Millys SmilesA few weeks ago we received a phone call from a lovely lady who works at Beaverbrooks Jewellers in Blackpool. The store had chosen Milly’s Smiles as their charity to support after one of the staff nominated us, following a friend receiving a Milly Bag.
We were thrilled to meet everyone and collect a cheque for £800 – an amazing amount that will make a huge difference to us.
A massive thank you to everyone at the store, it was a pleasure to meet you all.
We have been really lucky in having some amazing people volunteer to help Milly’s Smiles in many different ways, some of the people knew Milly, others have heard about the charity, and a few people have received a Milly Bag from us and wanted to give something.
We were very humbled by everyone’s kindness and so grateful for their offer to help. We decided to put together a Volunteer Training Day, where we would go thought the history of the charity, why we set up, explain all about Milly’s journey, and how we came to the decision about our Milly Bags. We also included the focus of the charity and our hopes and dreams for the future.
These lovely people gave up their free time to attend our training day and it proved to be very successful, with every one learning a lot about Milly’s Smiles. We had a fun day, with lots of laughter, and a few tears too, it was great to hear peoples idea’s about we can continue to thrive and move forward, and we can’t wait to work with everyone very soon.
We will be introducing each of them to you over the next few months.
It is the ambition of Milly’s Smiles to be able to help families all across the country when their child has been newly diagnosed with a cancer related illness. Today, after many weeks of meetings, planning and making up of bags, we came a little closer to achieving this dream.
We made the journey over the Pennines to Leeds Children’s Hospital, it was our second visit to the hospital, and predictably we got lost again in the city centre! However, we arrived at the hospital and were met by 2 ladies from the Playteam. They were both amazed at the size of our Milly Bags – most people are when they see them for the first time! We loaded the bags up on a trolley and took them to Ward L31, where we were met by the Ward Sister and other members of staff. The Milly Bags were safely handed over to the team, and from today all new admissions will receive a bag, and hopefully make their admission process a little easier.
Along with the Milly Bags, we also left some goodies for the nurses, to show our appreciation for their help and support, a huge thank you to LouLous Meringues for donating the meringue treats.
Whilst what we do as a charity makes a huge difference to newly diagnosed families, we would much rather there be no need for us, we acknowledge that we cannot change what is happening but we are grateful that we can bring a smile during a very difficult time.
As always, thank you to all our supporters, without you we could not do what we do.
September has always been my favourite month, it may due to having been born in this month, but I have always loved it. The weather changes and the air becomes more crisp, with the leaves changing colour before falling from the trees, and we get ready to brace the colder winter weather.
September is no longer my favourite month, its the month that I had to say goodbye to Milly. No parent should ever have to even consider this for a second, but from the moment Milly was diagnosed, I knew it was a possibility. I tried to absorb every little thing that we did from that moment on, I filed conversations away in my head, to revisit at a later date. I took countless pictures and videos of her, desperate to hold onto every single moment.
When we were told Milly had relapsed and the options were limited, it was after returning from her open day at St Augustine’s – Milly was so excited – the thought of going to high school had been a huge focus during all her treatment, her chemotherapy, her scans, xrays, blood samples, blood and platelet transfusions, and her bone marrow transplant. We returned from school on a high with everything to look forward to for Milly, until I got the voicemail on my phone from her consultant. From that moment everything changed.
And now four years later, the pain…the loss…her absence from every part of my life is still felt so intensely…it hurts, it hurts a lot, my heart feels like it is breaking every single day.
I know if Milly knew how hard it was living without her she would be apologising to me for having to leave and go to heaven…Milly always worried about me, about how I was coping whilst she was going through her treatment. I remember saying to her that I wished it was me that this was happening to, she told me she would have hated to see me so unwell and it was better that it was happening to her.
I would have done absolutely anything and everything to trade places with Milly. In a heartbeat. One million times over. But I just wasn’t given that chance, or choice.
I know Milly’s love continues to surround me, she keeps me strong, and my love for Milly, and her love for me, will never be stolen by death. It is infinite as it is powerful, it stretches past forever and remains with me for always.
I made a promise to myself when I knew that Milly would never get the chance to grow up, I promised that no one would forget her, that she would be remembered and thought about with love.
I believe that I achieve this with Milly’s Smiles, the charity gives me a purpose, I feel that I can talk about Milly in the present (and that’s a huge deal), it also means I can help other families during what will be one of the worst times of their lives, and I can do so in Milly’s name.
I feel honoured and blessed to be Milly’s mum, I had 11 and a half years with her…it wasn’t and never will be enough…she is forever loved and endlessly missed.
“I love her with the utmost love of which my soul is capable, and she was taken from me. Yet in the agony of my spirit in surrendering such a treasure, I feel a thousand times richer than if I had never possessed it”.
William Wordsworth
We were thrilled to hear from Milly’s teacher from Playgroup, Liz contacted us to tell us that she was turning 60 and instead of presents, Liz was asking for donations to Milly’s Smiles and also for contributions of toiletries to go in our Milly Bags.
Earlier last week, Liz presented us with £150 which will fund a bag for a family and also a large amount of shower gel, shampoo and conditioner. This is brilliant and will keep us going for while.
Thank you so much to everyone who contributed and especially to Aunty Liz for supporting us, we are more than grateful, and wishing you a Very Happy 60th Birthday!
Today Morrisons at Great Harwood kindly offered to donate Jelly Babies to us for our Milly Bags on a regular basis. This makes such a huge difference to us and to have such great support from our local store is fantastic. Thank you to Amy the Community Champion – it was a pleasure to meet with you.
We were recently contacted by Paul from Grays Schoolwear in Blackburn, who wanted to do some fundraising for us whilst they had more footfall in the shop, combined with this they also wanted to raise some awareness for Milly’s Smiles too.
Paul has designed a carrier bag which will be sold in store, with all monies raised given to Milly’s Smiles, the store are also kindly displaying our collection tins. We love this, local support from local companies is fantastic.
It’s funny the turns that life takes, it was only a few years ago that we would be shopping in this store for all Milly’s school uniform…their support means such a lot to us.
Massive thank you to Paul and his team.
On Saturday 13th July at Tesco Stores on Queen Street, fire fighters from Great Harwood hosted their annual charity car wash. Shoppers were treated to the Crew washing their car for a donation to support The Firefighter’s Charity and Milly’s Smiles charity. The event was extremely well supported, it was a very hot day and the crew did a brilliant job in the heat.
We are always eager to know how people have heard about Milly’s Smiles and their reasons for supporting us, Crew Manager Jonathon Ford gave us this answer;
“Great Harwood Fire Station are always looking at how we can support local charities and community groups in whatever way we can, with The Firefighter’s Charity kindly allowing Fire Stations, such as ours, to the use their ‘National Car Wash’ event as a platform to promote, raise awareness and raise funds for other charities in addition to raising funds for their own cause.
The crew at Great Harwood became aware of Milly’s Smiles and the amazing work the charity does following the daughter of one of our Fire Service colleagues at Leyland Fire Station, receiving one of Milly’s Bags when their daughter was admitted to hospital following a diagnosis with leukaemia and learned about how it made a big difference to the family, as well as many other families, at such a difficult time and we wanted to help the charity raise funds towards providing Milly’s Bags to children diagnosed with cancer that have been admitted to hospital.
Once we found out the Charity was based in Great Harwood, the crew were keen to work with the charity and saw our Annual Car Wash event as a perfect opportunity to do just that.”
A huge thank you to the Crew for all their hard work on such a hot day, and everyone who had their car washed, and for their generous donations.
Earlier this month we were invited to meet the team at Primark in Burnley. The staff had nominated Milly’s Smiles as their charity for the year. We were thrilled to meet everyone and to listen to their brilliant ideas for fundraising for us. We look forward to working with them over the coming 12 months.
We were lucky enough to be invited to a Whalley Lions meeting on Wednesday where they presented us with a cheque for £520.
They held a Easter egg hunt and coffee morning with help from Whalley 2nd Guides.
We would like to say a huge thank you to everyone for their kind support, it was a pleasure to meet everyone.
