Sue Scheff: Zig-zagging into LIVESTRONG to Help Others

With the recent news of the controversy of breast cancer early detection, there isn't a better time for you to learn more about how breast cancer effects so many lives.

Tom Wilson II, cartoonist of Ziggy, lost his wife, Susan, on November 18th, 2000 to her battle with breast cancer. Last spring he bravely released his memoir of this painful and spiritual journey through Zig-Zagging: Loving Madly, Loving Badly...How Ziggy Saved My Life (Health Communications, Inc 2009).

Tom Wilson recently announced he is donating 100% of his personal royalties of his book from November 18th (Susan's death) until January 19th (Susan's birthday) to LIVESTRONG.

From Tom Wilson:

Dear LIVESTRONG Friends,

My wife, Susan Shephard Wilson, died in my arms on November 18, 2000. She was forty-four years old. From the moment she was diagnosed with Stage 3b invasive breast cancer, Susan, who had always been my strength, began to teach me what it truly means to LIVESTRONG.

"From the first day we discovered this arch villain called cancer had struck at the very heart of our life together, I witnessed the one constant in my life, my beautiful, sweet, gentle "Tweety Bird" become a hawk so fierce that General Patton himself would have saluted her. Susan went into battle with more strength and courage than any fictional superhero could possibly muster…"Zig-Zagging: Loving Madly, Losing Badly…How Ziggy Saved My Life, came from the journaling I did in an effort to make sense for myself of the seven years my family battled the consuming, insidious disease that is cancer.

The decision to publish the raw, emotional, and painful story of our personal war against cancer and my personal struggle against the crippling grief, was in the hope that telling it might bring comfort to someone else struggling along a similar path of cancer diagnosis.When I recently had the opportunity to meet with the staff at the LIVESTRONG Headquarters in Austin, Texas, I saw an extraordinary chance to allow this terrible tragedy in my family's life to do something truly positive for fellow survivors and co-survivors.

ZIGGY's MILLION DOLLAR LIVESTRONG CHALLENGE is OUR opportunity to come together to make a real difference! Through this campaign starting November 18, the anniversary of Susan's death, to January 19, her birthday, I am donating 100% of my personal royalties to LIVESTRONG, and coupled with the HCI affiliate program, that averages out to roughly $4.50 from every purchase of Zig-Zagging to the LIVESTRONG organization when ordered from this link.

My HOPE is that together we will raise a MILLION dollars (or more!)for LIVESTRONG over the next two months!

With love,

Tom Wilson…and Ziggy

I have read this wonderful book. If you haven't, isn't now the time to do so? It is not only a gift to yourself, it is a way to give to a wonderful charity. Holidays are almost here, I am confident there is someone on your gift list that will benefit with a gift from Ziggy. After all, who doesn't love Ziggy?

Read an excerpt from Zig-Zagging - click here.

Order Zig-Zagging today!

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Also on Examiner.com

Sue Scheff: October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It is a perfect time to speak with your daughters about this serious subject, especially if it has touched someone in your family. Part of dealing with a serious illness is better understanding it. Open up your lines of communication.

Here is an inspiring and touching book written by a Cartoonist everyone recognizes, Tom Wilson aka Ziggy!

Ziggy Cartoonist Shares Story of Loss of Wife to Breast Cancer

New Book Zigzagging: How Ziggy Saved My Life by Tom Wilson

Cleveland, OH – (October 1, 2009) – How does a man find new, original and humorous optimistic sentiments each day while watching his wife lose her battle with breast cancer? Ziggy cartoonist Tom Wilson reveals his story of love, loss and overcoming depression with the help of a character that millions of people smile at every day.

In Zig-zagging: Loving Madly, Losing Badly – How Ziggy Saved My Life (HCI Books – $17.95), Wilson takes readers along with Ziggy, through tremendous family tragedies, deep depression, and learning to live happily, meanwhile always being an inspiration to millions of everyday readers.

Much of Wilson’s memoir is centered on the journey he took with his young wife after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

”Particularly in October, when there is so much focus on breast cancer awareness, I want to share with all of the other families out there, a personal experience about how breast cancer affected me and my life,” Wilson explains. “I don’t pretend to know what it is like to have cancer, but I consider myself a survivor because I watched it tear my life apart. My perspective is for all of the other spouses, sons and daughters, who deal with this disease when it moves into their lives.”

Like Ziggy, Tom Wilson has turned tragedy into a learning experience and readers can be inspired by the humorous healing touches throughout the book. Through the occasional appearance of Ziggy cartoons across the pages, the book deftly treats its readers to “comic relief” along Wilson’s occasional sad road.

Ziggy first appeared in newspapers in June 1971. Tom Wilson has drawn and written Ziggy since 1987, after the retirement of his father, the senior Tom Wilson, who first created Ziggy as a greeting card character. Now distributed through Universal Press Syndicate, a division of Andrews McMeel Universal, Ziggy is published in more than 600 newspapers, reaching 75 million readers daily, and maintains an online presence through http://www.ziggyzone.com/ and http://www.uclick.com/.

Order on Amazon today. Read exerpts of Zig-Zagging in my Examiner article. Tom Wilson will also be presenting at the Miami Book Fair International in November.

Sue Scheff: Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Our lives aren’t composed like a headstone with a straight line that marks the date of the first breath we take to the last; the journey we’re on is really a zigzagging series of unexpected detours. Every detour is a destination unto itself, and regardless of our plans, it’s what we don’t see coming that often affects us most…

This excerpt from Zig-Zagging: Loving Madly, Losing Badly…How Ziggy Saved My Life provides a small taste of the emotional feast famed cartoonist Tom Wilson delivers in his deeply personal memoir. Much of his story is centered on the journey he took with his young wife after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. With stunning honesty he details what it’s like on the other side of the hospital bed after a radical double mastectomy:

"The hype is there before you see it, to prepare you for a horrible disfigurement…It’s not that way. You don’t see the woman you love as any less of a woman for lack of breasts…What you see is that she’s hurting and afraid, and the only thing that repulses you is the disease that brought this heart-wrenching agony upon her (and) the excruciating frustration you feel as a man from knowing that there’s very little you can do to help take her pain away. When cancer is quietly going about its malignant mission, hidden beneath soft and familiar skin, you never get to see your enemy. But when breast cancer suddenly declares war, comes out in the open and shows itself in the tracks of sutures left behind, you suddenly realize that the woman you love more than anything in the world has not only come under attack, but has herself become the battleground. This makes you love her all the more and takes your love in a direction and to a height you never could have imagined possible…”

I cannot recommend this inspiring book highly enough—especially during October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It’s a time to honor the memory of those we’ve lost, celebrate survival, and commit to doing whatever it takes to find a cure..

For more info: Tom Wilson will be presenting at the Miami Book Fair International. Order Zig-Zagging today on Amazon or visit your local bookstores.