I just think this chick rocks...
Emily Thackray and her friend Emma Harris started a campaign for organ donation in the U.K. called “Live Life Then Give Life” – they are two awesome ladies.
I learned about Emily through another young lady who had been waiting for lungs in the U.K. named Justine Laymond. I’ll post about her sometime in the future too. Emily and Emma both have cystic fibrosis like me. In March, 2006, they started their campaign called “Live Life Then Give Life” – their website is at http://www.livelifethengivelife.co.uk/
Last December, they posted a beautiful little video – it’s available on their website, as well as on YouTube (and right here too!)
How could you look at that video and not want to help Emily get what she needs?!?! I’ve had so many precious faces like Emily’s in my life who were struggling… And more than anything, I wanted them to know what I know – to know what it feels like to breathe normally. In the past, I’ve posted about Lizzy and Megan – and there are so many others have touched my life who need lungs, or have received lungs. The coolest thing about this little video is that Emily received her beautiful, new lungs in January this year.
She's in the news quite often. Emily is a tireless supporter of organ donation and cystic fibrosis. Here is a little BBC news story published last month titled "Each breath I take is so precious."
Emily blogs at pinkandsmiley.blogspot.com I love reading her posts – she writes about friends, about friends in need, and about friends lost… She writes about adventures and about the new “landmarks” she reaches… Her blog title is “This is my life, and I choose to love it.” Her postings make that so obvious. She describes her blog as, “My life on a plate! A place where I get to waffle on about anything and everything, and hopefully raise some awareness about Cystic Fibrosis and organ donation on the way.” I think she’s doing a pretty good job of raising awareness.
Emily writes beautifully – she makes me feel warm... She makes me smile... Sometimes she makes me cry. And I think I just love the way the British phrase things – I love it when “Mum” doesn’t mean being quiet, and anyone who uses “whilst” is OK by me!
A few weeks ago, Emily posted about a family BBQ at the end, she wrote:
My dad stood up at the beginning of the meal to do a toast; to a summer we have been waiting hoping and wishing for, and to many more family experiences over the coming months. As we were clearing away, I came back out into the garden to see my parents standing there hugging, and overheard my dad saying how this was everything they had dreamed, everything they had been hoping for over the last 2 years. See it’s not only my life that has been changed unimaginably for the better; it’s also deeply affected all of theirs.
I walked down to the post-box a couple of roads away yesterday evening. Everything was bathed in that gorgeous deep gold evening summer light, which seems to highlight the surfaces of everything it touches and makes it shimmer. I wandered down the road, lost in my own thoughts, enjoying the solitude and the independence that I had so desperately craved for the last few years. Everything this summer seems so new and exciting, it’s such a long time since I did any of this, and I am loving every second.
I think I understand exactly how Emily feels...
