November 2007
October was a whirlwind month for http://www.yourawareness.org/ and now that Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming up, we are gearing up for another launch. This month we will be adding many charitable organizations to the site. The first of which is St. Jude's Hospital. They recently started an exciting new website for race car enthusiasts. Since my family is involved in the racing industry I thought this would be a fun site to highlight. Go to http://www.racingtosavelives.org/ for more information.
Thanks to the generosity of Nextel Cup drivers Denny Hamlin, J.J. Yeley, David Stremme and Kenny Wallace, racing fans now have a new way to show support for their favorite driver and for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
RacingtoSaveLives.org is a new interactive fundraising Web site that gives racing fans a fun and competitive way to help St. Jude in the fight against childhood cancer and other catastrophic diseases.
Sign up today to help St. Jude. Simply go to http://www.racingtosavelives.org/ and join a Pit Crew led by Hamlin, Yeley, Wallace or Stremme. Or create your own Pit Crew for friends and family to join.
Once you become a member of a Pit Crew, the goal is to accumulate as many members and donations as you can. Standings are based on how many members join your Pit Crew and how much they donate, so be sure to invite everyone you know to join your Crew and donate to this worthy cause.
So sign up at racingtosavelives.org today and join the race to save the lives of children with cancer.
For more information please visit http://www.stjude.org/
source: https://www.stjude.org/stjude/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=32e69eead48c5110VgnVCM1000001e0215acRCRD&vgnextchannel=785213c016118010VgnVCM1000000e2015acRCRD
OCTOBER 2007
FINALLY!!! YourAwareness.org is online! Thanks to the hard work of so many over the last few months, what started as an "idea" is becoming "reality." We will be adding more products and charities as our online community grows.
A special thanks to Nicole Sherzinger, an up and coming solo artist and lead singer for the Pussycat Dolls for being the first to support http://www.yourawareness.org/
It's Breast Cancer Awareness Month and half of the proceeds from many of the items in our store will go to http://www.breastcancer.org/ Did you know that every 2 minutes, there is a new breast cancer diagnosis. Every 14 minutes, a life is lost to the disease. Over 40,000 people will die this year; about 400 of them will be men. Below are links to articles and websites that I think you will be interested in.
21-Year-Old College Student Battles Breast Cancer
Liv Tyler, Bebe Buell, Dorothea Johnson Are in the Pink Partnering
PINK with a purpose
Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation
Breast Cancer Awareness
To be notified when we add products or celebrity interviews please sign up on our mailing list. Also be sure to check out the latest blogs and the forum section. The purpose of this website is not to solely raise money for charities but to make EVERYONE aware of how precarious our global sitaution is right now. If anyone has not seen An Inconvenient Truth, please watch it at your earliest convenience. Global Warming is not only a political issue today - it is a huge MORAL challenge for our global civalization. It is my deepest desire, that everyone who enters this site takes the time to educate themselves about issues important to them. I believe we are all messengers, and once we realize the importance of global issues, it is our task to TEACH others what we have learned.
While Global Warming is an issue close to my heart, this site is dedicated to ALL Charities and ALL individuals hoping to make a difference in this world. We will contstantly be adding charities to our website. If you know of a charity you are passionate about, please email the Charity, a breif description, and a link the website to charitiy@yourawareness.org
See Leonardo DiCaprio's The 11th Hour - Pledge to See the Movie and Bring 5 People with You
Global Green USA Shows Progress
of First Green Home at The Holy Cross Project with Brad Pitt and with lead funding partner The Home Depot Foundation
Global Green featured on Today Show
I also want pay my respects to Miles Levin and his family. One of my heros IS an eighteen year old cancer patient who passed on August 19, 2007. Please read his story below and I hope it will touch you as much as it has touched me. All Angel Wings Necklaces on the featured product page will now benefit the The Children's Cancer Foundation.
A Blog from Michael on May 9, 2007 (courtesy of CNN: http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/2007/05/whatever-life-we-get-is-bonus.html)
Whatever life we get is bonus
Editor's note: The following post is written by Miles Levin, a young cancer patient profiled on tonight's "360." Miles' personal blog can be read at www.carepages.com, page name "LevinStory."
 Through his blog, Miles has talked about cancer and life with tens of thousands of readers around the world.
Looking through my living room window, I suspect being outside would feel wonderful, but I really wouldn't know. As I write this from my bed, my entire body feels saturated in a sticky, toxic nausea, with chemotherapy pumping through my 18-year-old veins. Like Michael Jackson's moonwalk, chemotherapy has this strange way of moving a person another step towards life and death at the same time.
Twenty three months ago, I was diagnosed with stage IV rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare pediatric muscle cancer affecting only 350 children a year. With odds like that, and with a 20 percent chance of survival, I can only deduce two possibilities about the universe: God's plan is evident in every little shifting of the breeze, or it's totally random. I don't see how there could be much middle ground.
I remember my first chemo round, staring at the ceiling and trying not to cry. The agony was stunning. I've long since learned to go ahead and cry. How could this have happened? Yet as with anything that happens, it happens, and then suddenly you find it has happened, and more things keep continuing to happen. Chemotherapy has instilled in me a visceral understanding that all bad things will pass in time ... but that all good things will too.
I set out on a 19-month course of treatment, chronicling the journey on an online blog. Little did I know that my little Web site intended to keep extended family and friends informed would find readers all across the country and even the world, including such countries as Japan, Australia, Germany, Brazil.
My journey became our journey, with treatment finishing last December. For a brief, hopeful month in January, it appeared to have been successful. My scans were clear. But, as is so common with cancer, there were still sub-detectable rogue cells lurking in distant corners of my body. Within weeks, they swarmed forth again and my body was infested once more.
A recurrence of my kind of cancer has been hitherto incurable, although I still cling to a slim ray of hope. But in all likelihood, I am in the last few months of my short life.
Unlike many cancer patients, I don't have much anger. The way I see it, we're not entitled to one breath of air. We did nothing to earn it, so whatever we get is bonus. I might be more than a little disappointed with the hand I've been dealt, but this is what it is. Thinking about what it could be is pointless. It ought to be different, that's for sure, but it ain't. A moment spent moping is a moment wasted.
I accept what is to come, but I cannot rid myself of a deep mourning for all those experiences -- college, marriage, children, grandchildren -- that will probably never be mine to celebrate. What solace I do find is in the knowledge that I have done everything I can to transmute this terribleness into something positive by showing as many people as I can how to endure it with a smile.
I don't believe you can ask for any more, but if I could ask for something, it would be to be able to go outside into the glorious spring air, feeling healthy and blissfully clueless as to how lucky I was for it, if only just for an hour.
-- By Miles Levin, Guest Blogger
To read Miles' mothers blog please click here - In Memory of Miles |
