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!!
Thanks so much for posting this - I've been meaning to write and ask you how I could get a booklet. Hopefully soon, we can finally meet in person and have that coffee! Great job that you're doing - it's so awesome to see it coming together.
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