Rosanna’s Journey Bags

Hi Friends,

I’m working on a little project close to my heart and want to share.

For Mother’s Day last year I gave Rosanna a Vera Bradley bag and filled it with some magazines, snacks, tissues, a notebook and pens, and a bracelet. She started chemo the next day and the bag went with her to Brewer. For Christmas I upgraded her bag to take to chemo a bit. For some reason the chemo bag always felt important. We haven’t had the heart to empty out her chemo bag yet almost 6 months after her last treatment.

One day while Rosanna was getting a treatment, I was telling her about a girl I follow on Instagram who had stage 4 kidney cancer and had been fighting for nearly 6 years, Kim Can Kick It. She had such an inspirational story and a huge following. She reminded me a lot of Rosanna, she had a rare and aggressive form of cancer, she had a young child, a loving husband and family including close sisters, and she always made her health a top priority even before her cancer diagnosis. She also founded a non-profit organization called Lifted by Angels. Each year for her birthday she would ask her followers to donate her age in money (I think she was 32) and she would then buy tote bags and fill them with products for young moms who were being treated with chemo. People could nominate recipients and they just needed to be in active treatment, a young mother, and live in Utah. I couldn’t nominate Rosanna for the last reason, but Rosanna didn’t care about that. But she loved the idea. I clearly remember her saying “When I get better I want us to make care bags for people diagnosed with cancer in this area.” She said when she had Owen she walked out of the hospital with a little new mom care package and a precious newborn baby. When she was diagnosed with cancer she walked out with fear and a lot of questions. At the time of our conversation it was looking as if treatment was going successfully, so I had no doubt Rosanna and I would be working on this project together for years to come.

Just last week a friend of mine posted a GoFundMe link for a young woman in this area recently diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer. She is 30 years old and has young children. I went to the page and started to make a donation, but then hesitated. I could give her some money or I could give her a gift from my heart and Rosanna’s and try to connect with her. It took me a couple days to get the courage to reach out to this woman. I wasn’t at all afraid to offer her encouragement and support, but I was afraid of her reaction. It wouldn’t take her too much time to dig up the fact that my sister is no longer here with us, and I didn’t want that to scare her. I finally got enough courage after talking to a couple of friends and was thrilled to hear back from her very quickly. She truly appreciated the support and told me she is ready to fight but she’s terrified. I’ve written to her several times the past week and have gotten to know a little bit about her treatment plans and checked on her after her port surgery. She starts chemo this week and is on a similar treatment plan as Rosanna was.

With the help of some friends and family, I want to show you the first Rosanna’s Journey bag. This bag will be shipped to my new friend’s home in Ellsworth very soon. The dream was to hand deliver this at her treatment at the Lafayette Center, but Covid is preventing that. While I hope we won’t have to make a lot of these bags, I do hope I can hand deliver the ones I make in the future.

I got this Sea Bag from Brooklin Candy and will fill it with ginger candy, a homemade face mask, tissues, a stainless steel tumbler and straw, hand ointment, hand sanitizer, a deck of cards, pens and a gratitude journal, a nail file, lip balm, a beanie, Chaga Mann tea, healthy-ish snacks, and of course a fun book & Rosanna’s Readers bookmark.

If you know of a young mom who is undergoing chemo, please, please, please send me a message. I would love to connect with her to offer encouragement and would also love to put together a Rosanna’s Journey bag to take to treatments. Also, if you have any ideas for future bags, please feel free to share your ideas with me! Other ideas I have are gift cards to Starbucks or Dunkin’, gas cards, blankets, comfy socks, and a devotional book. The items in this bag are good quality and things I think will be useful at the cancer center, for instance the tumbler will fit under the water dispenser (trust me this is important!) and the beanie is made of bamboo to keep her head cool. I’m hoping to take this project a step further and start sending some Rosanna’s Readers books to her children as well.

Kim Can Kick It sadly died on Valentine’s Day, 13 days before Rosanna did. Of course I had convinced Rosanna to follow Kim and the news of her death came out just as we were learning Rosanna’s time was running out as well. These two women provided so much inspiration to me, I want to pick up where they left off and make them proud.

Xo, Laura

Journey bag that went to a woman at my church undergoing chemotherapy.