Hope Raisers

I am Hope Raising for the Scleroderma Foundation to help those whose lives have been affected by this disease and I need your support!

I am excited to partner with the Scleroderma Foundation of New England and run the 26.2 miles from Hopkinton to Copley Square in tribute to my Auntie Moe.

I know Moe would have been excited for me to run the Boston Marathon and there is a good chance she would have had the loudest cheer on Boylston St. 

Moe was fun and fearless, she was compassionate and kind and becuase of scleroderma she was gone too soon.  

She fit alot of adventue into her 40 years of life; from swimming with the Kennedys to spending a year volunteering at an orphanage in Venezuela and later a year serving the community of Bethel AK before setteling down on a farm in Maine with her husband Dan and daugter Galina.  She was the aunt to oganize a cousin sleep over at Nana and Papas complete with facials and gooy brownies and she always and a story to tell the nieces and nephews who just thought she was the coolest . Like her mother and 3 older sisters Moe went into nursing and later went on to become a nurse practitioner, a path that I have proudly followed behind her.  Even 15 years after she left us she remains an inspiration to those who knew her and she will be forever missed. 

Scleroderma is an autoimmune disease that affects connective tissue of the body leading to a hardening or tightening of the tissue.  Although there are medications to slow down disease progression and help with symptoms, right now there is no cure for scleroderma.  The scleroderm foundation works to raise awareness, provide supprt for patients with scleroderma and help to advance research in the hopes of finding a cure.  If you would like to find out more about scleroderma and the Foundation, please visit national.scleroderma.org.

Many thanks for your support -- and don't forget to forward this to anyone who you think might want to donate too!