The response from women seeking to express their experience both private and public was to become the phenomenon,. They received 600 submissions from around the world. Komen Foundation, The Breast Cancer Fund and the American Cancer Society announced a call for entries: art and writing by women who had faced breast cancer. I hope as my 4-year-old son gets older, this is what he remembers of this terrifying time: Mom's art work. I worked on it through chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation, completing it toward the end of treatment in March 1997. So I took the cards and turned them into an enormous collage of support. They turned the contents of the box into a mosaic table for their new home. All that remained was a box of melted glass and silverware.

Then I remembered hearing a story about a family who lost their home in a fire. I kept the cards on my mantle until it felt morbid to have them there. The outpouring of support was incredible. After I was diagnosed in September 1996, I received many cards from family and friends, and also from people I didn't know who had heard about me.

Art rage 3