So much love

For a few weeks after my diagnosis, I found myself in a struggle: Should I be focused on dying well or living longer? If what the doctors said was true and I only had limited time left to live, I wanted to focus on the love that I leave behind. The problem is that it felt a little like giving up, like I was succumbing to cancer without putting up any sort of fight. On the other hand, if I ignored the fact that I might die soon and instead set my mind on living, I might miss this rare and wonderful opportunity to be very intentional about death.

I asked my palliative care doctor about it, and she suggested that I focus immediately on the legacy I want to leave behind and then move on to focus on surviving. I have put a lot of thought into what it means to leave a legacy, and it’s mostly about the people I love and the people who love me and tending those seeds of love so that they continue to grow well after I am gone.

I made it known to people in my circle that I wanted to fortify my legacy at Solar Prep by leaving money in a scholarship fund just for our girls. I wasn’t sure how it would work. Maybe I would need to do a fundraiser to get enough money to establish the fund. Maybe it would just be an idea that would somehow become reality in the future. I just put it out there, and on Thursday, it came back to me in a big way.

Bill Durham, a parent at Solar Prep and founding member of the Friends of Solar Prep Foundation board, surprised me by giving $10,000 to start the scholarship fund. He announced the donation at the end of an elaborate 30-minute school assembly dedicated solely to celebrating ME as part of Assistant Principal Appreciation Week. My family came into town and we sat while 460 amazing little girls showered me with love. It was hard to sit through the assembly knowing that every single person in the room deserves the same recognition. It was uncomfortable and somewhat humiliating, but it was also lovely and an honor to share the love of Solar Prep with my parents and my family.

The assembly itself was such an over-the-top-production that it truly deserves a post of its own. I’ll get to that later.

In the meantime, I return to Houston tomorrow with the hopes of getting into a clinical trial that combines chemotherapy and immunotherapy. If I don’t get into the trial, I’ll come back to Dallas to begin standard of care chemotherapy treatment. Either way, I will switch my focus from dying well to living longer. I can’t wait to be there in 2027 when the first recipient of the Solar Prep scholarship fund are announced!

Video by the one and only Rochelle Hailey