October Pink

October. Tenth month of the year. True beginning of fall. Changing colors. Orange. Pink?

For the majority of my life, October was all about cooler temperatures, football, raking leaves, pumpkin spice latte, costumes and candy. Many years ago, my son was playing youth football and his team was given pink socks and pink shoe laces to wear in October. We happily agreed to share in the spirit and support of a great cause. My life until that point was not personally affected by breast cancer. Then, three years ago, my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. Through the support of her family and friends, great doctors and medicine, my mom was able to continue living her normal lifestyle; which largely consisted of being the number one fan at any one of her six grandkids sporting events.   Pink was now the new orange.

This past spring my mom passed away. As part of my own personal journey of healing, I became involved with a group of friends to form a team in this year’s Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Hunt Valley, MD. Together, our team of 19 friends called “Grace Girls” raised $4,500. I want to sincerely thank CollabraSpace for their generous donation to my team, as well many others who donated their personal treasure, time and talent, including our beautiful team shirt design. But we didn’t do it just for the fundraising, we ran because we could while so many could not. While I would rather have shared the day with my mom and cheered her through the survivor tunnel, she was alongside me and the thousands of other survivors and supporters in an ocean of pink.

-Rachel Neal, Operations Support Manager at CollabraSpace