Simple and affordable, these cell phone charms show your support. Put one on each of your phones, or give one to a friend! You can attach it to a zipper, or loop one around a purse handle.

Lamp work glass flat round beads have a pink ribbon design in 12mm clear or 10mm white. Austrian crystal accents.

Meredithbead shop has several styles of pink ribbon earrings, bracelets, necklaces, key chains, cell phone charms and stick pins.

* * * * *

May 19, 1998, two days before my 48th birthday, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. In the seconds it took for my doctor to say the word "cancer," my entire universe crashed.

I went through 11 months of multiple surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation. Life was hell, and hell was life.

Eighteen years later, I'm battling it again, and doing as well as can be expected. Every day I'm grateful to be alive.

In 1953, my mother's sister died at the age of 36 from breast cancer. Back in those days, people whispered the word "cancer" if they said it at all. "Breast cancer" was just not mentioned, period.

Now we shout it, we march for it, we pledge our money to cure it. We make noise and demand more research. We will not be silenced by an "embarrassing" disease.

I wear my pink ribbon jewelry proudly -- in support of 1 in 8 women who will be diagnosed with breast cancer; to raise awareness; and to say "I will survive."

May you survive and thrive as well.

P.S. --- if you're a woman, please get regular mammograms and do your monthly self-exam. I discovered my lump one month after a "healthy" mammogram. It can happen to anyone.