In Honor
Every ribbon is a person
Add a name — your own, or someone you love — and a ribbon joins the map in their state. Together they show how many of us this touches, and that nobody faces it alone.
Why we made this
Cancer is usually described in statistics, and statistics are how a person disappears. About one in three of us will hear a diagnosis in our lifetime (American Cancer Society, 2026) — and every one of those numbers is somebody's mother, somebody's friend, somebody still going to work on treatment days.
This map puts them back. Each ribbon is one real person, placed in the state where they live or lived, colored by the kind of cancer they faced. Nobody is reduced to a percentage, and nothing here is sold, shared or counted for anybody's marketing.
What it is for
- To be seen. Whether you are living with cancer now, years clear, or carrying somebody you lost, your name belongs on it.
- To show the scale. When we sit down with legislators and health systems to argue for earlier screening and plainer answers, this is what we bring with us — not a chart, a wall of people.
- To be a small act of remembrance. Some names go up in celebration of twenty years clear. Some go up because somebody wanted their father's name somewhere it would be read. Both belong here.
It takes a minute. A first name and a state is enough. Only a first name and last initial ever appear in public — never a full name, never an email address, never a location more precise than a state. You can add somebody else's name if you are the one who carries it, and you can ask us to take a name down at any time, for any reason.
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Add a name
A first name and a state is all we need. Only a first name and last initial are shown in public — never a full name, and never an email address.
We are not taking new names just now. The map stays here, and every ribbon on it stays with it — please do come back.