How many rubber band bracelets does it take to send one child on an Inheritance of Hope Legacy Retreat®?  

Nine-year-old Hayden Cochran raised $1300 for IoH families

 

March 18, 2021 marks the 48th birthday of Inheritance of Hope Co-Founder Kristen Grady Milligan.  Now, eight years after she passed away, many in our IoH family never knew Kristen.  Instead, most of you only know of   her as the loving mom who cement...

On October 11, 2020,  Dana Gilmour ran the Chicago Marathon, by himself, near his home of Portsmouth, Rhode Island.  He was the only runner in this race, but he wasn’t alone.  Friends, supporters, his children, and women affected in some way by breast cancer joined him for the last few miles, and all along the route he carried the legacy of his late wife Amy.

 

Dana with his supporters, the proudest of whom are his children.  Son Davin shared, “I thought he did a really good job because he completed his goals of raising money.”

 

 

October 26 marks eight years since our Co-Founder Kristen Milligan passed away.  Kristen spent too much time in the gray space of uncertainty--waiting at doctor’s offices, waiting for test results, waiting for a cure. In 2010, she wrote about this state of living in one of her blog posts titled “Waiting Room.”  

 

“In fact, each of us spends our entire life in the ‘waiting room,’ wondering what God’s plan is and wrestling to discern His purpose for us, all the while struggling against it because we would prefer to think we know best.  A major life event like a surgery or life-threatening illness only brings that reality to the fore.” 

 

 

 

Originally written in September 2010, Kristen’s words hold true a decade later.

 

I just heard Jonny Diaz's "Waiting Room" on the radio for the first time.  With another major surgery approaching and the thought of hours waiting for the results, the lyrics immediately captured my attention:

 

Here in this waiting room yearning for You to say go
And though I’m convinced that a yes would be best
This time You’re telling me no

It's not that I don't have an answer
It's just not the one that I'd like
But through this time Lord I must keep in mind
You're always wiser than I

 

 

For months, Leeland Garrison heard about Inheritance of Hope.  His school raised money to send families on Legacy Retreats®, and then his dad became a retreat volunteer last November.  A friend attended the April 2020 eLegacy Retreat™, and by July, Leeland decided he wanted to be involved himself. So, the entrepreneurial rising fourth-grader and budding philanthropist organized a lemonade stand. 

 

“I had the idea to do one a couple of years ago, but we just never followed through with it,” he says.  “But I started learning a lot about IoH, and my dad went on a retreat, and all this crazy stuff happened like my friend’s mom got cancer.  So, my mom said we could have one on the Fourth of July.”  And have one they did.

 

Leeland’s marketing strategies helped him easily surpass his fundraising goal!

 

 

 

Inheritance of Hope spoke with two of Holley Kitchen’s sisters, Missy Hobbs and Teri Larcom. They shared with us three pieces of advice based on how Holley lived out her last months. Holley battled metastatic breast cancer and passed away in January 2016. She serves on as a champion for researching a cure and building an intentional legacy. We celebrate her on "Holley Day", October 13. 

  

 

 

 

Of all the things Holley Rothell Kitchen wanted to be—wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend—the role she is most widely known for is something no one wants to be: the face of metastatic breast cancer. Like most true heroes, Holley was an ordinary woman facing extraordinary circumstances. How she soared beyond those confines will forever define her as a champion of this disease. 

 

 

When Jen Roett saw Kendra Scott’s metastatic breast cancer necklace charm set on Instagram, “I was like, ‘done!’” she raves, “And I bought it as soon as it came out.”  One-year-old daughter Kennedy loved it as much as mom, and when she reached in to get a closer look, pulled the necklace right off Jen’s neck.

 

Jen went to the Kendra Scott website to find out how she could get her brand-new jewelry repaired, stumbled upon the relationship between Kendra Scott and Inheritance of Hope, and she says, “I began hysterically sobbing, I was so moved.”  The very next day, Jen signed up to volunteer on the February 2019 Legacy RetreatⓇ to Orlando, which was sponsored by Kendra Scott, for families affected by metastatic breast cancer.   

As a young widow raising five children, Andrea Albanese wants her late husband Jim to be remembered and acknowledged. “Culturally, we are afraid of grief and afraid to say the name of the person who passed away,” she laments.  “People might drop off a casserole and run. But, I would say to please talk about my husband with my kids. They want to hear about their father. He is still part of our lives.”   

 

And that is exactly why a special gift created just for Andrea made such an impression on her last October. 

 

Andrea and Jim shortly before he passed away