This heartwarming story comes to us from our friends at AOL.com.
When Christi and Mike Nelson told their sons that Christi’s breast cancer had come back, Archer, 8, proclaimed, “cancer is stupid … Because Mom kicked its butt once, and it came back to get beat up again.” He then began a project that would end up supporting his mother through her treatment more than he could have predicted.
After writing an inspirational song for his mother, Archer gained support from superstar musicians all over the world who wanted to do their part to sing to Archer’s mother as a part of the universal fight against breast cancer.
Archer’s musical success didn’t happen right away — his first attempt at production included his father finding a crumpled up CD-shaped paper in the stereo system with “Boob Spelled Backwards is Boob” scribbled on the front.
“I made up a song for Mom,” Archer explained. “I think the CD player’s broken.
When Mike learned of the sentiment behind the paper CD, he did not throw the looseleaf in the trash — quite the opposite, in fact. As a DJ at KFOG, a San Fransisco radio station, he passed the idea on to some of his colleagues who helped recruit Michael Franti of the band Spearhead to set Archer’s touching lyrics to music.
After gaining Franti’s support, the KFOG employees began approaching every musician that came through the studio’s doors, asking if they would like to be involved in the song’s production.
“The idea was to make it like a ‘We Are the World’ for breast cancer,” Mike explained.
“The Grateful Dead heard about it and said, ‘We want to be a part of it.’ This was right before they did their 50th anniversary tours; they could be doing a million things with their time, and they took the time to do this. I was speechless,” said Mike Nelson.
Less than a year later, dozens of artists had contributed nearly 100 pieces of audio to archer’s song. Even celebrities without a musical background took to social media to show their support for the Nelsons and those battling breast cancer everywhere. The campaign’s hashtag #BoobProject began to show up in the hands of stars such as Sarah Silverman:
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Although the Nelsons are ecstatic about the success of their project and Christi’s good health, they recognize how lucky they are, as countless women are not so fortunate to have support or to come back from the doctor with good news.
Simply through purchases of “Boob Spelled Backwards is Boob” and donations toBoobProject.org, the Nelsons hope to raise at least $100,000 for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
