Seeing Pink

This is not another post about Middle Girl, my newly-minted three-year-old and her pesky penchant for pink. No. It's about something a bit more serious and sad than that.

On Monday, Sister C emailed me the link to a blog post, a beautifully written and absolutely wrenching blog post by Megan Nyberg, C's cousin-by-marriage and a loyal reader/commenter here at ILI. In this post, Megan writes about learning that her mother has breast cancer earlier this month.

Breast cancer.

This disease has affected and afflicted too many people I know. Parents of friends, friends of parents, even some of my own friends. It seems that everyone I speak to has a personal connection to this type of cancer, or cancer in general. I certainly do.

And Megan's post? It is exquisitely and simply rendered, but that's not what struck me most. What struck me was the similarity between what she seems to be feeling now and what I remember feeling four years ago when Dad was first diagnosed. What struck me was the profound, if inscrutable universality of love and pain. What struck me was how much, and how deeply, I felt, and feel, for this woman, this girl, I have never met in real life.

And so. I wanted to send you guys there to Megan's post and Megan's blog because really she's a lovely writer and she's going through something novel and particularly difficult at the moment. I also wanted to remind you - and myself - that this blogging thing is important. It is. It is not all navel-gazing and indulgent whining and cutesy anecdotes. No. This world contains nuggets of truth, of life, of loss. This world might be technically invisible, a constellation of faceless beings and floating comments, but it is also very much real.

What Megan and her family are facing right now? It is very much real.

Do you have any thoughts to pass along to Megan and her family? Have you had any personal connection to breast cancer, or other kinds of cancer? Do you agree that blogging can be a very meaningful medium? Please leave a comment here, or more importantly visit Megan's blog and read her words and leave some of your own.