Janet lives in upstate New York with her husband, Jerry.  Together, they created The Valley Table, a wonderful monthly food magazine for the Hudson Valley. 

On June 26 & 27,  I walked 39 miles from Keystone to Breckenridge Colorado as part of the Rocky Mountain Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. I walked alongside my 27-year-old niece, Claire.  On our backs, we wore a small walker’s flag declaring, “I’m walking for….”

My flag read: “my sister, Nancy (a three-year survivor), Jane N, Ruth N” (my husband’s mother and stepmother, both of whom lost their lives to breast cancer) “and Grandma P” (my mother’s mother, who lost her breast to cancer). My niece walked for her Aunt Nancy and her friend’s mother Jeanne Fame.  We walked with 1100 others—mostly women and a number of men–each donning a flag celebrating loved ones who had survived the beast or remembering those who hadn’t. The slogan for the walk was “In it to End it.”   I confess, when I first committed to do the walk with my niece in February, I was getting in it to keep in shape, to force activity during New York’s long, cold winter. My niece had just had a break-up with her boyfriend, and she was getting in it to get over it. It took months of training—incrementally adding miles to weekly walks, meeting up (Claire from Manhattan, me from the Hudson Valley) to walk together, gearing up (running shoes, really good socks, shorts, tanks—we were walking advertisements for the Under Armour brand),  shouting out to friends, family, workmates and anyone else  for fundraising (the entry was a commitment to raise $1,800 for the Avon Foundation), fretting over whether I was really in shape to complete the walk, whether the altitude would affect me, whether I could keep up with my fit and athletic niece. And then there we were at the beautiful Keystone Resort along the Snake River, with snow-capped mountains surrounding us–all assembled at 7 a.m. in the brisk mountain air. Ready.  

 I came to the walk prepared. But there was nothing that could quite prepare me for the raw emotion of the gathering of people standing for a common cause. At the opening ceremony, we learned we had collectively raised $2.6 million that would be distributed to local organizations; we heard from fellow walkers—a young woman “walking for her mom,” a husband “walking for his wife,” a survivor walking “because she could.”  And then we were off, walking. I noticed the woman in front of me: “I’m walking for my mother, 1957-2003,” the same birth year as my sister, just two years older than myself. The tears flowed forth. Thank goodness I had 39 miles ahead and scenery to distract.   (more…)