AnissaMayhew
Married, stay at home mom
AnissaMayhew has been a member for 28 weeks.
I’m 34 years old and I live in Brandon, Florida (a suburb of Tampa) with my husband and kids. I was adopted from Korea at age 3 and grew up in a small farming community in Indiana. I graduated high school in Daytona Beach, never finished college and decided to go get my degree in “Keg Stands and Late Night Denny’s Runs” instead. Because, really, what was I going to do with a communications degree? I’ve been a waitress, a barista, a bartender, a computer tech, production assistant and craft service provider for TV/Video production and now I’m a SAHM with a 10-year-old son, 7-year-old daughter and 4 year-old-daughter. I met my husband online, I got my kids the old fashion way. I started blogging in July 2006, days after my youngest was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. The original purpose of the blog was to have a way of sharing updates on her treatment and health, but it soon morphed into a tell-all medium for the stranger-than-fiction chaos that makes up our lives. I grew up in a Baptist household, but my personal relationship with God didn’t start until 2000, and it has grown stronger every day. My faith in the Lord has sustained us though 3 incredibly straining years with me having a stroke in 2005 and then my daughter’s journey through cancer. I am thankful to Him every day for the many blessings with which I’ve been gifted. This blog has been my therapy, my tool to raise awareness of what it’s like to live with pediatric cancer and my way to share my faith with others. Living in the Tampa area when Peyton was diagnosed with cancer was a real God thing. We have been blessed with support and encouragement like I never dreamed was possible. We are very involved with a tight-knit community of cancer families and we are very active in the push to make our voices heard for the needs of children battling cancer. I don’t pull punches, I don’t gloss over the brutal reality, I don’t make nicey-nice on truth. I talk about cancer a lot, I talk about the kids who have cancer a LOT, I get up on my soapbox and rant and rave about cancer A LOT. But (and how thankful I am) our lives are about more than that. I think my favorite quote about the life of a parent with a child fighting cancer is “Having a child with cancer is like swimming in a toilet bowl. Some may have a bigger piece of crap to hold onto to stay afloat, but it’s all still crap.” We never stop fighting. We never stop praying. We never stop hoping.
