Day 66 -- Volunteering at Breathe Deep lung cancer walk

"You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow too."
---Sam Rayburn

Meaningful doesn't begin to describe the event I helped at today with other MoverMoms. Touching, powerful, inspirational - it was all of those and more. I helped out at Breathe Deep DC, a 5K walk to raise funds for lung cancer research and awareness of lung cancer. It's the #1 cancer killer and kills more people each year than do breast, ovarian, and cervical cancers combined.

Jerry Sorkin, a local dad, has Stage 4 lung cancer. He and his wife are the brains behind this event. They have a huge network of family and friends, so the turnout today was incredible. There were chants of Je-rry, Je-rry from the crowd of about 1500 who stood together in the shadows of the Washington Monument. And it seemed to be organized flawlessly, with everything from a kid's tent, to a Jumbo-tron that had photos of other Breathe Deep walks in different cities, including Baghdad and the Caribbean island of Turks and Caicos!

I hadn't seen the sunrise in a while and was exhausted when the alarm went off at 5:50 AM (I was up last night till about 1 AM). But once I was in the car with other MoverMoms I was fine. When we got downtown it was so serene and beautiful, especially at the Tidal Basin near the Jefferson Memorial. There were some volunteers who gave us minor tasks but the lucky thing was that we also got to go for a walk around the Washington Monument. Oh, and I forgot to mention that it was indeeed a beautiful sunrise over the Capital!

My prediction? This walk gets bigger and bigger each year, especially if the weather forecast is anything like today.