Call to action-Send a Letter to Washington Jan. 23rd

Best of luck!!!!

Painterly,  Wow!  You really want us to go for the jugular with mentioning Michelle too if we copy Merilee's letter!  Frankly, I think mentioning his "girls" will get the point across.  I just finished "my" version of Carol's letter (thank you, Carol).  I have not had her same experiences so I just added a line of my own and took it from there.  Both letters are great, imo so we have no excuse not to get ours together and ready for mailing on the 23rd!  I used Carol's because she is addressing both Obama and Boehner and that is what I, also, intended on doing. 

painterly:  Do what I did then.  Take what you want out of Merilee's sample and make it what you want to say.  It's easier and faster than coming up with another letter.  I have Carole's all ready to mail and since I do not have a pink envelope I got a pink marker and drew all over the envelope!  Soooo maybe they will think my bout with bc made me a bit nuts!  They wouldn't be too wrong!

They are not going to read "all" of the letters for sure!  But they will read a couple and get the point of what we want from them and that is what it is all about , imo.  

Painterly:  Carole's letter is on Merilee's blog.  It is a bit long but since we know they are not going to read them all, just come up with even one paragraph imploring them to help us.

As for the ladies who are bc survivors, it is great they want you to send in letters for them but I think you should have their names and address and also those for the other letters they want you to send.  What I would do is come up with one paragraph for them and copy and paste it in each letter and just make sure it looks legit.  We don't want them to think we are faking these letters!  If you can't get the ten names from them, I would just send in a letter letting Obama know they have ten friends who are no longer around to write but "her" letter comes on their behalf.  There are really millions of women who want their voice on this issue heard but unfortunately we can't send in fake letters for them.  I think each letter should have a legit name on it like Petitions are supposed to have.   Now if Merilee feels differently about this, she can give you her opinion.  That is just my opinion about how I like to do things.

Welcome to America , Painterly!  You are fitting in quite well with your new homeland!  Thanks for recruiting your two ladies!

I think that if the letters are not obvious copies of one or two versions, the huge letter-reading team will indeed read every letter.  I wrote a letter to President Obama during his first year in office, and ten days later I received a personal, hand-written reply.  I had questioned something in a speech he made about tax policy.  It dropped my jaw, and I looked into the letter-reading process and learned that someone really does read everything.  Maybe an intern or another less experienced person, but they look, categorize, and tally, and they put ten letters a day aside for the president to read and respond to.  So personalize your letter--make it different enough that it doesn't seem like a form letter, to maximize the chances that it gets read and its topic noted.

Carol

Mentioning her daughters or that Mrs. Obama herself is going for the jugular?

PLEASE!!!!

I think gettting a diagnosis of effing stage iv breast cancer is going for the jugular.

Michele Obama is a Harvard educated woman.  She already knows she and/or her daughters, could one day have to deal with breast cancer.  The idea of trying to "soften" anything about breast cancer is offensive to me.  

I am sick of women having to be effing "nice" about this disease.

I found Merilee's letter to be well written. I will be getting my letter in the mail on January 23rd.

I have one pink envelope and the other white one I am drawing pink ribbons all over it with a marker.

Medigal, sorry that your comment about 'going for the jugular' did not come across as just kidding to me.  Yes, it's true that the type written word can be interpretted differently by another person reading it. 

And then painterly typed this: 

...I do not like targetting children at all and that is why mentioning the mother softens the comment.

To me, that sounds like someone trying to be too nice about a very hideously, ugly disease.  Imo, no one is 'targetting' children. Mentioning them in a letter about breast cancer is a way of relating from one mother to another:  "We do not want our daughters to go through what we are going through.  Please help us!"

Me, I don't have a daughter.  But  I will be blunt here.  On the stage iv forums in just the past month, there have been far too many posts of women from this board who have died from breast cancer who left behind children, husbands, other loved ones.  No, if I were not stage iv I would never ever read those posts.  But they are tragically there. I know how difficult my diagnosis has been for my son, husband, other family members. Being aware of all that, I cannot soften anything about breast cancer. 

My family tree is littered with BC, pre-menopausal and four generations now. Yet we're BRCA negative, so go figure.  I do however  think often about the immense improvements in diagnosis and treatment results.  I say 'results' because the treatment process is of course still draconian. 

My great grandmother was diagnosed pretty close to the end of her disease, with no treatment available at that point; my grandmother was told the lump she found was nothing; come back in a year , honey (!!); my aunts had surgery and rads but their diagnoses were also too late to do much; my mother had surgery and rads and survived (at age 82 she is now 44 years since diagnosis!), but the permanent collateral damage was extensive--cataracts very young from rads being too dispersed, surgery for which then led to detached retinas; and lung scarring for the same reason that leaves her susceptible to pneumonia after a simple cold. 

I had the 'benefit' of getting an LCIS diagnosis, which would not even have been possible to identify 40 years ago, and which I took to be an early warning signal, so I could interrupt the family cycle and do a prophy bmx.  Have we come a long way? Yes, only we have to say 'yes, but' because obviously 'long way' has not done the job.   My 30-year old daughter is vigilent, gets mammos at her young age, and all I can say is that I want a vaccine for her and my grandaughter!

I know how very fortunate I am that I got to pre-empt this hideous disease, and my heart rips in half when I read posts from those of you who have been slammed with all its devastation on health and spirit. Let's just hope that whether through a  vaccine or surer, less devastating treatments, our daughters and granddaughters have a shot at life without the full force of this scourge.  All the more reason to weigh in with the letters we are planning here.

Carol

My letter is printed out, waiting to be sent.  Do you have an address for Mrs. Obama?

Thanks!  Just emailed a survivor friend & asked if she was interested in writting too!

I have my letter ready to send tomorrow. I hope we get a mass of letters out there. This is our chance to let our voices be heard.

Good for you Granny!  My letters went out this morning so they should be there in a day or two.  I am already working on all our family taxes so I could not do as much with this campaign as I wanted to.  Too many irons  in the fire when it comes to my life!  It will be interesting to find out if we get a response to the letters and "when".