‘You are not alone.’ Blessing Boxes help connect, support women with breast cancer.

Dawn Compton has been in the dark place of battling breast cancer. She won her fight, but she also recalls how a simple gesture of support was, well, a blessing.

The simple knowledge that someone else cared and was rooting for her victory was uplifting.

It was that experience in 2018 that inspired her to start the Blessing Box Project. It’s her way of showing other women now going through that frightening experience that someone out there is on their side.

“This is God’s vision. I told him to put me in front of who needed my story,” Compton said.

Each Blessing Box includes a mastectomy pillow and a drain shirt, along with a few special trinkets designed to lift spirits. It’s what Compton did for herself and a few friends on Facebook when she was herself in the throes of battling her own cancer.

From there, the idea took off. Why not provide this for anyone else with breast cancer?

And each Blessing Box is absolutely free. Compton does ask, if possible, that recipients return the postage to help offset costs, but there is no obligation.

Since she started keeping track of Blessing Boxes she sends in February 2019, Compton said she has shipped approximately 6,000 packages. She has requests coming in regularly for more, many from ladies who have heard of her through other recipients.

“Ladies are led to contact me from other box recipients to request their own Blessing Box. They send me a private message or email, or request through the website (blessingboxproject.com),” she said.

Compton’s personal battle began on March 16, 2018. She underwent a double mastectomy and DIEP reconstruction, endured chemo and radiation treatments. Through it all, she kept telling herself she could do this, and with each Blessing Box she is sending that same message to others.

“We are the same now, we just have cancer,” she has posted on her website. “That changes us forever, but we truly have the opportunity to decide how we look at that and proceed. Just don’t give your power and smile away to the fear.

“Don’t worry alone. You are not alone. We are now all connected by the amazing pink thread.”

Terri Willis of Fort Worth was one of the first to receive a Blessing Box from Compton. She said it was a moment that affected her life forever.

“She shared, not just in words, but also from her heart and soul. She said that she, a total stranger at that moment, would walk beside me and we would pray powerfully together,” Willis said.

From Fort Worth to Florida, Dallas to Denver, Weatherford to Wisconsin, Compton sends Blessing Boxes all over the world. Recipients are in every state, including Hawaii and Alaska, as well as foreign countries such as the United Kingdom, Finland, Switzerland, Australia, South Africa, Barbados, Norway, even Korea.

“When I first got diagnosed, I had no idea what to do or where to even look for resources,” Victoria Reyes of Fort Worth noted. “I joined a support group and it was there where I ran into a dear friend who had gone through the journey I had just embarked. She put my name in the Blessing Box and weeks later I got the box.

“In the middle of so much chaos and uncertainty the box came to show me that there is still so much light … it gave me hope.”

While Compton does much of the sewing and sending herself, she does have volunteers to help with a massive undertaking that is growing larger.

She said the boxes aren’t just blessings for those who receive them but also a blessing to her.

“I experience watching God take something very simple and make it powerful due to unconditional kindness,” she said.