Warrior Survivor Number 3 for P.ink Day Minneapolis! Meet Kari!

P.ink Day Minneapolis is happening in just one month! October 10^th is the day we will all gather at Twilight Tattoo and the six amazing women survivors will get their healing tattoos! This coming weekend, on Sunday, September 13^th, we are all meeting at Twilight so that the artists can meet their survivor and everyone can see the shop and fill out all the forms. We have a few professional photographers and a videographer lined up, thus, lots of forms!

A local restaurant has donated lunch for us this Sunday. Breaking Bread Café is an amazing place for fresh, flavorful and healthy global comfort food. It never ceases to amaze me the willingness people have to support this beautiful healing effort.

Our third survivor warrior is Kari Hitchcock. She is 49 years old and she lives in Rogers, MN, which is very near Minneapolis. Kari’s greatest support is her family. She’s been married for 16 years. Kari and her husband have a wonderful and supportive 12-year-old daughter. In addition, her parents and her sister have been there for Kari through all the challenges of cancer.

Kari was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013. The cancer was discovered through a routine mammogram. Early detection does matter! It was determined that she needed a mastectomy. Kari chose to have a double, because they found a spot on her other breast that was suspicious. Kari had the mastectomy that July, so she can now say she is over two years cancer free! Kari feels very lucky that she did not have to have chemo or radiation. All the tests they did indicated that she did not need that type of treatment. Kari went through reconstruction in December of 2013.

Kari’s neighbor is a very dear friend, and she is a great support. So much so, she helped Kari with her drain tubes after the mastectomy. That is an amazing friend! Kari also has great support at work. Some very close friends are her co-workers, and many brought food after the surgery.

In addition, Kari has a wonderful and far reaching support system online. Kari is part of a group on a website called Ravelry, which is for knitters and crocheters. Kari is a spinner of yarn, and the group she is part of, all enjoy spinning on spindles. There are members from all over the world, and they have given Kari a lot of support when she had the cancer, and when she had a stroke.

For her tattoo, Kari is planning on getting dandelions with seeds blowing across her chest that turn into birds. She hopes to get a ladybug on the stem of one, to represent her work. Ladybug is a nickname she got several years ago! She would like to have one of the seeds turn into a small heart to represent her group on Ravelry. The heart is a symbol they use a lot in their posts to one another. She will work with her artist Ariel Cafarelli to figure out a small representation for her daughter.

This will be Ariel’s second year participating in P.ink Day Minneapolis. Ariel and Alli, who is a tattoo artist in training, recently opened a new tattoo shop, called TailorBird Tattoo. Alli is an incredible organizer, and I, Mari, could not imagine organizing P.ink Day Minneapolis without Alli’s assistance!

Ariel is an incredibly gifted artist! You can see Ariel’s work here. Ariel and Kari are going to have a wonderful experience creating a beautiful, healing tattoo for Kari!

Please leave a comment for Ariel and Kari! And, please Like our P.ink Minneapolis Facebook page!!

Thanks so much!

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