The month of March has a significant meaning for me.  It’s colon cancer awareness month but it’s also the month my only child died from this horrible disease. Make no mistake – I’m a grieving mother.  My daughter Queah (pronounce: Quaya) had just turned 27 when she was diagnosed.  She fought it.  Beat it. Three and a half years later it came back with a vengeance.  I’ll never forget when she said “mom, this cancer is trying to kill me”.  It did just that on May 19, 2011.  I was her caregiver and watched her take her last breath. Part of me died right along with her.

Back then, I put many of my thoughts into words in this blog. Writing helped me through some of the darkest days. They all have titles and a few of my favorites are… “Things I Must Do”, “Charished Things” and my all time favorite, “These Three Words”. Here’s an excerpt from that post written about ten years ago…

One year, four months and 20 days.  That’s how long it’s been since colon cancer killed my daughter Queah.  There hasn’t been one single day that I haven’t thought about her since.  In fact, there was a point not so long ago when I felt I wasn’t going to make it through this – not in one piece.  The pain at times just seemed to cut right through my heart.  In the beginning I was as fast as an Olympic sprinter – I could outrun the pain.  I found many distractions with the biggest being my work.  But the faster I ran, grief was always on my heels.  As I write this story I am still very much shaken, very much heartbroken.   Recently someone brought to my attention — someone made something very clear to me through three important words that I now can’t get out of my head.  These three words – “it gets better”. (You can read this and other posts on this website).

No — the grief doesn’t go away but yes — it does gets better.  One thing that helped was creating the non-profit organization called Donna Terrell’s Yoga Warriors Fighting Colon Cancer.  We’re in our 7th year and we’ve been able to raise awareness of the disease – especially in young people even without a family history of colon cancer.   We’ve also introduced cancer survivors and caregivers to the benefits of yoga through yoga classes.  We’ve provided life saving nutritional supplements to cancer survivors and we’ve covered the cost of housing survivors when they’re in town for treatment at local hospitals and treatment centers. This year our organization will purchase medical equipment that can remove stage I and stage II colon cancers non-invasively.  This is huge accomplishment for us and you’ll hear more about it soon.   All of our efforts are made possible through donations and our two annual fundraisers – Yoga Warriors Community-Wide Yoga event, which is Saturday, March 14 from 10a.m. to 12p.m. at the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Little Rock.  Our second annual Warrior Golf Tournament also generates funds.  It will be held Monday, September 28th at Maumelle Country Club!

It feels good to be able to help cancer survivors but I still long for my daughter.  I think about how life would be if she were still here.  I miss her so much and still cry many times when I think about or talk about her.  Yes – I’m still a grieving mother.  Yoga Warriors exists because of Queah and I know she would be proud of the work that’s being done and all the lives that have been touched in her honor.  

Learn more about Donna Terrell’s Yoga Warriors Fighting Colon Cancer at http://www.yogawarriors.org