Helping Hearts, Blog of Anne Sanders

I took a break from Relay for Life last year for the most part and I'll be honest, in some ways I've missed it. In other ways, I have enjoyed having more time. OK, I did raise $250 to keep myself out of the fake jail they put up at our Relay (try it if you haven't, you can raise lots of money by promising to put people in jail, or not, based on whether they raise money!) and I did write an article about the honorary chair at the Relay last year in my town for our local newspaper. And, gosh I can't miss one of the biggest events of the year, so I went. But, that was about it. I wasn't on the board and I didn't have a team of my own. In the meantime, some things changed. My husband and I both started new jobs on the same day for one. And, I found out that the new company supports Relay but they have never had a team at this location. So, I wondered. Should I say something about it? or not? Eventually, it came out that I had worked on Relay and when they ...

Today is the day! My Relay for Life in Niceville, Florida. I haven’t spoken much about being on the steering committee for Relay this year because it’s just not as exciting as having your own team. I have been calling people, recruiting teams, setting up chairs at team meetings and helping to plan the event. It’s not like planning events to fundraise. You don’t get to count the money at the end of the evening and know it’s going to fight cancer. Of course, everything you do on the steering committee helps the teams do their fundraising so it’s all important. We have had rain in too many of our past Relays in Niceville I’m told and it looks like it might happen again. There’s a fifty percent chance of rain pretty much throughout the Relay. The skies have been cloudy but it hasn’t actually rained yet as I write this. I wish it would rain early and get it over with or hold off until Sunday. But we don’t know God’s plans. I just know we have almost 50 teams and we are ready t...

I’ve talked about a lot of things on this blog. About women’s mental health, about men’s prostate cancer, about being raped when I lived in Japan and my thyroid problems. It hasn’t always been bad. I’ve also talked about how wonderful it was to raise money to fight back against cancer and the angels that helped me do it. Now it’s time to talk about something I’ve never covered before—cervical cancer. It’s Cervical Health Awareness Month. I have to be honest. I’ve never had it, but I’ve known many people who have had tumors and have had their ovaries or cervix removed because of them. In fact, I was so aware of this being a problem for women that I read a book about Fran Drescher’s experience having gynecological cancer. Her book and website is called Cancer Schmancer and is about how it took eight different doctors over two years of symptoms to finally diagnose her uterine cancer. Most of us don’t have the time, money or tenacity to go through that yet if we’re diagnosed ear...

I’ve mentioned briefly that I’m trying something new in the way of volunteering. Many of you know that I’ve been a volunteer for the American Cancer Society, have captained a Relay for Life team, and now am on the steering committee for my local Relay for Life. In fact, today I will be out recruiting teams and sponsors for that very Relay. But now, I have a new charity that I am learning about in a different way. I’ve also been pursuing a master’s degree in instructional technology and in my last semester (which I’m in now, oh yeah!) I must do a field experience such as an internship or real world project. I looked for an internship which is what I really wanted to do, but instead I found not one, but two projects to do. One is for the First Circuit Court of Florida. My university is helping them put a face-to-face course they teach online and I’m on the team to make that happen. The other is for the American Red Cross. The Red Cross is an organization that I’ve admire...

Relay for Life season is coming to its end for 2013. Over the past year, you’ve heard about my preparations and fundraising for my church’s team Angels for a Cure. It’s the last time I’ll be able to say I’m on a team of Angels, at least one that raises money to fight against cancer. We went out with a bang. We won fifth place overall for fundraising and got first place for most number of laps walked. We went to the silver team level, raising over $4500 which was $1,000 over our goal. It was an amazing year, starting with a garage sale last October and finishing with photography sessions this April just a couple weeks before the actual Relay. We also had our first ever Chili Cookoff and a two-day bake sale to end all bake sales. We auctioned off donated items at the Elks annual auction and ate at Ruby Tuesday’s, getting ten percent for the team. We sold over $900 in luminaria as well as several trackmarkers, something we had never sold before. We had the final team part...

Today is the day. Today we have the Relay for Life in my hometown. We have already made about $500 over our goal of $3500 so I’m very happy going into the Relay.  I am so excited about today. We’re going to be selling homemade coconut salt scrub that our Miss Pinterest Sam Roberts has made for us. She also had the idea of making hair ribbons and got us started on that.  We’re going to be braiding hair, doing nails, selling jewelry and raffling some items, too. While the moms are getting pampered, we have some games for the kids to do as well. As for food, we went pretty simple, just muffins, apples, bananas, green tea, water and coffee.  We’re having a spa theme to the booth this year and I’ve called it the Angels for a Cure Stress Reduction and Cancer Prevention Booth! I can’t wait to see what all the other teams are doing. I hope we make our goal for the Relay. Our team has really come together. I’m so thankful to them. When my mother was sick, the...

Happy Valentine’s Day and Random Acts of Kindness Week! It’s time for an Angels update. My Relay for Life team Angels for a Cure did so great on our bake sales. We made nearly $900! People were outbidding each other for cakes and we had enough cookies to feed half of Pensacola. The extras went to the Waterfront Rescue Mission Sunday night meal and the minister there was so grateful to get them. We just had our Giveback days at Ruby Tuesday, too, on Tuesday and Wednesday, but I won’t know how we did on that for a couple weeks. It’s the first time we’ve ever done that, so I’m interested to know how it went. We passed out about 250 flyers and invited people through Facebook. Then our team had our meeting at Ruby Tuesday and had dinner there. We get 20 percent of sales back when people show the flyer we gave out. Our next fundraiser, a Chili Cookoff, is going so well except for one thing—no ticket sales. I’ve gotten donations of cookies and drinks from Publix. We’ve got eight chili ...

What were you doing two Saturdays ago? If you’re like me, life is so busy that you can hardly remember what you did yesterday, never mind two weekends ago. But I had been building up to Saturday, October 20 th for a long time because I’m the captain of an American Cancer Society Relay for Life 2013 team.   We had our first fundraiser the 20 th . It was a great big yard sale in the parking lot of our church. My team is called Angels for a Cure because we operate out of our church, the Gulf Breeze United Methodist Church . I’ve been going there since January of 2004 and we became members in 2005 (I think, once again the mind reels at all to think back that far.) It wasn’t until 2010 that I found out we had a Relay team. We’d gone to other Relays, supported my husband’s work team, my sister’s team and so on. Have you ever been to an event? There’s a Relay for every 60,300 Americans and there were 5,146 Relays in 2010. There were Relays that year in 18 countries outside th...

Do you have a pink bra? Up until about a month ago, I didn’t, but now I have one covered in flowers which I’m waiting to wear on October 27. You see, the last Saturday of this month is the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk. Thousands of women (and men) will be strapping on a decorated pink bra over their t-shirts, putting on pink wigs, wearing pink tutus. Why? Because they want to stop breast cancer in its tracks. This is my second year of involvement with the walk. Last year I volunteered to count money behind the scenes. I’ll be doing that again this year, but I made myself a bra this year and got on a team that’s fundraising, too. October 27, the day of the walk, also happens to be USA Weekend’s Make a Difference Day . What better way to make a difference than to fundraise to fight breast cancer and walk to raise awareness about it? Here’s some more awareness. Women over 40, like myself, need to get mammograms every year. I didn’t get one last year. My gynecolo...

Those of you who have followed my Working Mother Magazine blog the last couple of years know that I couldn’t get through September without sharing that it’s National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. This designation has only been around a few years, but I’ve written about it the last two because I have a son who was diagnosed with cancer at the age of five. Thanks to a lot of prayer and two surgeries, he has been cancer free for almost six years. I’m thanking God for his remission. His great grandfather died of the kind of cancer with which he was diagnosed. I have been volunteering for the American Cancer Society for over a year now and am also the captain of my church’s Relay for Life team Angels for a Cure.   Although the American Cancer Society is a great organization and I love Relay for Life, there’s another organization that’s dear to my heart because of my son. It’s Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF). Alex is a little girl who was diagnosed with a childho...

As of yesterday I have been volunteering for the American Cancer Society (ACS) for one year.   It has been a great experience.   The people I volunteer for are so appreciative of my work.   I’ve had the chance to brush up on my clerical skills.   I enjoy getting out of the house, meeting new people and being involved in an organization that’s making a difference in the world.   The kicker is that because I have volunteered more than 40 hours in the past year (other studies say 100 hours), I also am in better health than if I hadn’t volunteered. You read that right, volunteering more than 40 hours a year makes you healthier. At least that’s true according to the Corporation for National and Community Service which reviewed two decades of research on the benefits of volunteering.   Here are a few of the results: ·          Volunteering enhances a person's social networks to buffer stress and reduce disease ...