Powerful Personal Writing: Is Your Site Pink for October?

Pow­er­ful Per­sonal Writ­ing: Is Your Site Pink for Octo­ber?

This Week’s Prompt: Powerful

Every time a writer sits down in front of a key­board or picks up a pen or pen­cil, he or she hopes to craft a writ­ten work pow­er­ful enough to impact its read­ers in some way. Iron­i­cally, we can­not fore­see the many ways in which our writ­ing affects those who con­nect with our words.

We work so hard to string flow­ery phrases together, search­ing the the­saurus and dic­tio­nary for unique words and expres­sions that will demon­strate to our read­ers just how accom­plished we are, how pow­er­ful our com­mand of the language.

But despite all our efforts, there are times when the writ­ten word is most pow­er­ful because of its sim­ply stated, unam­bigu­ous truth.

As I con­sid­ered this week’s prompt, I began read­ing the var­i­ous blogs to which I sub­scribe. And there it was: The most pow­er­ful, thought-provoking, and mov­ing post I have read in a long, long time. Not coin­ci­den­tally, I had just trans­formed Col­lo­quium in antic­i­pa­tion of Pink for Octo­ber when I read WhyMommy’s words at Tod­dler Planet.

On July 30, 2007, I joined Team Why­Mommy, pub­lish­ing, as she requested, her story of being diag­nosed with inflam­ma­tory breast can­cer. She has con­tin­ued blog­ging about her jour­ney back to health, chron­i­cling her treat­ment and its impact upon her and her family.

Con­sider A Day off from Can­cer:

Yes­ter­day was my first day solo’ing all day with the kids, with­out Why­Daddy or Why­Grammy or Why­Grand­dad or Why­Grandma or Why­Paw­Paw here for help and sup­port. I’m happy to report that both kids were fed, napped, and played with until we all col­lapsed from exhaus­tion. We spent time out­side on the swings, and we had a play­date with friends. Wid­get painted a big piece of card­board with ALL the col­ors, and he climbed up on the stool to choose his own snack. Lit­tle Bear crawled and walked with the sup­port of my hands. And then? I put Lit­tle Bear down to sleep THREE times — morn­ing, after­noon nap, and bed­time — dou­bling my suc­cess rate since July, when my chest/arm pain became so intense that I could no longer hold him long enough to rock him to sleep. Good times.

Today, I’m tak­ing a day off from can­cer. I’m just going to pre­tend it isn’t there. I des­per­ately need a break from tbe research, the options, the future, the past, the pain, and the medication.

Wish me luck.

Why­Mommy is a 34-year-old mother of two lit­tle boys, born in August 2004 and Jan­u­ary 2007. As I read her words, I was trans­ported back to the time when my two boys — and my two nephews — were lit­tle guys. In fact, I was also 34 years old when my youngest was born.

How many times over the years did I rock my boys to sleep and put them down for naps or bed­time? I have no idea, but I was always phys­i­cally capa­ble of pick­ing them up, chang­ing and feed­ing them, and then plac­ing them in their bassinet, crib and, finally, tod­dler bed. It was for me, as it is for all par­ents, my favorite activ­ity, espe­cially when pre­ceded by bath time, sto­ries, and snug­gles. In fact, I know that there is a great deal of debate about chil­dren sleep­ing with their par­ents, but both of my kids slept with me, pri­mar­ily, because there have always been peri­ods of time, some­times lengthy, when Big­Bob has worked nights. So we would say good-bye to Daddy, have a bath and bed­time sto­ries, and fre­quently fall asleep together. Some­times I would wake up a cou­ple of hours later and make the con­scious deci­sion to just let them remain in my bed because Big­Bob would not be return­ing until morn­ing and, when we were home with­out him, I was more com­fort­able hav­ing the boys close to me lest there be any sort of emer­gency dur­ing the night.

So I was moved by WhyMommy’s joy at being able to rock her lit­tle guy, just about nine months old and begin­ning to walk, three times in one day. Her sense of accom­plish­ment was evi­dent, and made me real­ize just how lucky I was to be able to take care of my kids when they were lit­tle, per­form­ing such rou­tine, but pre­cious and mem­o­rable, tasks with­out a sec­ond thought.

At that moment, WhyMommy’s strug­gle to beat inflam­ma­tory breast can­cer became more real to and res­onated with me in a deeply pro­found way. I devel­oped a new appre­ci­a­tion of just how invid­i­ous the dis­ease it, capa­ble of rob­bing a young mother of the sim­ple plea­sure of pick­ing up her baby and rock­ing him to sleep.

WhyMommy’s words were pow­er­ful beyond mea­sure, reach­ing into my heart and caus­ing me to fin­ish read­ing her post with tears run­ning down my cheeks. I got out a cou­ple of photo albums and looked at the var­i­ous pho­tos of me hold­ing one or both of my kids. And when they next came out of their rooms to for­age for snacks, con­fer about the video game they were play­ing on line or ask me for money to trans­fer char­ac­ters, I hugged them. These days, of course, I have to reach up for those hugs because they both tower over me and I am always stunned when I feel whiskers on their cheeks instead of the soft baby skin that I still seem to expect, even though it has been gone for quite a few years.

And I was very glad about my deci­sion to par­tic­i­pate in the Pink for Octo­ber event. Such con­certed cam­paigns are pow­er­ful and effec­tive. If just one per­son reads one post dur­ing Octo­ber that results in an early diag­no­sis and cure for him/her, it will be worth the efforts of all the blog­gers participating.

So … is your site pink for Octo­ber yet?

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