How your kindess saves me.

​This month I have gathered my sadnesses together, lined them up and asked them to take a number, be patient, I’ll get to each of you in good time. The volume of sad this month is a tsunami and too great to feel on the fly. I’m going to have to schedule my sad and unpack it bit by bit. Pack a lunch Tanya because it’s going to be a long trip. While I am sad I have NEVER felt alone with great thanks to you, our Bravery Box supporters, our Bravery Boxers.

This parenting of a child with cancer gig can be tricky. Days and weeks can go by when I feel capable and our daughter is well and our friends are doing well and our new normal is very livable and I soak in gratitude for our silver linings. 

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​In my heart lives hope for our daughter’s future. There’s plenty of room in this hopeful heart of mine; in there lives the future of our friends in treatment, hope for those friends finished treatment to maintain their health and remission and for their parents who have become my friends to get through this whole. This part of my heart dances and laughs loud and celebrates the wonder of  a moment.

​My hopeful heart also holds an unthinkable sadness for the children and teens in our world who don’t get to grow up, I hold fear for our friends when their cancers become complicated and I hold a grief that I haven’t yet completely unpacked for our own daughter who has battled brilliantly and continues to battle with so much treatment still to come.

​It is times like now when I feel the weight of our world, where a straight spine is hard to come by and I just have to stop and share my weight with others and it is times like now when you save me.

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Thank you for supporting Bravery Box, every donation, every word of support is a lifting of the weight of our world. Every time our child chooses something from the Bravery Box we feel supported and recognized by you and our weight is lighter.

​This week our world has felt supported enormously. A business has been in touch and asked to star the bravery box on their work shirt sleeves, a support group has pledged $500 of iTunes vouchers to our teens, and yesterday a beautiful soul donated a crate full of ‘parent and carers’ care packages (a little out of our remit but I am delighted to deliver them to the inpatient ward on Mothers' Day).

For me these awesome acts of kindness filled my very bones with the care of others.  These beautiful gestures helped me remember that it isn’t just the parents in this world who share each other’s pain, it is each of you who stand up and tell us ‘not on your own’ with each act of kindness. In a month where silver linings have been hard to come by, the support for the Bravery Box shows me that we have an army of people behind us whispering to us ‘Not on your own’. 

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