Now we kindly ask for your attention.

Please hold the hands of the people next to you;
Remain silent and hold your applause�
As a group of breast cancer survivors moves toward the stage.

In the distance, you will see a group of women and men holding hands around an empty circle.
The same circle we created three days ago in Santa Barbara.

We used the circle then to remember, and we use it to remember now as well �
all those we have loved, all those we have lost to breast cancer.
Our mothers, our daughters;
Our wives, our sisters, our fathers, our friends;
Our grandmothers and granddaughters.
We use it to remember a time when there was laughter and conversation.
We use it to bring back, for a moment, the sounds of their voices,
the fleeting mist of their faces in the eyes of our minds.

We use the circle to hold our tears,
and to create a place where it is safe to let go of them.

But the circle holds more than tears now.
It hold memories of the last three days �
Some of the hardest � yet some of the happiest � of our lives.
It holds the memories of new friends,
new experiences.
It holds the promise of a new self.
New possibilities.
New challenges.

A new life, not ordered by the limits of the past,
but wide open to the wildest of dreams.
It holds 4,663 spirits of the living now re-awakened.
It holds our magnificence.
And it holds the thought that if we can do this,
we can do anything.

Perhaps we see a glimpse now of what those who have
departed have been waiting for us to see.
Perhaps they helped to deliver us here.
To see that life is a great adventure, to be savored and explored �
not squandered on doubt and caution �
that life is, in the end,
To be lived.