It’s the middle of the night. My legs hurt like heck. I should have stretched more. Oh well, I’m fine–really fine.

Yesterday amidst business calls and meetings I owned my words and plans. Within the confines of one day I ascended all three local peaks I climb along with my beloved river trail at dusk. My reason for hiking Mt. Pisgah, Spencer Butte, Skinner Butte, and walking from the red bridge on Delta to my favorite walking river bridge at Valley River was to celebrate, simply: that I could!

Last year at this time I was pretty much bedridden before back surgery–for over two months. It was one of the worst seasons of my life.

Secondly, I need to do something about an issue that has had and still has huge impact on my life and the lives of so many in my life whom I love.

I could just get that bumper sticker I see often which reads, “F@!% Cancer!” or, I can do something. My mode is the latter and it only involves $5 to $25 gifts!

I’m a board member for a fantastic organization, Making it Matter, which produces high-end entertainment events to raise funds for cutting-edge cancer research.

The research being supported this season is through a research team at Seattle’s Children’s Hospital. They are not only saving children with an incredible success rate but they are sparing them (and their families) from traditional means of destroying cancers, chiefly chemo, etc. using immunology.

Many of you have been touched by cancer. Just this year our family lost my brother Ed Jeremiah to cancer. Of course I lost my husband to cancer and his first marriage family was forever changed as Gary’s son Kelly lost the fight with cancer just before he turned seven years old.

Good cancer research has cures already impacting lives. We have the power to see change and impact countless lives.

Why do I bring this up? Because to celebrate my recovery I’m asking friends–and strangers, to give a donation of $5 to $25 to Making it Matter. These gifts will go straight to the aforementioned research.

Will you celebrate with me AND fight for lives alongside me, please? You can go directly to the website and donate or message me about other ways to donate.

Making it Matter’s next event is going to be sensational! It’s in Seattle this November. You can find the details on the website.

Also please like our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter. Here is the page link: http://makingitmatter.net/

What in the world can you do to spare families from the cancer’s catastrophic impact? Together, even $5 at a time we can see brilliant cures! Please give.

Thank you!
Annette Trucke

“Hope” at Spencer Butte trail. God’s light comes down and invites us up!

I’m sharing my early day, sweaty face with you for a good reason and the thoughts woven together on the way up the mountain.

She (me) is a woman made up of thousands of interactions with others. She is not just “me.” Do you understand?

As I drove to meet a friend to hike at a location close to the area my family and I lived in for the many years, I was filled with joy and anticipation at the thought of seeing my friend, and hiking that bump of earth called, Mt. Pisgah.

I exited off the freeway and stopped at a light.

That’s when I was hit. It literally felt as if I had been suckered punched in the gut. Out of nowhere intense pain hit. Dazed by it, I quickly got my bearings and realized it was a blast of grief. Dang, I miss him! I miss the knowns of life, before cancer struck and all sorts of other tumultuous circumstances.

Quickly I recognized the feeling, allowing myself to own the emotion but not to engage in it fully. I had a friend to meet, a mountain to climb, and a God who sets my face towards the future.

The thing is, I had many years with Gary before he passed. Just short of 30 years of marriage, children, grandchild…life.

Time had flown by.

Which brings me here: The face you see in my photo, well the one I a wearing at this moment, it is his too!

In fact, if you and I know each other, or even if you just read my words or listen to me, or if I follow your words, and know you, then we may look a bit like one another.

We are a collection of our relationships with others, and I will say, my friendship with God, as well as our and meld with our DNA and that’s who we are!

Our relationships define us greatly.

Gary, is no longer with us. I gulp as I even write that. Yet he is so much who I am presently that I have no idea who I’d be otherwise. Therefore, his influence will never be removed from my life. It cannot be nor do I wish it to be.

I can say the same about my mom–such a significant person in my life: past, present, future. How can I not be like her in subtle, and less than subtle ways?

I can say this about so many who have came in and out of my life, in one way or another–family, friends, teachers, co-workers, cultural shapers, authors, etc. We are not left unaffected by any relationships. We always have some sort of faint or overt takeaway, whether we own up to it or not.

And the big thing here: we impact others–many, for life. My influence, your influence, our lives matter. Becoming intentional about what we leave with others is huge, because these encounters and relationships make us who we are and others who they are.

That person in the photo, me, had just worked a bit to summit a small mountain; she did that because of examples and the impetus of others. She is a collection of relationships, those who have invested in or intersected with her life for the good, the bad, the ugly, and all the combinations.

Don’t let the past sucker punch you with regrets and grief forcing you to keep turning back. We don’t need more pillars of salt or monuments. We need more living, breathing, life-giving people. We need you!

Keep getting back up from the punches of life, moments or blocks of them–and lean forward into your destinies.

You are more than you realize, thanks in part to some fantastic life-changing people you’ve encountered along the way.