Nick Arquette
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“I felt terrible that in the past I hadn’t wanted my mom to drop me off at soccer practice because of her physical appearance, her loss of hair,” Nick says. “I was embarrassed by her, and that was painful for me to remember.” Realizing he could have used someone to talk to when he was a young, isolated teen, Nick decided to launch a mentor program. He wanted to transform his loss into something positive, something that would honor the memory of his mother and would also help other children confront the complex and myriad emotions that arise when your mother or father is seriously ill. “To have a relationship with someone that I could’ve talked to while my mother was dying of cancer, someone to let me know that my emotions were normal, that would have been huge,” Nick says. And so Walk with Sally, named after his mother, was born. The basic mission of the program is to ask the question "How can we help?" Just talking to someone who went through the terrible process that a kid with a sick parent is experiencing, Nick says, can be enormously helpful. “I chose this as my project in a Landmark course, and it gave me permission to say, ‘What if?’” Nick says. “I realized I didn’t have to be ‘Nick the boy who lost his mom to cancer at 16’ anymore. I saw the opportunity to use my experience to change the lives of children whose parents have cancer.” Today, Walk with Sally (www.walkwithsally.org) matches children of parents with cancer with qualified adults that “walked in the same shoes”. The program is committed to providing healing and hope to children – giving them an emotionally safe environment to share their experience. Walk with Sally is committed to live love, share love and send love into the future through mentoring - one child at a time, one heart at a time. See more articles about Grads Making a Difference. |
