Voting

Well, tonight, thank God it's them instead of you.

Since losing Georgie I have grown to hate the above lyric. It is of course a famous line from the song, 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' by BandAid. Despite the fact that Bono is actually the person who sings that particular line I can't even get myself to like it a little bit.

When Georgia died I was acutely aware that the people around me and those that had just heard about us were counting their blessings. That's great. In fact, I was still doing the same thing. While I did have moments of "why me?", I remembered Randy Pausch's question of "why not me?" I am no more special than anyone else and while it pains me to say it my children are no more special than anyone else's... except to me and the people that love them. Not once did I ever or would I ever wish SMA or the loss of a child on someone else.

When I received the phone call not so long ago from the genetic counsellor telling us that this baby girl did not have SMA I was relieved to say the least. In fact, in many ways I was ecstatic. After hanging up however I started to wonder if I was her last call of the day. Had she delivered bad news to another family just before calling me? While I was totally grateful for the good news that I had received I felt sick at the idea that somebody else could be receiving the most awful news a parent could ever get. You won't catch me thanking God that it's somebody else because I don't want it to be anybody else.

That's why it's so important to me that the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation wins 1 million dollars. Curing SMA means that it won't ever have to be anybody else. You see despite losing Georgia I can still imagine a world where Gwendolyn Strong one day walks down the aisle on the arm of her father. I can imagine a world where Daikin has enough lung capacity to become an Olympic Athlete or a World Class Diver. I can imagine Nicholas growing to be bigger and stronger than his mother, one day picking her up and thanking her for not giving up. What would these children tell us? What could they teach us? We'll never know unless we choose to hope and believe in the possibility of another reality. I can imagine it. Can you?

Join us in voting for the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation to win 1 million dollars. Here are some of the ways that you can help.

1. VOTE: go to http://VoteForSMA.com
2. Email friends the voting link
3. Post the voting link to your Facebook status all week long
4. Blog about GSF and the $1M miracle to cure SMA
5. Twitter the voting link
BE ANNOYING (we mean persistent:) ALL WEEK LONG!

If any of you are still actually wondering why this is so important please take the time to watch this video the Strongs have put together. Actually, I encourage all of you to click on the above link and look into the eyes of so many little ones like Gwendolyn and even our Georgia and remind yourselves to be grateful.

Voting begins tonight at midnight.

Love to you all,

Kristen