Sisters in Battle

In the last couple of days I've been introduced to two different women who are related to old friends of mine. Women who are battling this breast cancer beast--not that I've met them personally, just that I've learned their stories.

And while I've heard a lot of moving stories of people touched by cancer, tonight I'm thinking especially of these two. I'm told that once you get the diagnosis, you become part of a pink sisterhood. I'm just starting to appreciate that.

One of the ladies is on her second go-around with the disease, and it's not good. She's resigned herself to the horror of it all and is just happy for the year with her family that she didn't think she'd get.

The other just got the news and is still grappling with how to make sense of the insensible. How to accept the unacceptable. She doesn't know how to tell her children. Or her father. Or how to say goodbye to a part of her body that she really wants to keep.

I look back on my own experience of gradual acceptance, and I want to cry for that woman, for what I know she's going through. I look ahead to what the other has had to accept and pray I'll never walk in her steps.

The best I can do tonight though is to pray for them. For all of us girls in pink.