A long, long overdue thank you

I sent this email to my sponsors today, but I do not have email addresses for everyone, as some visitors to my blog sponsored me and the 3-Day does not share out those addresses. Please accept my humble thanks.
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I have been intending to sit down and write each of you a heartfelt letter of thanks for your donations to the Breast Cancer 3-Day, and for your support of me. I still intend to do just that, but since life has been getting in the way of my doing so, I'm at least starting with an email to you as a means of saying THANK YOU.

The Breast Cancer 3-Day was an amazing experience for me. The weather was perfect, my walking companions were amazing, and my body was cooperative in finishing every step of the sixy miles....but it is you, my sponsors, who really had the greater accomplishment. I raised a total of $6,165.00, and my team raised a total of $30,907.25. I am absolutely in awe that a team of amateur fundraisers could come up with over thirty thousand dollars...and it is all because of you. The Seattle Breast Cancer 3-Day raised a total of (are you ready for this?) $6.8 MILLION DOLLARS! That is a lot of mammograms, a lot of shower cards, and (best of all) a LOT of research. Your money really makes a difference. It makes a difference to me, personally, that you are willing to fight against the disease that threatens my life; it makes a difference because your dollars are going to be part of ending breast cancer forever.

The walk itself was nothing short of incredible. I wrote about it on my blog at http://rykri.blogspot.com/2006/08/breast-cancer-3-day-first-installment.html if you would like to look. I met survivors, co-survivors, and people who simply cared enough to walk. (One of these was a man who walked the entire 60 miles in knee-high Doc Marten boots and a utilikilt. I asked him what brought him to the event, and he said, "It's time to cure breast cancer." I asked him how he had been affected by the disease, and he said, "I'm lucky, I don't know anyone with breast cancer." WOW - I consider him a real hero!) My team made me laugh, and made me cry, but every minute was filled with pure joy.

On the walk, I often saw signs saying "Every step counts" and "Every step leads us closer to a cure," but I know that isn't true at all. Every step made me feel good, and healthy, but it is every dollar raised that leads us closer to a cure. Your sponsorship enabled me to do the walk, and your sponsorship is part of finding the cure. I daydream sometimes about how that money raised is being used; I think that maybe the $30,907.25 that my team raised is paying one researcher's salary (they're notoriously underpaid!) and that maybe it's THE researcher, the one that will have a breakthrough that will bring us to a cure.

I am grateful, from the bottom of my heart, for your sponsorship. Thank you so much for choosing to support a cause that is so near and dear to my heart. I believe that we will find a cure, or at least a less heinous treatment plan, by the time my daughter Tessa is a woman old enough to be worried about getting breast cancer. I pray that we will have more breakthroughs before I receive yet another phone call from yet another person with tears in their voice, shaking with emotion, saying,"I have it too." It gives me great comfort to know that the work I am doing, that YOU are doing, is making a difference, and that every day we are one day closer to having answers.

I am not done, though the 3-Day 2006 is over. I hope that you will consider sponsoring me next year when I do the event again - yes, again! - as I continue to fight this disease on both a personal and a public level. Next year I hope that you will sponsor me again, and that you will feel some of the "high" that I feel in knowing that you are a part of the cure. We are not sitting on the sidelines crying: we are fighting to the finish!

Thank you for being at my side, and for carrying me in your thoughts, as I walked. Bless you!