BRICKS at Gilda's

On Tuesday, April 27th Ive been invited to speak to and hang out with the young adult cancer support group at Gilda's Club. A couple members of the group came out for the BRICKS booklet release party, and Im looking forward to reconnecting with them! Gilda's Club offers free support services to people living with cancer and their loved ones, and holds a young adult group meeting two Tuesdays a month from 6:30-8pm. All are welcome, but you must attend a new member orientation before coming to the group meeting. See the contact info listed below for more information on how to get involved!

Gilda's Club Western Pa
www.gildasclubwesternpa.org
2816 Smallman Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15222-4722
(412) 338-1919

Thank you!

Just wanted to send out a quick thank you to Kairol Rosenthal and all the new, awesome people I met last night at our coffee meet up. It was wonderful to see Kairol again, and to meet new young adult cancer patients in Pittsburgh. I really hope to see all of you again soon, and feel like we should try to have more regular coffee shop meet ups so more people can come out and talk. Any thoughts? Im happy to organize and facilitate if there is interest- let me know!

Hey Pgh YA's-

Come join me and the amazing Kairol Rosenthal, author of Everything Changes: An Insiders Guide to Cancer in Your 20s & 30s for coffee and chit chat.

Tuesday, April 20
7pm
Coffee Tree Roasters – Shadyside
5524 Walnut Street

Pick up a copy of the booklet and ask us questions. We're both relatively friendly, I promise!!

Back to work!

After a nice weekend getaway, Im back and back to work. Come see us saturday at the I Made It! Market, where we will be tabling and giving out booklets. You can buy some amazing handmade goods and say hi to us as well.

Date: Saturday, April 10, 2010
Time: 2:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: Former Joseph Beth Bookseller space at the SouthSide Works
Street: 2705 East Carson Street
City/Town: Pittsburgh, PA

Learn more about the vendors by visiting the I Made It! Market website.

Booklet release party photos!

Please check out these AMAZING photos of the release party, taken my my friend Mark Rawlings. GREAT stuff. More pics soon, but enjoy these for now!

A word about our booklets....

So you may notice the new profile photo- thats me with the BRICKS for Young Adults Cancer Awareness & Resource Guide, released March 20th. So far about 400 copies have made their way out into the world, not a bad start, right?

In October of last year I was granted a Seed Award from the Sprout Fund. I put out the call to young adults in my community, looking for stories about their experience with cancer. I collected resource information as well, and set to work on this project. In the end, we had a 68 page book, with submissions from 15 contributors. We had stories from cancer patients, cancer survivors, cancer widows & widowers, the mother of a young adult cancer patient, the friend of a cancer patient. The diversity of the stories was pretty incredible. I included a suite of 8 prints by my departed husband, that addressed an element of his relationship to illness, and along the way we lost one of our booklet contributors to her disease. It was an emotional and exhausting journey for me.

Even in the final round of edits I was moved by the things people said in their submissions, and often felt tears brimming in my eyes. Always something different, from a different story, that I had probably read a hundred times before. Still, I didnt realize how heavy these booklets were, I thought maybe I was just being emotional because I was still working through my grief.

The response from people who have read the booklets in the last week has confirmed that they are indeed serious business. They are reaching a broader audience than I had anticipated, and Im finding out very quickly that more people than I could have imagined have been touched in some way by young adult cancer. I couldnt be happier that I am hearing from those of you who fall into this category- I am glad that people are talking about it.

Im so proud of the booklets and grateful to those who helped make it possible. Im honored by the people who were brave enough to share their stories with me. Im eager to get the booklets into the hands of those who want them. If you are interested in getting ahold of a copy, please send me an email at brickspgh at gmail dot com to make arrangements. The booklets are absolutely FREE, though Im finding it costs about $1.70-$2 to mail one. Check back here to keep track of where we'll be over the next couple months, we'll have the booklets on hand at all of our upcoming events (and boy are there some good ones in the works!).

More updates soon, including photos from our past events. Thanks all!

PS- Please feel free to let us know what you think of the booklet, either here in the comments or via email!!

Saturday!! Ride & Talk with Ezra Caldwell

Repost from the Bike Pgh blog, because Erok did such a damn fine job writing this up!

Join BRICKS for Young Adults for a ride & talk with Ezra Caldwell, cancer survivor and owner of Fast Boy Cycles on Saturday, March 27. Fast Boy, a custom frame builder, gained some fame in the bicycle world over past few years with their production of wooden fenders and wooden handlebars, featured in Urban Velo #3.

Several years ago, Ezra was diagnosed with cancer, and his doctors told him he couldn’t ride anymore because of the pressure of sitting on a bike seat. So he built a bike with no seat. In a Bikerumor.com post, he said:

Yeah.. the assless is a pretty fun bike. I built it for myself over the summer after being diagnosed with ass cancer. They told me I couldn’t ride a bike. I asked if it would be ok if the bike had no seat. The doc said, ’so.. what? you’re just going to stand the whole time?’ ’yeah.. that’s right.’ He just shrugged at me and said, ‘yeah.. that’d be fine.’ So I built an assless bike.

You can read Ezra’s writings in his awesome and inspiring blog, Teaching Cancer to Cry.

BRICKS for Young Adults is a Pittsburgh based organization that aims to connect Young Adult cancer patients to people and resources that may be useful to them as they undergo treatment and beyond. They also hope to raise awareness about Young Adult cancers, and impact survival rates through education and activism.

This event is set to coincide with the release of their brand new Cancer Awareness & Resource Guide, the culmination of 6 months of hard work. In addition to providing practical advice, the booklet also features writings by young adults who were affected by cancer, including a contribution by Ezra.

The ride will start at 1pm at REI in the South Side, and will end (around 3pm) at the Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community on the South Side. Here Ezra will talk about bikes, his cancer experience, and The Assless, the special bike he built while dealing with cancer.


Event Details:

Saturday, March 27, 2010

1pm: Bike Ride – The ride will be social and low key, good for beginners, with an effort to use the trail system. Meet at REI in the Southside Works

3-5pm: Talk featuring Ezra- Ezra will talk about bikes, his cancer experience, and The Assless, the special bike he built while dealing with cancer. Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community, 2700 Jane Street, South Side

This event is FREE, but donations are always welcome. Attendees will also get a copy of the BRICKS for Young Adults Cancer Awareness & Resource guide, that includes a submission from Ezra.