This may be the hardest thing I have ever done - voluntarily. Putting my daughter on the Internet!
It was hard enough writing about her. Now I also have to be practical and sell her story! And yet, - I choose to do it. Voluntarily! And with some people asking: "Why are you doing it? You don't have to. Go on a cruise and forget about it!"
Sometimes there are things we have to do. Not for ourselves, but because it just has to be done. It is a cause in itself. It is a thing screaming to Heaven to be done.
It is a cancer epidemic out of control.
When I was a child there was hardly any crime. A murder was practically unheard of. Today crimes are as common as a cold. Murders are committed all the time.
When I was a child I never knew anybody with breast cancer. It was so rare.
Today there are three women in my little fitness group who have lost a daughter to breast cancer. My closest neighbor has, too. 6 children were made motherless. Husbands were devastated. parents would have given their lives to save their daughters. It happens everywhere, all the time. To 40.000 women every year.
Can't we all do something? Just a little bit? If not much?
That is why I am putting my daughter on the Internet! I want to do something. So I have written her story and the book will be sold. And every penny that comes in next month will go to Silent Spring Institute, where the people are dedicated to identifying - and changing - links between the environment and women's health, especially breast cancer.
There is something very wrong in our society when people turn to crime and kill each other. And there is something very wrong, when men invent things that poison our environment, our food, our toys, our lives.
I can not do much. But this one thing I can do: Tell the story about Maria and how she fought to stay alive and how she died. It is a story that could be told about 40.000 women every year. And I can give the money to those who try to find out exactly what it is that has gone wrong. It is not much, but it is something.
Ragnhild Munck grew up and was educated in Denmark where she worked in the public Health Care Sector. She came to the United States in 1980 and worked as a social worker for a number of years. She has spent periods of her life in other countries and traveled extensively with her four childrenk who eventually all settled in the United States. She has articles published in Danish newspapers.