Interview on BBC radio program World Have Your Say

BBC World Have Your Say Interview with The Cancer Warrior Dec 16,2011 from Cancer Warrior on Vimeo.

I was honored and humbled to be requested by the BBC to speak about "The Topic of Cancer"  Here is my segment on the program.

Check out my podcast The Cancer Warrior on Empoweradio.com.  Available on demand and also available on Itunes.

Pay it Forward

Another guest blogger.  Enjoy

My name is Kurt Shattuck and I have started “Hobby Bracelets” because I have hope.

Hope that one good things turns into another.

Hope that everyone somewhere in some way can and will be effected by a change that they might not have seen before. 

I am NOT doing this to make myself tons of money or even hardly any. I am doing this for the cause.

Right now my cause is to help a local church in Petoskey, MI to raise money for a building. They currently meet in a Knights of Columbus and are charged a ridiculous amount for one day a week. The New Hope Community Church deserves better than that. And I have seen there are a few cause’s and charity’s that could use more than what they are getting so… 

I am no millionaire, I have no inheritance and I am currently in quite a bit of debt. But what I do have is a skill to make things and market them. So, I am using my gift God has given me to raise money to help this church get a home.

Then when they have all they need for the building fund I will help the next cause on my list and then the next and the next. This is not just some pipe dream. One dollar of every bracelet sold, or item sold as I am expanding my website slightly, will go toward the building fund for New Hope.

Now for anyone concerned with the math of it all. I offer FREE SHIPPING meaning that comes out of the price of the bracelet. Then I am donating one dollar of the sale to current cause of choice. Then I replace the cost of the material to make the bracelets or other item. That leaves me with 0.12 cents if someone buys a single color bracelet for 4.50… and 0.62 cents for a two color… and finally 1.12 for three color... see I’m not planning on making tons of money for myself off this business. This started as a hobby hence the name “Hobby Bracelets”. And after selling my first 3 I realized that if I could… I could do something good with this business. If everyone in the US bought just one bracelet. That’s effectively 307,006,550 dollars that I could use towards various different cause’s… churches needing buildings or new equipment… breast cancer research… diabetes research… helping people who can’t afford to pay their bills because of hard times… helping people buy quit smoking items because saving up to get them is harder than the six dollar pack of cigarettes… starting a foundation where people can get assistance with living when the government says they can’t…

My hope isn’t just for me… it isn’t to see my bank account swell… I want to see smiles on the faces of kids who don’t get Christmas’… I want to see hope is someone else’s eyes that hasn’t seen it in awhile…

I make all the bracelets by hand myself. This is not some huge company that has machines to make them all and never will be. So even if I do sell 307 million bracelets I will make every last one of them by hand.

Although at anytime most of us can stop what we are doing and look around to see tens of hundreds of people around us. Most of us travel our lives with blinders on. I heard a song called “Give me your eyes” by Brandon Heath and it changed me in an instant. I was a blinded, spiteful, arrogant jerk who cared only about why God was dealing him such a crappy hand in life. But when I heard this song for the first time I instantly saw everything I was doing and who I had become in life. I knew I had more to give than what I was.

I am writing this as a blog for the first blog I have ever written. I didn’t really know what to say I just kept writing what was in my heart. So I hope anyone who reads this can see the passion and drive that I have to help and will at least take a look at my website and maybe even if you don’t want one you may have a friend who likes them.

Also on a related yet side note if you don’t want a bracelet I also take donations for the current cause which will always be posted on the bottom of the home page under the donation button. And if you want to I am donating all the money I get from the ads I have on my website so you can also help by clicking on the ads.

I had someone ask me why I decided to do this… and the only thing I could come up with to say was, “because doing nothing is no longer an option.” I have had this ‘someone else will take care of it’ attitude my whole life and now it’s time to realize that they won’t. 

Do not withhold good from those whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it

     - Proverbs 3:27

What its like to survive

Another guest blogger. Enjoy.

What’s it like to survive? Have you or someone you really care about ever survived something that could have changed things forever?

Being a survivor sets you apart from other people in that you have a totally different view on things after “surviving”. No, I am not suggesting that we survivors are better than other people or anything like that; after all it’s friends and family who helped us survive, bring us through the hard times, and stand behind us as we continue on our journey. In a way, they survived too and are a part of the survival team. Think about it, a mom having to watch her child go through treatments for cancer? When that’s all over, you better believe she feels like a survivor also!

Survivors of car wrecks, wars and other diseases all know that they have, for some reason, been given a second chance; and I’d like to think that second chance, was not by “chance” exactly. Now my next comment is not to just show my fascination with conspiracy theories and secret clubs like the “Skull and Bones”, but I would like to think of survivors as being in their own little club too. (Unfortunately, we don’t rule the world though!)

As a survivor, first and foremost, we realize that we are temporary. No matter how great things are today and at this moment, we know that it can all change in an instant. We carry this attitude with us at all times. Whether we are at the Christmas party hanging out with friends and cutting up (break dancing in some cases), or at home relaxing with our families, our survival and what “could” and “could have” happened is always tucked away within us. We know that the unthinkable does not just happen to “other people.”

Now, this all shouldn’t read as the “poor little survivors”, because we are not “poor little survivors”; we are “blessed little survivors.” We now have a new appreciation for the smallest things, for all kinds of people that enter our life; we now take the time. That’s what it’s like to survive!

Ryan Hamner is a 4-time survivor of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and a singer-songwriter who travels performing and speaking to those affected by cancer. Please check out his new song, “Survivors Survive” online at http://www.hearthehearttour.com and learn about his community for cancer survivors at http://www.2surviveonline.com .