Team Trish

The Oklahoma City Race for the Cure happened on a beautiful, sunny, windless day. There were lots of us in our Team Trish gear in Bricktown. Trish, just coming off her last chemo before her surgery, walked the entire 5K with her husband, two young sons, mother, siblings, friends and coworkers. It was moving.

She has done the deal. Kept her head down and took it like a girl, the chemo, the illness and kept working, kept being a mother. She told me cancer was just not going to become who she is, but an illness she has for a year. At the end of the walk, the survivors gathered on the ball field. She held back waiting for the line to clear. Her mother offered to walk over with her. She reached the end of the long line. It was a few seconds later that the ladies turned around to see her sweet peach fuzz and say "I was there a year ago," "five years ago," "ten," and "you can walk with us." Trish was enveloped by a sea of pink. She was one of them. It was too much for her mother. For all of us. So comforting. Such hope.

She has had her big surgery and of course texted pictures of herself in that hospital bed beaming that it was over.

I want to thank the wonderful friends who supported Trish with their words of comfort, cheering her on. I want to thank those who donated to my fundraising effort for the Cure which got me to $325! Thank you Marla, Alisa, Maija, Penny, Linda, Stefanie, Charlene and Julie. A thousand thank yous.

I didn't really hear from Jemellia all that weekend until she asked to bring this by. She made this quilt for Trish. I really don't have words for this. I delivered it to Trish in her hospital room. We didn't have words either. Trish read the center block, whispering "fight like a girl." We shed tears and ran our hands across this labor of a love, this symbol for what women can do...

What we do.

Thank you Jemellia. I am so moved by what we as women do for one another.