This 12 months, as I sat at my kitchen desk getting ready my Christmas playing cards (a seasonal ritual I’ve cherished for many years) I spotted I had run out of postage stamps. Usually, that by no means occurs. I’m old style, and I nonetheless get pleasure from writing letters, sending playing cards, and stunning mates with a handwritten observe. Conserving a stash of stamps available is simply a part of who I’m. However someway, over the previous few months, I had used each final one.
So off to the submit workplace I went, blissfully unaware that one thing as small as a postage stamp would stir a storm of recollections, gratitude, and dedication in my coronary heart.
After I stepped as much as the counter, the postal clerk assumed, fairly naturally, that I used to be on the lookout for vacation stamps. With Christmas approaching, he pointed me towards a small show of festive choices: Madonna and Little one, Santa Claus, fairly wreaths, snowflakes, and all of the beloved symbols of the season. Usually, I might need chosen a type of. However not this 12 months. None of them spoke to me. I wished one thing particular—one thing significant.
Seeing my hesitation, the clerk shrugged and stated, “Effectively, the one different ones I’ve left are the Flag Eternally stamps… and these breast most cancers consciousness ones.”
Breast most cancers? That caught my consideration instantly.
“Let me see these,” I stated.
He positioned the sheet of stamps on the counter, and instantly I felt a jolt—the type that hits your coronary heart earlier than your thoughts totally understands why. The stamp featured the silhouette of a lady standing along with her proper arm raised behind her head, the posture really useful for a breast self-examination. Throughout the highest, in daring letters, have been the phrases Breast Most cancers. Circling her breast have been two easy however highly effective phrases: Fund the Battle and Discover a Treatment.
I leaned nearer, drawn in by the art work and by the recollections it quietly woke up. Earlier than I might even ask, the clerk added, “The artwork director for these stamps, her title is Ethel Kessler, she’s a breast most cancers survivor too.”
That sealed it for me.
“I’ll take fifty,” I stated, with out hesitation.
After I bought house, I unfold out my stack of Christmas playing cards and my sheet of postage stamps. Every time I peeled one off and pressed it onto an envelope, I felt one thing stir inside me. These stamps weren’t simply postage; they have been reminders. Tiny, sticky-backed echoes of my very own struggle with breast most cancers, and the fights so many others are in the midst of at the moment.
I don’t know the way a lot of the price of the stamp truly goes towards breast most cancers analysis. A part of me hopes—maybe unrealistically—that it’s a hundred percent. That each penny from each buy helps carry us one step nearer to a treatment. The sensible facet of me is aware of there are administrative prices, salaries, overhead, and promoting. However the survivor in me can’t assist however want that each greenback would land in a lab, instantly fueling the work of scientists looking for solutions that generations of ladies, and males, desperately want.
Nonetheless, even with these questions, there was one thing profoundly significant about putting every stamp on every card. As I sealed the envelopes, I questioned whether or not my family and friends would discover the picture. Would they pause to absorb the message printed across the silhouette? Would they really feel the burden hidden behind these white block letters on that lovely blue background?
Fund the Battle.
Discover a Treatment.
The phrases are easy. The necessity behind them shouldn’t be.
Virtually everybody I do know has been touched by most cancers not directly. A mom, a sister, a daughter, a pal, a coworker. It appears unimaginable to search out somebody whose life hasn’t been brushed, if not devastated, by the illness. Survivors like me usually marvel if we’ll ever see the day when breast most cancers is not a risk hanging over the heads of future generations.
Analysis has come far. Therapies have improved. Survival charges have risen. However we aren’t there but. To treatment one thing, we should first perceive it, and regardless of a long time of progress, breast most cancers stays a thriller in some ways. Why does one lady develop it whereas one other doesn’t? Why do some cancers unfold whereas others keep dormant? Why do some reply superbly to therapy whereas others defy each effort?
These questions preserve scientists, medical doctors, and sufferers awake at evening. And analysis, actual analysis, the type that adjustments futures, takes funding.
That’s why this little stamp means a lot.
Not simply because it helps analysis, however as a result of it speaks. It reminds. It nudges. It reaches individuals in quiet, surprising methods. A Christmas card could also be opened for less than a second, however a message like this? It lingers. And possibly, simply possibly, will probably be the mild push somebody must do a self-exam or schedule a mammogram. Perhaps it can encourage somebody to provide or to advocate. Or possibly it can merely remind somebody that survivors are in every single place, carrying tales of braveness and scars that talk of battles fought and gained.
Certainly one of my hopes in selecting these stamps is that my family and friends will truly discover them. That their eyes will catch the silhouette of the girl elevating her arm. That they’ll learn the message circling her breast. That they’ll pause lengthy sufficient to let the picture settle into their reminiscence.
As a result of early detection saves lives.
And generally it’s the smallest issues, the issues we practically overlook, that make the largest distinction. A girl sees that stamp, thinks about self-exams, and later that night checks herself. Perhaps she finds one thing early. Perhaps that early detection offers her a preventing probability.
If one thing as tiny as a postage stamp can plant that seed, then it carries extra energy than we give it credit score for.
Throughout my very own struggle with most cancers, I discovered that consciousness isn’t a one-time factor. It isn’t a month on a calendar or a fundraiser that comes and goes. It’s a steady weaving of reminders, visible, emotional, and non secular, that retains us conscious of the significance of proactive care, analysis, and compassion.
This 12 months, that reminder got here within the type of a stamp.
Every one I positioned on a card felt like a prayer, quiet and unstated, however deeply felt. A prayer for the newly recognized. A prayer for these at present preventing. A prayer for those who didn’t survive. And a prayer of gratitude for the life I nonetheless get to dwell.
I might have picked fairly Christmas stamps. I might have gone with snowflakes or angels. However I wished one thing extra. One thing with objective. One thing that matched the gratitude I really feel for every day I get to get up, alive and complete.
If even one one who receives my card notices the stamp and provides themselves a second of consciousness, only one second, then the tiny sq. of paper may have executed extra good than I might ever measure.
It’s straightforward to miss small issues. A sort phrase. A gentle reminder. A easy gesture. A tiny stamp.
However generally, these small issues ripple outward in methods we by no means count on.
This 12 months, a postage stamp jogged my memory that I’m nonetheless right here. That numerous others are nonetheless preventing. That consciousness remains to be wanted. That analysis nonetheless issues. And that hope, irrespective of how small, nonetheless travels far.
As you mail your individual playing cards this season, look carefully on the stamp within the nook. It might appear insignificant, however you by no means know who is perhaps inspired, reminded, and even saved by that little sq. of paper.
Small issues matter. And generally, they matter greater than the rest.
This piece displays the creator’s private expertise and perspective. For medical recommendation, please seek the advice of your well being care supplier.
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