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

February 17, 2020

Monday, February 17, 2020

Monday, February 17, 2020

Tonight's picture was taken in February of 2008. Mattie was five years old and doing one of the things he loved best..... building and creating. As you can see, Mattie created a plane out of tinkertoys. I can't tell you how many Mattie creations filled our home on any given day, and when Mattie died, our home seemed transformed. Things were quieter, less vibrant, and in a way it felt like we were living in an alternative universe that made no sense to us. 


Quote of the day: Smooth seas do not make for skilled sailors. ~ African Proverb

In one of the professional counseling magazines I received this month, I noticed an article entitled, Helping clients grow from loss (https://ct.counseling.org/2020/02/helping-clients-grow-from-loss/). Naturally I felt compelled to read it. I should caveat my comments on this article with the fact that I have NEVER found a book on grief that has resonated with me. I can freely say this as I received practically a library's worth of books from people when Mattie died. People were good intentioned and wanted to help and support me. I am sure the thought was giving me a book would either show me the way through grief or that I would see that I was not the only person feeling this way. Either case, the books weren't helpful. I did not want to hear someone else's story, I did not want to hear how they survived it, and I most certainly did not want to read the grief "how to list" on what I should do to accept this loss and grow stronger. 

Don't you know it, in this article I read today, the African proverb (I highlighted above) was integrated in the story. I certainly get the analogy, that we learn more about ourselves and the world around us during the times we struggle. Certainly I can see this proverb working under most circumstances. But I truly do not like when people talk to me about what I learned and my "growth" after losing Mattie in a most hideous manner. In fact the whole notion of post-traumatic growth (a positive change that follows the struggle after some kind of traumatic event) irritates me. I get it, we want to put a positive spin on our losses. We want to highlight that even under the worst of circumstances we picked ourselves up, regrouped, and re-invested back in the world and in ourselves. 

In fact, research seems to indicate that there are 5 makers of post-traumatic growth:

  1. Improved relationships with others
  2. Greater appreciation for life
  3. New possibilities for one’s life
  4. Greater awareness of personal strengths
  5. Changes in spirituality
Certainly I have seen all five of these markers in my own life. But what I most resent about these conversations is it always makes it sound like a bereaved person would never have the opportunity to rise to this level of understanding without the traumatic event happening to him/her in the first place! Traumatic events happen tragically, none of us ask for them to happen, and personally trying to rationalize why they happen and attaching some positive spin to them negates the experiences and memories. 

A few weeks ago on the blog, I reframed that horrible saying.... 'things happen for a reason' and instead said we must find the meaning behind the things that happen to us. With that same line of reasoning, if I worked with trauma survivors, I would absolutely rework the lexicon from post-traumatic growth to post-traumatic meaning. How we progress forward living with trauma is not honing in on growth, but instead finding meaning behind our experiences, feelings, and thoughts. As I don't think I grew from Mattie's cancer diagnosis and death. Growth evokes guilt and frankly anger. But I have certainly found meaning from Mattie's cancer experience and I use this meaning to guide the work I do with the Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation. 

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