Put Your Yellow Pants On…

I get an email out of the blue. A friend tells a new friend she has to meet me. It’s the new friend who makes the reach out. So and so says we need to meet. She notes what we have in common: nonprofit work, cancer and at the bottom she throws out, “I’m from Chicago, too.”

I figure there’s a good chance she’s a Cubs fan and not a Sox traitor, so decide to meet. When she texts to confirm, she notes I’ll recognize her ‘cuz she’ll be wearing yellow pants, I’m more intrigued. She plans ahead, which is one of the many ways to my heart and she is obviously fashion confident. And fun. Yellow, after all, is the hue most easily visible to the human eye. More importantly, it’s the color of happiness, optimism, sunshine and spring. Basically, the chick’s probably a badass.

Her sunny disposition matches her pants and she is, indeed, a badass. Sounds like she accomplishes more in a day that I do in a week; but most people do.

We chatter of shared stories, cancer, her work, my work. BTW–she’s s writer. A real one; with books published the old fashioned way and a tv deal. But it’s her current passion that brings us to one of Sam Fox’s best oferings known for amazeballs breakfast sandwiches and the cutest morning vibe. Perched on a settee in the coffee bar, my day’s already made.

Turns out, girlfriend turned cancer into a second act–literally. She came out the other side of her cancer slice of life a different girl and figured the rest of us must have as well. Across the country, she gathers a trail of girls with stories to tell, not just of cancer but of the changes left in its wake: shattered careers, financial difficulties, misshapen and permanently changed bodies, mental differences–the scars left after we’re pronounced, “all better.”

She starts a nonprofit celebrating the afterlife of treatment and the chicks brave enough to share it. She blends them together in recognizing that, “The single component missing in most support groups is how to change the survivorship questions from ‘Why me?’ to ‘What’s next?’ Kinda turns the whole thing on its head. Lucky for us it does.

So they put together performances, A 2ndAct: Survivorship Takes The Stage. Eight women tell their stories with humor, irreverence and passion. Kinda like The Vagina Monologues with cancer. The goal is to celebrate the courage to be on stage, to motivate the audience to rate their own 2nd Acts regardless of their challenges (don’t have to be a cancer girl-it’s really not a club you want to belong to) and to raise funds for micro grants for women survivors starting their own 2nd Acts. How’s that for a ball of goodness all wrapped in a bow?

Oh, and, the nonprofit hosts Girls Night Out with wine, cocktails and chocolate. Did these chicks fall from heaven or what?

Visit them here: a2ndact.org