LIV’s Promise: Family Blessings
Hi everyone and welcome BACK to the Hill Pursuit Blog!
If you haven’t checked out the recent podcast episode, I highly suggest you do! It has a lot of very relevant nuggets for athletes heading into a challenging and sometimes lonely/confusing off-season. Before we know it, we’re back into what we refer to as “the grind,” and it’s literally the WORST feeling in the world when we get to that point feeling like we’ve accomplished next to nothing over the winter (off-season) months. Have a listen!
But even COOLER than the recent podcast episode…is our new outreach initiative through LIV’s Promise: Family Blessings!
Let me start by describing the WHY related to this initiative…
In early 2024, our family’s world was rocked with the devastating news that our 9-month old had developed cancer. I’ve told that story likely hundreds of times at this point…and although that story isn’t over, and won’t be over for years to come, we are in a healthy and happy place. Our daughter needs to maintain some normal scans and check-ins at the hospital on a regular basis to ensure the cancer doesn’t come back, but she is healthy and cancer free! Thank GOD.
Looking back at the hardest times in the hospital…the diagnosis, the chemotherapy, countless drugs, scans, doctors, appointments, tears, sleepless nights…on and on…there was always a constant.
The hospital was an awful place to us. We were there what felt like 5-6 days/week for MONTHS on end, doing whatever we had to do for our baby. It was terrible. We were “regulars”…cheers, right? Wrong.
But in the darkest moments in this place we grew far too comfortable with, we experienced an outpouring of love from our neighbors. Most of whom, we NEVER EVEN MET. People in the community came into the hospital with free pizzas, free sandwiches, popsicles, etc. etc. Anything small that lightened the mood even for a MOMENT! Some organizations just blindly donated between $100-$500 to ALL of the families on the cancer floor. The love was just limitless. We even got bags full of toys and goodies for Olivia to play with, and some she could pass along to her bigger sisters!
ALL of these acts of love meant the world to us. And we knew that LIV’s Promise would eventually be able to give back in a similar way. Well, now’s the time!
We are starting a “Family Blessings” outreach to do exactly that: to give back to families and children dealing with early childhood cancer diagnoses. It can be in ANY form, but we aren’t waiting any longer! We will begin providing resources to families in all of the ways listed above, and we would love your help!
Please don’t feel like you need to donate anything large at all. This type of outreach takes an entire village..an entire community. If you feel called to do so, you can donate using the link below. Type “Family Blessings” into the donation message! You can even type something like “pizza” if you want your funds to be 100% allocated to a pizza fund!!
We have no rules. We just want to give back.
From the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU for the endless love you’ve given to our family and to Olivia. Now it’s time for us to do the same for others who are experiencing their own darkenss.
Help us be the light!
-Coach Hayden