Monday, May 21, 2018

Monday, May 21, 2018


Tonight's picture was taken in May of 2009. Mattie surprised me with a gift for Mother's Day. A gift that he worked with his art therapists to create. They made paper tissue flowers, but what you can't see was Mattie made a red clay vase for me in clinic. This vase holding the paper tissue flowers remains in our living room today. 










Quote of the day: Grief is love with no where to go. ~ Uma Girish


Over the next week or more, I will be highlighting photos from our Walk & Family Festival that was held on Sunday! Here are three top Walk facts:

1) There were over 400 people in attendance
2) The event raised over $97,000 (exceeding our goal by over $12,000)
3) Our 19 teams raised $41,232

Last year, Mattie Miracle did a Facebook campaign. We invited families to submit photos of their child who died from cancer. In addition, we asked parents to supply their child's name, age, diagnosis type, and five words that describe their child. These posters became our "Forever Heroes" series. It is a very haunting and meaningful visual at the Walk. This year, I explained to attendees that if the hurdles around the track represented a child with cancer, then this would illustrate the vast number of children who die in less than one month's time in the US. It is a very sobering visual, in which children lose their battle with cancer daily. In fact, four children a day in the US, die from cancer. This is tragic for parents, but what is even more tragic is when people forget about the lives of these children. As tonight's quote points out.... grief is love with no place to go. It is our hope that the posters provide a place for that love and also the faces and lives of these children are never to be forgotten, but instead shared with others in the community. 

A close up of our challenge wall and gold pinwheels. As gold is the official color for childhood cancer. Those of you not familiar with our walk, maybe saying, what's with the cups?! The cups help track the number of laps our teams walk around the track. So a cup a lap! 

We did a second Facebook campaign this year. This campaign generated our "Forever Family" poster series. The point was to emphasize that childhood cancer is a family disease and every one in the family is affected. In addition, we encouraged our participants to read the five word description, these families provided, of how cancer has impacted their lives. The words they used were purely psychosocial in nature, with no mention of the medicine. As families know from personal experience, childhood cancer is NOT just about the medicine. 

Families play a vital role in the health and wellness of their children and must be included as part of the cancer treatment team for the medicine to be effected. We wanted to illustrate the importance of family and also the simple fact that some things are bigger than cancer, such as family. Family lasts forever, regardless of diagnosis, treatment, survivorship or grief and loss.