My Twitter feed this morning is full of links to a very inspiring story of how a woman faced with breast cancer is using her blogger gifts to raise awareness, and how her friends are using theirs to raise funds.

Blogger Susan Reynolds learned earlier this month that she has breast cancer. She is in surgery today. She blogs about the suddenness of her diagnosis, her understandable fear of what could happen to her, and about how she dealt with the physical pain of the biopsy that was required to determine whether the mass she found in her breast was malignant. Reynolds, who is a well-known presence on Twitter and in Second Life, tells the story of how frozen peas eased her pain.

Organized by Reynolds’ friends on Twitter, The Frozen Peas Fund raises money for Making Strides, the breast cancer campaign of the American Cancer Society. The group has declared the first Frozen Peas Friday on Twitter, as a catalyst for the fund-raising, and a weekly encouragement to contribute “the cost of two bags of frozen peas” to cancer research.

those of us who use Twitter daily have already seen how the service can be a source of information, comfort, and inspiration, because of the way in which it connects people in almost-real-time. I hadn’t heard about Susan’s struggle, or about Frozen Peas Friday until I checked in with Twitter this morning. But judging from the variety of people who are talking about it, and taking action, and sharing links, I think we’re seeing something really powerful that has its roots in a very organic means of communicating.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 21st, 2007 at 9:04 am and is filed under Blog Entry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.