An Open Thank You Letter To: Dragonfly co-founders, Ria and Christine, and our friends at The Dragonfly Foundation,
This email has been a long time coming. You may need tissues by the time I am finished. I don’t even know where to begin. All I do know is you were the light and continue to be in the darkest time of our lives. To see my daughter smile and be a kid (even if for a few hours) is amazing. Our family has been through a lot since our D day and we continue to hit road block after road block.
Because of the many sponsors you have, Dragonfly has given my child the opportunity to hang out with Reds players, she has been able to have front row tickets for Phantom and also be super close to the stage for Little Mermaid and her other dragonfly friends when she has come to the landing for our PNO. She finds comfort in seeing a dragonfly. She looks for one on the scariest days as we walk the halls of the hospital. If we are in a store, she seems to find one. She smiles. She smiles because she realizes that she isn’t alone. She knows she isn’t alone in this fight as long as the dragonfly is around! She went to camp Joy this year with Childrens and her dragonfly friends where there! She knew other kiddos because she is a part of you!
She came home missing camp. She came home with stories and she came home with memories. The memories that may not have been possible had we not became a part of you. You have given my sweet girl something to look forward to when she sees your care packages in the mail. She loves opening the card and seeing “A dragonfly has landed on you”. You gave our family an amazing memory with the family portraits. We were able to capture a moment in time when we had true smiles. I sit and look at pictures from “before” and then I look at the after. What I see is what cancer took from us. It took our happy. It took our safety, it took our security. What your picture captured was a smiling family who was together, who is weathering the storm and who has support.
When my grandma was diagnosed with cancer you made her an honorary dragonfly. That was comfort for her. When I told her she was a dragonfly she smiled. She knew what they meant to us. I am glad it brought her comfort in her final weeks. Had it not been for you urging me to come to a PNO I wouldn’t have met the wonderful ladies I now have as friends. These friends were there for me to lean on when I lost my grandma. They knew what I was feeling. Even though they couldn’t bring her back, they said words that brought comfort, “I understand”. It’s because of you, its because of you that I have these ladies who support me even when it’s not about my dragonfly.
I can’t thank you enough for what Dragonfly means to our family. I could keep going on and on about how wonderful you are but I won’t. I just want to say thank you. Thank you for the sponsors who make what you do possible. Thank you for the community connections you provide and thank you for just being there when we need something, even if its just a shoulder to cry on. To see a dragonfly, it makes me smile. It lets me know I am not alone and even though dark days are here, it means we have a light to look for.
-A Dragonfly Family
