Bloggers Beating Cancer

 

There are so many clichés surrounding grief: it will get easier; time is a great healer, and, what doesn’t break you makes you stronger. I have come to the realisation that these words, despite sounding empty and insincere are not meant to be, people just don’t know what to say. What do you say to the husband who lost his young wife to cancer? What do you say to her young children? In truth, there are no words. Sometimes there is nothing that we can say. Sometimes our words can’t help, our words can’t heal, our words are inadequate.

 

I have spent a lot of time feeling guilty. Guilty that I didn’t send Sarah more cards when she was ill, guilty that I didn’t get over to see her last year. I have brooded over it in the early hours of the morning. I have struggled to untangle the complex emotions of grief, anger, guilt and then loss. However, I have to come to accept that this is totally normal. We will always question what we could have done differently. There is a saying that hindsight is a wonderful thing, I don’t agree, in this case it torments me.

 

Sarah was an amazing woman and I fear that whatever I do, it won’t be good enough. It won’t reflect just how brilliant she was. However, I am going to try to do her memory justice, I want to do good things in her memory. I need to take action. Even in death Sarah is still inspiring me. I don’t think she will ever stop inspiring me and I like that, I want her memory to live on.

 

As I struggled to process how someone who was so loving, beautiful and brave lost her battle to cancer I did what I always do, I turned to writing. I poured my feelings of hurt and loss into this post. In writing this I was amazed and saddened to discover just how many people had been affected by cancer, how many people had lost someone close to cancer. It was then that I fully appreciated what an unsparing disease cancer is. It can affect anyone, young or old, male or female, rich or poor. There is no rhyme or reason to it. It doesn’t make sense. It’s just unbearably cruel. After writing the post I got chatting to one of my blogging friends, Sarah from Mumzilla. She too has been affected by cancer. Between us we decided that we wanted to do something positive.

 

How you can help.

 

Join us in #BloggersBeatingCancer

 

As Sarah from Mumzilla said:

 

“We bloggers, as a collective, we could really shout. How many people could we each get to donate say £5 to charity? To Bart’s Charity and to MacMillan, for both cure and care? So we have set a date for bloggers, and the people who read our ramblings, to have a virtual coffee morning. To spend 10, 15, 30 minutes, whatever we can spare, to sit and have a drink, and to talk to our friends, either in person or online. To ask people to donate to these amazing causes, that could change lives, that could save lives.

 

Will you join us? Write a post, use the #BloggersBeatingCancer badge or the picture below if you want to, and just let people know what we are hoping to do, when and why. Every penny we raise goes towards two brilliant charities. Cure and care.

 

#BloggersBeatingCancer – join us on Friday 30th September at 10.30am, for coffee and a social media thunderclap. Use the hashtag, get your friends involved, and get fundraising if you can.”

 

Like Sarah says, will you join us? You don’t have to be a blogger to take part, anyone can take part. Perhaps you just want to donate some money in someone’s memory. Perhaps you would like to use this opportunity to have a coffee morning with your friend that now lives over the other side of the world. Use this #BloggersBeatingCancer morning to Skype the friend you miss, use it to chat on twitter with your friend who now lives abroad, use it to message your old school friends. The internet is a powerful tool, with it we can reach across the world and chat to our friends as if they are sat in the room with us. We need to celebrate friendship, we need to tell our friends how much they mean to us.

 

Come together, do it for #BloggersBeatingCancer

 

You can donate here