This year I am again shaving my head, for the third time, for St. Baldrick's Foundation, and will stand in solidarity with children battling cancer. As many of you know, I myself was diagnosed with advanced aggressive throat (tonsil) cancer in 2009. To see the words "squamous cell carcinoma" written after your own name is truly frightening, but even on my most challenging days of treatment I was grateful that it was me, and not my child, who had received that diagnosis. To have seen those words written after my child's name would have been a thousand times worse. Yet everyday, that thousands-times-worse becomes a terrible reality for all too many parents. Childhood cancer continues to kill more children each year than Aids, Cystic Fibrosis, Juvenile Diabetes and Congenital defects combined. Worldwide, a child is diagnosed with cancer every three minutes! We need to find a cure! As a cancer survivor and as a mother I am committed to raising money for St. Baldrick's Foundation, monies that will be used to fund the most promising childhood cancer research, so that every year less and less parents will receive such almost unbearable news, and those that do will have more and more hope for a treatment, a cure, a healthy future for their precious child. Together, you and I can help to CONQUER CHILDHOOD CANCER. Those are powerful words -- YOU. I. TOGETHER. CONQUER. In 2012, the St Baldrick's Foundation raised over $33 million and funded over $105 million in research. The overall goal for the St Baldrick's Foundation for 2013 is $35,000,000 worldwide. These funds will be used to fund life saving research, improve treatment protocols and allow more children to have access to clinical trials. Research must not only find cures it must also find ways to make treatment less dangerous for young patients and give survivors a better long-term quality of life. These monies also directly endow the St Baldrick's Fellowship & Scholar Programs, which fund the training and education of the next generation of Childhood Oncologists. Only the best candidates are selected, ensuring that all children will have caring doctors and research scientists well into the future. You know, when I was diagnosed with cancer I never asked "Why me?" After all, why NOT me? But when I was cured, with my life and my future returned to me, it was then that I asked "Why ME?" and why not so many others? I have no answer. I only know that four year later I can say "Yes, my life was touched by cancer. But more importantly, it was touched by AMAZING GRACE." Please support me this year and make a miracle happen for someone else! “For we are here, not merely to bloom in the light, but rather, like trees, to be weathered: burned by heat, frozen by snow and though our hearts have been broken, still, we put out new leaves in spring, begin again.” - Barbara Crooker