Pumpkins and pink items. Everywhere I go there they are. Pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin coffee, pop tarts, bagels, waffles, oatmeal, marshmallow, beer, potato chips and even vodka. Virtually anything you could imagine now available in pumpkin flavor or scent, most for a limited time of course. People everywhere are gorging themselves all in the name of the season.

When not bombarded with all things orange and pumpkin, my eyes are overwhelmed with all things pink. Walks and rallies, sports events at all levels and all products imaginable marketed in pink for Breast Cancer awareness month. Watching football this week is giving me a bit of a headache with the pink shoes, gloves and towels flying around. Don’t misunderstand, I think it is wonderful that everyone is raising money to hopefully one day put an end to Breast Cancer. But let’s be honest here, would the NFL be repainting lines in bright pink if it was not profitable?
All hype aside, maybe you do not have the extra money to buy that cute pink whatever. Maybe things are too tight to send anything in the envelope this time around. What you could do is something much more impactful, maybe pick up a phone and call a woman who you love and ask if they have had a mammogram recently. This week I shared my own bilateral prophylactic mastectomy story with 3 of the women I work with. Two of those women have breast cancer in their own families. I encouraged them to be proactive talk to their doctors and possibly get tested for the BRCA gene. I wasn’t even wearing anything pink.