This year I am again shaving my head for St. Baldrick's Foundation, for the FOURTH time (Woo-hoo! Bald is so Beautiful!!!), 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! As a cancer survivor and as a mother I believe 100% in the mission of St. Baldrick's Foundation: "ALL CHILDHOOD CANCER RESEARCH, ALL THE TIME." I know that the money I raise 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. Five years ago, when I myself was cured of cancer, I experienced a miracle in my life. Now I look back and I 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