Fear: Why I Ride Pelotonia

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I ride because I'm scared.

Really scared.

I'm fearful, anxious. Not panicky or terrified. I'm scared.

Cancer is scary.

Most of us feel it. Few of us admit it—even to ourselves. Fewer still will share it.

Admitting it makes us aware—and vulnerable.

Sharing it make it real—and dangerous.

Cancer: it's that-which-shall-not-be-named. It's Voldemort.

Yet, it's always there.

And it's scary.

My mother has a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. After some unpleasant treatments, they told her that it was not a question of whether it would re-emerge, but when.

She lives with that knowledge every day.

And it scares me. I know trepidation.

And while I know that others bear the same burden, it fails to comfort me.

My mother is going to die, and cancer is (likely) going to take her from me.

It's why I ride.

My Little Angels are 11 and 7 this year. They blossom. And they have a solid family history of cancer.

That's scary.

The odds are that they will get some form of cancer. I live with that knowledge every day.

I usually don't think about it. Unless I do. And when I do, I'm scared.

I know about the children who fight cancer. The images are burned into my mind's eye. The tubes and wires and baldness and pallor and scrawniness and the smallness—god, they're small! They're young! It shouldn't happen to them!

Yet it does.

And I know about young adults who fight cancer—how their lives are completely re-defined by the experience. How the best years of their lives are smothered. It shouldn't happen to them!

Yet it does.

And we feel powerless.

It's why I ride.

Something happened to me a few years ago. I intuited something long before I understood it. I'm not powerless. I'm not a bystander. I'm not passive.

When I ride against cancer I'm empowered, involved, and active.

I ride because I'm scared; because I choose to do something with that fear.

I hope you will help me to raise money for life-saving cancer research.

We need your support to end cancer. Please consider donating.