Third Annual Recognition Dinner Recap

Fabulous Evening....the first event that went so smoothly.  So you know there were many hands making that happen.  Shout out to our 'day of' workers...Lisa Gruenfelder, Peggy Goutink, Barbara Donnellan, Karen F (way too complicated a name...aka Lisa's sister-in-law), Teresa Doherty and Denise DeCarlo Humphrey.

There are also nerves...will they come?  will I botch up a word speaking? do I have to speak? no band? deejay? enough raffles? venues?  what day, what time?  ....these worries are endless...Debbie and I tried very hard to allay our fears and concerns because it always works out...historically we went into the last week needing guests and each time we sold out ...even on the last day we were getting requests to come.....breathe.

And our friends and family not only put up with us, but they get it!!.. and remind us 'it will be fine."  But you may know we don't want "fine" although with china fine is a great description - we want "fabulous"...or fabulous enough to really celebrate these women.

That is what this night is about and it is worth every effort when we can share their stories and have others realize why they were chosen as our honorees.

This annual event is based on our motto to inspire, empower and strengthen, with each survivor representing one of the three words, but just like Evelyn each honoree past and present bears all these aspects. This year we are excited to present our first annual “Evelyn Knapp Benevolence” Award to one of the most generous and gracious supporters we have. 

Annette, Maryann & Margaret

Let me introduce our honorees...(words taken from the night's introductions)

Inspire - Maryann Graham

Inspire- to fill with enlivening emotion, to affect and guide, 

to stimulate to action, to motivate.... 

Enlivening emotion - oh yeah!! Any one who knows Maryann would say that this is the perfect way to describe her! Ready to incite a party at all costs, ask her about how she wooed the Harlem Globe Trotters using only a few small boxes of cereal at one of our last wellness retreats.

You can normally identify her by her fingernails as oppose to her finger prints....they usually have some inspiring script written on them like her most recent message “bleep cancer”..... she does love nails, she even polished nails to raise money for the Evelyn Knapp Memorial Run this past November.

While nails make Maryann happy so does going into the city to see “the kid” we only learned tonight 'Amanda' is her daughter's name.

So these things put a smile on her face, but her love for animals can bring her to tears.

Andy Rooney said that animal owners are “nicer than the average person”. Animals love unconditionally, forgive immediately, they donʼt pretend to like you and they donʼt disappoint. It is no wonder that you have a bond with all animals, their positive attributes mirror your personality.

Maryann has really put herself on the front lines for us , she has raised an enormous amount of money for last years run and she continues to support us in everything she does whether it be soliciting donations or just spreading the word about Strength for Life. Recently while at a cancer seminar she called to reprimand us for not having brochures displayed there.

Maryann has such comfort and is so uplifting to those around her, she is the person you want to be seated next to because her energy is so infectious - she truly inspires others to embrace life, to enjoy life and to live every moment to the fullest....we are thankful to have you in our circle, Maryann, and are blessed to know you!!

Maryann Graham

*****

Empower - Annette Gerani

Breast cancer…and then some….4 surgeries in 3 years…countless number of chemo and radiation therapies…a gifted artist …a gifted artist forced to adapt to her temporary limitations, going from beautiful  murals to intimate works of amazing artistry.

The meaning of the word Empower….

The quality to take control of your life and become         

stronger and more confident…..clearly this is what Annette has done and why she is our “empower” honoree.

As with what appears to be this years theme, Annette also like to display poignant messages about what she feels cancer should do ….

She is an animal lover, as well, particularly cats – especially Chester!

She has become quite a gifted “bitstrip” master and I have to be careful about what is being said here because I know I will become a comic strip before the end of this evening…..Jacqui has been in more than a few hilarious ones- sometimes taking the form of different shapes, sizes and ages…

A little more about Annette---she loves Lady Gaga, Marilyn Monroe and the meatball place – (that’s a plug for you,  Donna Reale)– but those that take center stage are Amanda – her daughter and her niece affectionately nicknamed “mini me.”

Annette is passionate, head strong, resolute in her beliefs, grounded and extremely compassionate – her softer side may not be initially apparent but spend just a little time with her and you will experience her empathy.

She is passionate about empowering others on their cancer journey and she certainly holds no bars in advising them. Challenged continuously for the last 4 years – and still choosing to use her humor and artistry to get through each trial lands her a special spot on the Strength for Life tapestry.

 

Annette Gerani

(side bar)Now let me tell you about the 'show stopping' acceptance speech from Annette - 

she twirled and sang excerpts from Lady Gaga tunes...got to love her! 

Next year she will be the emcee!  

*****

Strengthen - Margaret McAdorey

The meaning of Strength, is to have courage, to persevere, to withstand adversity, fear or difficulty. As we sat down to consider our survivors as honorees we were in awe of all you endured in such a short time and it was clear to us that “strengthen” was the perfect fit.

  

In March of 2011 , Margaret’s husband had major surgery for a heart condition which turned into a lengthy, complicated hospital and rehab stay - during this time, she had to have surgery for a complex ovarian cyst. All seemed fine until Margaret got the call a week after her surgery that she had ovarian cancer – it happened to be on the same day her husband returned home after his 5 week hospital and rehab stay.

Margaret's cancer journey officially began in May 2011 after her 2nd surgery to evaluate the extent of the cancer. It was deemed an aggressive form.  Months of chemotherapy totally depleted her strength and endurance and, worse yet, her confidence in her ability to accomplish everyday tasks.

She shares a story of how she remembers looking up a flight of stairs and feeling so defeated with just the thought of having to actually climb them. But being defeated was not what Margaret had in mind, slowly and with great perseverance she worked her way back to feeling not only like “herself” but maybe even better!

Margaret's daughter is the one responsible for finding Strength for Life for her - she brought her a workout outfit and told her to go to the Stony Brook Class – we are so thankful to her daughter for the introduction. Class would not be the same without Margaret - she is known as the “official counter” which others in the class

are grateful for! She does incredible walking lunges, spanning the whole length of SB Cancer Center! And she is smiling during all of it!!

She is a small package with a big punch, always up for any challenge – she has the “I CAN” attitude that everyone needs to adopt. To Margaret it seems to come naturally.

Strengthen is what you represent for your family, for other survivors and for us... and we thank you for sharing yourself with us!  

Margaret McAdorey

*****

First Annual “Evelyn Knapp Benevolence Award”  

Donna Reale.

(Debbie speaking) Donna and I have been friends since we were 'tweens' and that was before the term tween was coined! So it has been awhile, and although she certainly deserves an award for putting up with me for that long that is not why she is being honored her tonight.

When Strength for Life was form she was there to support in anyway, she became our ‘go to person’ for advice since our first attempt at fundraising, Jac and I always say that we know exercise but we fly by the seat of our pants for everything else that comes along with running a non profit. We are forced to learn as we go and Donna has been an invaluable resource.

Her standard lines are “what do you need?” and “what can I do?”

She comes from a place of true generosity and is so humble, always wanting to remain in the background. Kind of why she is not loving us for this award!

But please know that this is not me!  SFL has been talking about doing an Evelyn Knapp award of some kind and being that Evelyn gave so much of herself to others we knew that 'benevolence' fit the honor.

The moment we decided on incorporating this into our annual event the first thing  everyone involved said was that Donna from 'Popei's ' should be the first recipient –

- so there you have it - unanimous vote.

When I called 'D' to let her know that she was nominated for this award, she was like why are you doing that?? no way, - my response was “because you deserve to be recognized” then she said - “Deb, thank you is enough”

So thank you Donna!

Donna offers before we can even ask and gives more than we would ever expect. 

Her restaurant has been a venue for fundraisers and she even provided incredible off site catering for our first recognition dinner – people are still talking about the food that was served that night!

Her commitment to SFL began maybe even before she fully understood the realm of our organization. But in 2010 Donna accompanied her sister in law, Toni Ann who has since lost her battled cancer, to a wellness retreat and this is where Donna witnessed first hand what Strength for Life does.

I remember Donna commenting at the end of the retreat that she was so proud of our work and so impressed with what we do – these comments meant the world to me.

A quote by Mother Teresa that reminds us of Donna is

“It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.”

The dollar amount of the generosity to our small non profit is monumental to us,  

but the genuine gift from her heart is immeasurable.

Thank you Donna for your friendship and your support and your commitment to Strength for Life, we are pleased to present you with this "Proclamation" from the Legislator of Patchogue.

Donna Reale & Debbie Hughes

 *****

......to be continued

Immediate ways you can help Strength for Life...

As you may know Strength for Life provides FREE exercise classes and wellness retreats to cancer patients/survivors on Long Island.  We hold classes at various venues to make it as accessible as possible for the survivor to be compliant to an exercise program.  Classes are held at Stony Brook Cancer Center, Winthrop Hospital, Mather Hospital, STARS Rehabilitation and Long Island Cancer Help and Wellness Center.  New venues are always considered. Strength for Life relies on our fundraising efforts to afford these programs and your help is greatly appreciated.

How can you help Strength for Life, your friends, family and neighbors?

We are holding our Third Annual Recognition Dinner on June 1st at the Upsky in Hauppauge. Our honorees this year are Annette Gerani, Maryann Graham and Margaret McAdorey - who we are blessed to know. And our First Annual Evelyn Knapp Benevolence Award to Donna Reale of Popei's, Deer Park.
Please join us!

To purchase tickets : click here.

OR

Please consider a donation to our team "Strength for Life" participating in the LI2Day Walk for Breast and Other Women's Cancers on June 7th. Each team member is committed to raise $500 - every dollar helps.

Long Island 2 Day Walk to Fight Breast Cancer

www.li2daywalk.org

These are two simple ways you can help your friends, family and neighbors that are battling cancer feel their absolute best during treatment and recovery. There are so many recent studies regarding exercise during treatment and recovery here is just one.

“There is no exercise better for the heart 

than reaching down and lifting people up.” 

~ John Holmes

May is skin cancer detection and prevention month

Sun Safety Gets Easier With EWG’s 

2014 Guide to Sunscreens

Every year, more than 2 million Americans find out they have skin cancer. At a time when most other cancer rates are in retreat, the rate of newly diagnosed cases of melanoma — the most deadly skin cancer — has tripled since the 1970s.

What is responsible for this epidemic? Though there’s no single or definitive answer, most experts attribute many of these new cases to widespread overexposure to sun. Paradoxically, while increasing numbers of Americans say they are aware of the dangers of the sun’s ultraviolet rays, they are still reporting a worrisome number of sunburns, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For these bad sun safety habits, much blame falls on poor-quality sunscreens and misleading sunscreen advertising that leads people to believe, wrongly, that their products protect their skin from too much sun.

For busy shoppers faced with a sea of beautifully-packaged bottles and tubes, the trick is figuring out which sunscreen represents the best value – and will get used by the whole family. EWG’s 2014 Guide to Sunscreens is designed to empower consumers with a user-friendly searchable database that puts them in charge.

And this year, for the first time, EWG has launched a Sun Safety public education campaign in partnership with dermatologists and sunscreen companies. The campaign aims to make sun safety as essential as seat belts. At the core of EWG’s Sun Safety campaign is the shared conviction that the American public, young people in particular, need a wake-up call about sun safety and clear, compelling strategies to reduce the risks of skin damage and cancer related to sun exposure and tanning beds.

Over the past eight years, as EWG has investigated the performance of American sunscreens, we’ve seen surprisingly few improvements in the safety and effectiveness of sunscreens sold by mass-marketed brands.

Yet because of increasing consumer awareness and innovation by small companies, Americans have more good choices. More zinc- and titanium-based mineral sunscreens are on the market, and that’s a good thing, because they do not penetrate the skin and offer stable and lasting UV protection.

One-third of the beach and sport sunscreens we have assessed for the current summer season offer good skin protection and are free of ingredients with serious safety concerns.

That means two-thirds of the sunscreens in our analysis don’t work well enough or contain ingredients that may be toxic. American stores are still stocked with inferior products.

Regulations enforced by the federal Food and Drug Administration are feeble, tardy and full of gaps. The FDA’s first major set of sunscreen regulations, 36 years in the making, took effect in December 2012 and proved far too weak to transform the market. They restricted some of the most egregious claims on sunscreen labels, among them, the patently false “waterproof” and “sweatproof. ” As well, the FDA ended the sale of powder sunscreens and towelettes — products too thin to protect skin from ultraviolet rays. Moreover, powders with zinc oxide and titanium dioxide nanoparticles posed a serious inhalation hazard.

But the FDA’s task is only beginning. The agency wants to set an upper limit on sunscreen SPF claims, but that proposed regulation is winding slowly through the tortuous regulatory thicket. It is considering banning spray sunscreens on grounds they are ineffective and could cause lung damage. And it is under pressure from Congress, advocates and manufacturers to approve some European sunscreen ingredients. Until the agency accelerates its efforts to ensure the long-term safety and effectiveness of sunscreen ingredients, Americans will not have access to the best possible products.

Broad spectrum protection – Almost every American-marketed sunscreen with an SPF of 15 or higher meets the FDA’s rules for “broad spectrum protection,” meaning that it can claim to protect skin against both ultraviolet A and B rays. The catch is, the FDA has set a low bar. According to our modeling of sunscreen ingredients and their effectiveness, EWG estimates that half of the U.S. sunscreens that meet the FDA rules would not make it to store shelves in Europe, where, since 2006, sunscreen makers have voluntarily complied with stricter European Union standards (European Commission 2006).

European ingredients – The most common UVA filter in American sunscreens is a chemical called avobenzone, approved by the FDA in 1972. The agency has not approved a new sunscreen chemical since 1999. Beginning in 2003, U.S. sunscreen companies petitioned the FDA for approval to formulate their products with eight chemicals used as UV filters in Europe and elsewhere. The agency has failed to act on petitions for six of these ingredients, including four that appear to offer stronger UVA protection than avobenzone or other UVA screens now permitted by FDA. These chemicals – Mexoryl SX, Mexoryl XL, Tinosorb S and Tinosorb M — could improve the effectiveness of U.S. sunscreens if approved. The FDA has been so slow in investigating promising sunscreen ingredients that Sen. John Reed (D-Rhode Island) has introduced the “Sunscreen Innovation Act” to spur it to take action. Click here to see EWG’s Congressional testimony

High SPF – Sky-high SPF numbers are no measure of sunscreen effectiveness. A sunscreen’s sun protection factor, or SPF, measures its ability to deflect skin burning UV rays, primarily UVB rays. The SPF value does not reflect the product’s ability to filter out UVA rays that, according to a growing body of evidence, cause skin damage, immune suppression and possibly melanoma. Studies show that people who use high-SPF products are exposed to as many or more ultraviolet rays than those who use lower-SPF products. Many experts believe that people get a false sense of security from those big numbers, don’t apply enough sunscreen, wait too long before reapplying and spend too much time in bright sun.

Fully 15 percent of beach and sport sunscreens on the market this year are labeled with SPF values greater than 50+. The FDA has proposed to limit SPF claims to 50+ but has not issued a legally binding regulation to that end. By contrast, the European Commission rule caps SPF claims at 50+.

Sprays and powders – One in three sunscreens in EWG’s database for this year is a spray. In 2011 FDA said it lacked data to confirm that spray products are safe and effective. It asked manufacturers to provide proof that sprays form a layer of sunscreen thick enough to protect skin and to show that sprays don’t pose inhalation risks. If the agency does not receive sufficient data to substantiate these products’ safety, the FDA can bar them. But until the agency takes decisive action, sprays remain on store shelves, and many shoppers buy them for ease of application

The FDA has issued a rule barring sunscreen and makeups in loose powder form from claiming SPF protection. But several powders are still on the market. These contain zinc or titanium nanoparticles that should not be inhaled. Powders also have a practical drawback; users cannot tell if they are applying a thick, even coating essential for UV protection.

Many of this year’s crop of sunscreen products contain potentially toxic ingredients. Among them:

·         Vitamin A, also known as retinyl palmitate and retinol – This ingredient is in about 20 percent of the beach and sport sunscreens and 12 percent of SPF moisturizers in this year’s database. It is used in regular makeup as an anti-aging ingredient. It has been shown to hasten the development of skin tumors and lesions on sun-exposed skin. Data on the potential skin cancer risk of retinyl palmitate have been public since 2010, but most sunscreen makers have not abandoned this chemical as they should. EWG recommends against using sunscreen and cosmetics whose labels disclose the presence of vitamin A, retinyl palmitate or retinol until this chemical’s safety on sun-exposed skin is proven.

·         Oxybenzone – This common chemical sunscreen filter shows up in nearly half of the beach and sport sunscreens in EWG’s database this year. It has several disadvantages: it soaks through skin, triggers allergic skin reactions in sensitive individuals and may disrupt the hormone system (Krause 2012). Despite evidence that oxybenzone is a hormone disruptor, the FDA has not yet investigated it rigorously. The agency should give oxybenzone top priority because it has been detected in urine and breast milk samples and could affect the development of the fetus and the health of children and adults (Schlumpf 2010, Calafat 2008).

·         Moisturizers with SPF – Daily-use moisturizers with SPF claims should offer lasting protection from both UVA rays and UVB rays. UVA rays are especially insidious because they bombard us year round, in contrast to UVB rays, which are more intense in the summer. Most moisturizers with SFP don’t fill the bill. This year EWG examined the product labels of 246 moisturizers with SPF and found that only one in four offered strong and lasting sun protection. This is a critical shortcoming, because moisturizers are generally designed to be applied just once a day.

EWG did not evaluate make-up and lip products with SPF claims this year. In prior years we have found that SPF-rated makeup and lip products do not offer significant protection from the sun.

* Statistics in this report are based on products in the EWG database as of May 2014.

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“I alone cannot change the world, 

but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” 
~ Mother Teresa

Join us as we honor three incredible women who exemplify our motto to

 'Inspire, Strengthen and Empower'  

Annette Gerani, Maryann Graham and Margaret McAdorey.

AND

As we present our First 'Evelyn Knapp Benevolence Award" 

to Donna Reale of Popei's, Deer Park

 June 1st at the Upsky Hotel, Hauppauge from 4-8pm.

$65 or $550 table of 10

email strengthforlife@optonline.net

mail - Strength for Life, 902 Constance Lane, PJS, NY 11776

Thank you!

http://www.nycharities.org/events/EventLevels.aspx?ETID=7229

Opening Your Heart Chakra

I spent a powerful evening with Dr. Dean Telano of True Living Yoga learning tools to open your heart chakra. Please notice his incredible background - I have the utmost respect for him, and his talents.

Dean Telano, ND, PHD, MS, E -RYT 500   True Living Yoga ( I hadn't a clue what E-RYT 500 means...Registered Yoga Alliance Teacher... fyi) has a unique background I must say:

http://www.truelivingyoga.com/about-us/dean-telano.cfm
B.A., Nutrition and Food Science, Queens College, Flushing, NY

M.S., Exercise Physiology, Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY

Doctor of Naturopathy, Clayton College of Natural Health, Birmingham, AL

Ph.D., Doctor of Philosophy in Natural Health, Clayton College of Natural Health, Birmingham, AL

One of the mantras we learned was the "Sat Kartar" pronounced 

"Suit - Ker -Tar" - the link will explain how to add the hand positions to this mantra. This "Sat Kartar" mantra is used to expand and direct the energetic flow of the heart. It heals the physical heart and brings harmony to our emotions.

The meaning of the mantra: "Sat" is the Soul's Truth or Essence, which resides in the heart. "Kartar" means 'Doer." 

When the two words are combined, it is to say "

Doer, Manifestor or Walker of the Truth"

Namaste!