Hey all--or should I say "Hola Todos"--all the people in Mexico, Peru, Brazil, and the rest of Central and South America who've emailed me after watching my film The Breast Cancer Diaries ("Diario de mi Cancer") on Discovery Health Latin America this week.  

Fue un tiempo muy dificil--it was a difficult time--but like the compost out in my garden made up of the garbage of my kitchen, so sprouts seeds from the cancer heap that can actually nourish.  Like the potatoes that I see pushing out of the composter in the backyard, the support of friends and family,the love of people I don't even know who saw me bald and breastless and gave me a smile of hope, and the film that tells the story of what breast cancer really does to a life--all those things were the germination of new growth coming from the heap of cancer in my life.  

Today I still fight--for if you've had cancer, you never stop. You keep eating whatever they say is the right food, and drinking herbal liquids and anti-cancer teas and you pray like hell that you've really beaten the beast. It can come back any time, so you have to keep eyes wide open or else they could one day be closed shut--for a lifetime. 

So I like all cancer survivors stay vigilant, and hopeful, and I show my film, run my non-profit Project Pink Diary and tell my story to anyone who will listen.  We all  have trauma and fear and I have to believe somewhere amid it all we will find some hope, goodness and light.  That's why I'm here, that's why I write.  That's what I hope you get from my story--inspiration for your world.

Because if in every life compost must gather, I want yours to have some potatoes pushing though the crap of your life, too.