I’m not normally one for begging people to vote for me in some kind of popularity contest. It makes me feel a bit embarrassed. However, Kidspot are offering $2500 to the charity of the winner’s choice in their Voices of 2015 Most Popular Alumni Award and I couldn’t say no to the chance to raise money for The Cancer Council. What’s more, if I win, I pledge to donate a further $2500 to the cause, making a big fat $5000 for charity! I’d have to get an awful lot of people to sponsor me to do something to raise that kind of money!
The winning blogger gets not just $2500 for their charity but a cash prize or business grant of $7500 for themselves. I’m promising (and I’ll of course provide evidence) to give $2500 of that to The Cancer Council if I win.
I don’t need to tell you why The Cancer Council is a brilliant cause and I’d be surprised if any of you have not been touched by losing a loved one to this disease. But I can tell you why cancer is personal for me.
This cause is particularly close to my heart because I lost my mum, Patricia Bishop, to skin cancer (malignant melanoma) when I was three (and my little sister was even younger). Becoming a mum has brought the harsh reality of what happened into focus for me. I remember just a few days after Sebastian was born in May, having lost my mum hit me like a tonne of bricks and not how I’d expected it to at all.
I knew I might feel the lack of having a mother when I became a mother myself and of course the thought that Sebastian would never get to meet his maternal grandmother saddened me and still does. But what I didn’t see coming was the sudden empathy for my mum, knowing she was going to die and leave her two young daughters to grow up without her. I had never ever thought about her dying from her perspective before. I’d thought about how sad it was for my dad being left a single parent and for us little girls being left without a mum but I’d never (and how I feel rather selfish and ignorant about this) thought about how it would feel to be a mother knowing she was leaving her children.
I think only becoming a mother myself made me realise just how awful that must have been. I just can’t imagine it and if I try to put myself in her shoes it really is too painful to think about.
Of course, sadly, children will continue to lose their parents and parents will continue to lose their children, but I don’t want people to lose relatives because of a lack of research into the many different cancers which are killing people. Research saves lives, there is no doubt about it. I’ve recently become an ambassador for The Cancer Council’s Girls’ Night In (please consider holding your own event this month!).
So an unashamed PLEASE VOTE FOR ME! Not out of sympathy or to make me feel popular, but because The Cancer Council will get FIVE GRAND if I win! I won’t deny that if I manage to pull this off, it will make me feel amazing! Thank you SO much, lovely readers, for your help and for reading my personal story.
(And while I’m here I can’t resist a reminder to please wear your sunscreen and get your moles checked! I didn’t get this pale and interesting English rose look by sun baking, you know…).
Voting closes on 6 November 2015 at 6pm. You can vote as many times as you like.