Mattie Miracle Walk 2023 was a $131,249 success!

Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation Promotional Video

Thank you for keeping Mattie's memory alive!

Dear Mattie Blog Readers,

It means a great deal to us that you take the time to write to us and to share your thoughts, feelings, and reflections on Mattie's battle and death. Your messages are very meaningful to us and help support us through very challenging times. To you we are forever grateful. As my readers know, I promised to write the blog for a year after Mattie's death, which would mean that I could technically stop writing on September 9, 2010. However, at the moment, I feel like our journey with grief still needs to be processed and fortunately I have a willing support network still committed to reading. Therefore, the blog continues on. If I should find the need to stop writing, I assure you I will give you advanced notice. In the mean time, thank you for reading, thank you for having the courage to share this journey with us, and most importantly thank you for keeping Mattie's memory alive.


As Mattie would say, Ooga Booga (meaning, I LOVE YOU)! Vicki and Peter



The Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation celebrates its 7th anniversary!

The Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation was created in the honor of Mattie.

We are a 501(c)(3) Public Charity. We are dedicated to increasing childhood cancer awareness, education, advocacy, research and psychosocial support services to children, their families and medical personnel. Children and their families will be supported throughout the cancer treatment journey, to ensure access to quality psychosocial and mental health care, and to enable children to cope with cancer so they can lead happy and productive lives. Please visit the website at: www.mattiemiracle.com and take some time to explore the site.

We have only gotten this far because of people like yourself, who have supported us through thick and thin. So thank you for your continued support and caring, and remember:

.... Let's Make the Miracle Happen and Stomp Out Childhood Cancer!

A Remembrance Video of Mattie

November 10, 2012

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Tonight's picture was taken in November of 2006. Mattie was four and a half years old. I love this picture! We took Mattie to Leesburg Animal Park and he loved the hands on petting zoo. Something about this photo gets me laughing, it wasn't that Mattie was chasing the rooster, he really just wanted to get a closer look, but the rooster had other plans. As the rooster began running, so did Mattie.


Quote of the day: Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer


My dad sent me this quote yesterday. It is very applicable given the intense action it takes to collect all this post-Halloween candy around town and then sort it. The running total right now is 67 (2.5gallon) bags of candy! That may sound like a lot, but when you see it in person you get the full magnitude of this collection. I included a picture of what our dining room looks like now. Our table is filled, the floor is filled, and today it is migrating onto our side board. This is NOT the end of sorting either. More candy continues to come in.
















Peter and I have been asked to give an hour long presentation this coming Friday at a palliative care conference hosted by the Hospital for Sick Children in Washington, DC. We have been working on this presentation in stages, especially since the coordinator of the conference wants our presentation to be told in stories. I have enough stories to fill up a four hour presentation, so trying to narrow down our content is key. Our audience will be health care and psychosocial staff providers. Between candy sorting, we sat down and discussed the presentation in more detail and we are busy working on a PowerPoint presentation filled with pictures illustrating the stories we plan on telling. All of this requires a lot of work, time, and energy. Emotional energy! Certainly telling Mattie's story and sharing our perspective is important, but we want the stories to have a clinical meaning. We want staff members to leave having greater insights into how their care impacts a child and his/her family and along the way share feedback about what did and didn't work for our family. With each presentation we give, I always find it interesting to hear the questions posed to us along with the feedback we receive. Such opportunities to talk honestly about Mattie and our experiences rarely occur in our everyday lives. Therefore, these presentations are always therapeutic for Peter and I. They keep Mattie's memory alive but they also allow us to freely be what we are...... bereaved parents.
 

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