that despite a small team for our first year, we did raise over $1500 in support of WHEN. Perhaps more important from a symbolic perspective, we ran with our mother - now cancer-free for almost five years - and she nearly showed us up with her running endurance!
We hope you will consider joining us in 2011 in the fight to prevent cancer by joining our team.
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