Motorcyclist for Breast Cancer Causes Wins Two National Book Awards

Tamela Rich sharing lessons from friends who faced cancer at oncology conferences

CHARLOTTE, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Charlotte-based “Author, Speaker, and Adventurer,” Tamela Rich recently received two National Awards for her first book, Live Full Throttle: Life Lessons from Friends Who Faced Cancer. Rich earned a silver medal in the Living Now Book Awards and won a National APEX Grand Award for Publishing Excellence. “What timing! I received the news of my awards on the threshold of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month,” she said.

“I heard stories from women facing life’s ultimate sink hole, and doing it with grace, moxie and joy. This taught me how a brush with cancer helped patients, survivors, and their supporters re-examine both their priorities and their assumptions about how to live their best lives.”

Live Full Throttle is a collection of stories and life lessons that Rich collected during two cross-country motorcycle trips to raise money for breast cancer charities. “I heard stories from women facing life’s ultimate sink hole, and doing it with grace, moxie and joy. This taught me how a brush with cancer helped patients, survivors, and their supporters re-examine both their priorities and their assumptions about how to live their best lives.”

In Live Full Throttle, Tamela shares eight lessons:

• The Healing Power of Joy
• Gratitude Eases Pain
• Laughter Lightens Tragedy
• You’re Terminal Too, Embrace It
• When to Fight, When to Flow
• Art Restores
• Relationships Are Fluid
• Channel Sorrow Into Service

Rich just returned from speaking to an oncology conference at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill about her experiences traveling across the United States and Canada with a pink bra strapped across the windshield of her motorcycle. “I selected stories that would help healthcare professionals provide support and counsel to patients and their families,” said Rich, who will speak at another oncology conference in West Virginia later this month and keynote a session at the 23rd Annual National Interdisciplinary Breast Center Conference.

In addition to speaking to healthcare groups, Rich delivers the messages from her book to business and community groups. “Sometimes groups say they just want me to entertain them with stories and photographs from my road trips,” she said. “I’ve traveled on my motorcycle across 35 states and 4 Canadian provinces so I have plenty of material.”

Designed and produced by SPARK Publications, Live Full Throttle includes 112 pages of full-color photographs by Christina Shook along with exercises designed to help readers re-think the direction of their lives.