{Causes} Breast Cancer Awareness Month 2012

Last year during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, an amazing woman in our life was actually battling breast cancer herself.  I used this quote in my post last year because it reminded me so much of her.  She is always ready to tackle things head on, and rarely accepts no for an answer.

While her battle is slowly fading in the rearview mirror, it is never far from our minds.  It's a reminder of how quickly things can change, and how they often sneak up with little or no notice.  

The facts haven't changed a lot since last year.  1 in every 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime.  70 - 80% of those women will have no history of breast cancer in their family.  The good news is that the mortality rates continue to go down every year because of awareness and early action.  There are currently 2.9 million breast cancer survivors in the United States.  

There are many ways you can get involved either by donating your time or your money.  If you don't have a lot of money to give but want to help somehow, the American Cancer Society and Susan G Komen have lots of great information on how you can do so.  

If you want to donate money straight to the cause, there are so many places out there that you can donate to.  Here are just a few: BreastCancer.org, the American Cancer Society (make sure to specify you want it to go to breast cancer), and Susan G Komen.

Another way to help is by buying products that donate to the cause.  There are lots of great companies out there that are donating part of the proceeds of certain products to breast cancer research.  I will warn you though that some companies are not so great and hardly give anything, so make sure you're reading the fine print.  Here is a little round up of some fun stuff I found out there.  

Image Credits (clockwise from top left): 1, 2, 3, 4

If you're a nail polish addict like me you might want to try Nails Inc's Pinkie Pink (meant to go on just your pinkie to raise awareness) or Ciate's pink duo.  I'm a huge sucker for Tocca's perfume, so I had to include this little set.  All the scents in it are fantastic, and they donate a whopping 50% of the proceeds to BrightPink.org!  Lastly, this mud mask sounds awesome.  I really want to try it!

Image Credits: Coach

Every year Coach does a line of products, and donates 20% of the proceeds to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

Image Credits: Loft

Another company that does a line every year is Loft.  They have nine "pink pieces" in which they donate 25% of the purchase price to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.    They also do the Loft Cares Card.  90% of the price of the card ($25) goes to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and with the card you get 20% off any purchase of $100 or more.

I hope all of this has you thinking about how you can help.  It seems like today most of us know someone that has been affected by breast cancer in some way.  Hopefully as the years go on we will get to see a cure.