Encourage Your Mom To Get Her Breast Health Checked Out With A Homemade Momm-O-Gram

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and if you think that means wearing pink ribbons and pink accessories, you're only partially right. But it also means sending a Breast Cancer Awareness Momm-O-Gram to encourage your mom, grandma, or other loved ones to check on their breast health. Sure, you're about to be bombarded with anything and everything pink, but the true aim of Breast Cancer Awareness Month is to educate women, and you can do it with a simple card.

Encouraging your loved ones to take initiative in keeping themselves healthy can be a big undertaking. Heavy conversations filled with plenty of emotions, and sometimes heated debates, are daunting to think about. I've definitely been there. But it truly doesn't have to be that way at all. Wouldn't it be nice if you could encourage your mom, grandmother, or aunt to take control of her breast health with just a plain, old homemade card? As it turns out, you can.

DoSomething.org has developed a campaign to encourage people to make homemade cards called Momm-O-Grams to give to their moms (or other significant woman in their life) to help encourage them to talk to their doctor about getting a mammogram. Unlike some of the pricey Breast Cancer Awareness Month swag out there, this simple, yet impactful, gesture costs absolutely nothing.

While the average woman has a 1 in 8 chance to develop breast cancer in their lifetime according to the National Cancer Institute, the institute also reported that mammograms have been shown to reduce the number of breast cancer-related deaths that occur. This is especially true for women over the age of 50, which is why the initiative to encourage the women in your life in this age group to get mammograms is absolutely vital.

So, how does it work? It is actually ridiculously simple and as cute as can be. DoSomething.org suggests making a homemade card using paper, pens, crayons, markers, glitter, or pretty much anything you have on hand to make a card for your mom. You will then present the card to your mom during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. (Perhaps over breakfast in bed? She deserves it!)

On the card, DoSomething.org suggests drawing or writing about all of the things you're looking forward to doing with your mom in the future with the hope that this will encourage her to get to her doctor for preventative breast cancer screenings. The idea is that she will see all of the love you poured into the homemade card and want to take steps to ensure that she does everything in her power to be there for you to do those things — including getting a mammogram.

You can include specific items like "I can't wait for the day when you give me away at my wedding" or "I'm looking forward to seeing you at your grandson's graduation" in order to really hit your mom right in the feels. They also suggest using her favorite colors or adding her favorite flowers to the design to give it a truly personal touch.

To help spread awareness of the initiative, DoSomething.org asks that you snap a picture of the card with you and your mom and post it on their Momm-O-Grams page. There are already a plethora of pics on the site of kids (yes, many of these "kids" are actually adult children) encouraging their moms and grandmas to get checked out. They also encourage you to follow up and make sure that your mom or loved one books an appointment with their doctor to talk about their breast health. This small, simple gesture could be the difference between life and death for your mama, so make it count.