Isn’t it about time I BRAVE THE BALD?!
After countless years of contemplating doing so, this year I am finally committing to shaving my head in order to fund lifesaving research to find cures and better treatments for kids with childhood cancer.
What makes this act more meaningful is that I will be shaving my head in solidarity alongside my BEAUTIFUL & BRILLIANT mother who has not only defeated stage 3 throat cancer herself but has since shaved her head ELEVEN times since her recovery in 2008, raised OVER $110,000 in that time-span, and compiled a team of others willing to do the same for this worthy cause.
Because I was just eleven years old when my mother was diagnosed I have few memories of the pain and trauma that accompanied this unspeakably horrible disease. I owe it to my age, as well as my non-assuming and under-developed brain, for the ways in which I failed to properly understand the weight of the given situation and nightmarish journey that lay ahead.
My mother has always meant too much to me to reconcile losing her to a mass of unruly cells, but I realize now in the same ways my youthful innocence at that age protected me from comprehending the “what-if’s” of my mother’s plight, it just so happens to also be the very thing that makes childhood cancer so unthinkable... the loss of youthful, innocent life.
Years later my mother has confided in me that what got her through her treatment, even on her darkest days, was the simple fact that her diagnosis was not mine.
The drugs were not mine to take.
The hospital bed was not mine to make.
The radiation was not mine to undergo.
The IV drip was not mine to flow.
The wounds were not mine to ache.
The smile was not mine to fake.
Because these things weren’t mine, my mom found the strength to push on. My heart goes out to the parents, grandparents and guardians who don’t have the option of finding solace in the places my mother did, but instead must come to terms with different, tragic truths.
Thank you for choosing to support me in honoring my mother who chose to stare cancer down and say “Not me. Not now. Not ever.”, along with the courageous children who find themselves struggling to say those same words today.
With love,
Scarlett.
