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24e gym in Pelham held a Pink Party event to bring awareness to breast cancer. (For the Reporter/Dawn Harrison)

By LIZZIE BOWEN | Staff Writer

 PELHAM – The power of pink was prevalent Monday, Oct. 10 as women gathered together to spread breast cancer awareness.

Songs of empowerment played as breast cancer survivors lined the stage in 24e gym in Pelham to accept their flowers of honor for their battle with breast cancer. Those in attendance came adorned in pink tutus, tank tops and head to toe pink attire to honor lives lost to breast cancer as well as those who are survivors.

The event is called the “Pink Party,” and those in attendance all exercised together, danced and worked out to a variety of music.

Libby Schropp, the founder of Pink Party at 24e gym and expressed her excitement for the event and said it is always an emotional experience.

“If you’re a survivor, it is so emotional,” Schropp said. “But we planned this for two months, it has been crazy busy, and we are just excited.”

Brenda Ladun who is a news anchor at ABC 33/40 was present at the Pink Party to tell her story of surviving breast cancer.

“Survivors sometimes we become like magnets,” Ladun said. “We come together. That is why I wanted to help. Having cancer twice, I know what women go through. Just dancing, exercising and being in a group of loving women can really help you get through it.”

She said she has beat cancer two times, once in 2001 and again in 2007.

“While it was a bad thing, it also helped me understand what was good in life,” Ladun said. “Just being with the people I love and being able to talk to my kids, touch them on the head. Part of the chemo, I lost feeling in my hands, and so, when I could feel my hands again and I touched my children’s head it was like, ‘Oh, this is the best,’ so, it’s not about the big stuff.”

Ladun said she has cherished her life so much more since becoming a breast cancer survivor.

“It’s about just spending a great day with the people you care about,” she said. “The little things in life, life is a gift and we forget that. We forget that so often because we are always striving to the next thing. Just enjoy today.”

Ladun said breast cancer has changed her in many ways, but all for the better, and she hopes to be the same light in someone else’s life that many women were for her.

“I was very goal oriented,” Ladun said. “And I still am, but I don’t sweat the small stuff like I used to. I just want to be around loving people that I can enjoy, and now I want to give that help to somebody else and take their hand and say, ‘I did it and you can do it too.’”

She said she wants people to know where her strength and endurance came from.

“I want people to know I was strong, and I made it,” she said. “It came from my faith. It came from the people that loved me and helped me through it, and I just want to pass that on.”

Ladun encouraged those who have been diagnosed with breast cancer or know someone that has been diagnosed with breast cancer to keep going.

“Don’t give up,” Ladun said. “Find your joy. There is plenty of joy to be had and reach out. Don’t give up is the main thing. That is what my mom always taught me.”

More information about the Pink Party can be found at 24e gym’s Facebook account at Facebook.com/24ePelham.

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