Welcome To National Young Adult Cancer Awareness Week!

national young adult cancer awareness week

Yep!  April 6-10, 2015 is National Young Adult Cancer Awareness Week!

With the knowledge of this, here is my next question…what should we do (as patients, advocates, and organizations) to bring awareness to young adult cancer and all of its topics?  How do you think we should be pushing the envelope to better educate, inform, and reach out about the importance of providing age-appropriate resources to young adult cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers?

Last Thursday there was another tweet chat edition of #ayacsm.  (the next one is April 19th at 8 pm ET if you want to join!)  This great group is comprised of ya cancer organizations, young adult survivors + caregivers, as well as health care providers.  The question remains though, how do we continue to bring in more young adult cancer survivors + caregivers into our tribe?  What kinds of resources are/were you craving as a young adult cancer survivor or caregiver?  If you found the resources that you wanted, how did you arrive there?

How can we continue to build awareness about all of the specific needs that young adult cancer survivors + caregivers require?

Together we can build power, strength, and knowledge!  #ThisisAYACancer

For more information about what is happening this week for National Young Adult Cancer Awareness Week, check out this information from Livestrong.

Let’s Read The Planet Cancer Book Together!

young adult cancer book club

Anyone interested in forming an online, young adult cancer book club?  I just ordered the Planet Cancer book written by the CEO of Critical Mass, Heidi Adams.  There’s a lot of great content in the book and I thought it might be fun to read it as a group!  We could talk periodically about it, chapter by chapter, or we could determine a day (maybe a month from now?) when we could discuss the book in its entirety.

Let me know what you think!  We gain strength as a young adult cancer community by sticking together and learning from one another!  Why not form a young adult cancer book club?!

Happy 1 Year Lacuna Loft!

Lacuna Loft

Today is the first anniversary of Lacuna Loft’s launch day!  What a whirlwind of a year it has been!

We’ve been to 2 different expos, a conference, worked through a lot of business and website development challenges, and found 12 different awesome contributors.  We’ve done a fair number of cool DIY projects and recipes, talked about self care as often as possible, and started offering you some awesome weekly yoga posts.  We’ve had a few series go through the blog and listened carefully to feedback from many of you about what else you’d like to see here on Lacuna Loft.  Our founder had a two clean scans and cut off her hair for Locks of Love.  We’ve had meetings, started collaborations, and met so many awesome people in the young adult cancer world.  We even started working with a great group of lawyers to help us file as an official non-profit.

This next year we’re already attending another expo, going to a few other exciting conferences, designing our first fundraising campaign, and looking forward to a few rad collaborations with other organizations.  It is going to be a great year.  We’re excited to bring on some more people and start really taking things to the next level.  Thank you for your love and support!

With love,

Mallory & Brett and the Lacuna Loft team!

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P.S. Launch Day!

Take A Break Outside!

We have started a new series here on Lacuna Loft called Take A Break!  Once a week or so we’ll post a different Take A Break article with a new twist.  This week, enjoy some tips on how to...

Take A Break Outside…

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[list_item]Grab a magazine or book.[/list_item]
Reading is one of the best activities to do outside.  Flipping through a magazine or diving into a great novel is always best with a little sunshine and fresh breeze.  Right now, I’m reading The Jew in the Lotus, The Dragonriders of Pern, and am about to start Children of the Mind.  (I’m typically reading more than one book at once.)  If you’re looking for more of a memoir kind of read, an acquaintance of mine just published one entitled Metastatic Memories about his journey as a young adult with cancer.

[list_item]Bring a tv show![/list_item]
In my backyard, I have this awesome hammock.  From the hammock I can still get the house wifi.  When I was in treatments, I basically stopped reading.  (I know other people who read non-stop!  Everyone reacts so differently 🙂  )  Instead of reading during those months, I would start from the beginning of a tv series, and watch all the way through (with breaks of course haha).  Are you watching any fun tv shows right now?  Try Alias if you haven’t seen it already!  Really fun spy show 🙂

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[list_item]Grab some shades.[/list_item]
Make sure you’re taking care of your skin and your eyes!

[list_item]Enjoy![/list_item]
You’re ready to enjoy your time outside!
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P.S.  Take a break with a good book.

*while some links are affiliate, all ideas and opinions are those of the author

Embracing Color

Building an outfit around bright colors (or adding a great pop of one) is another way to boost your mood and feel ready to face a more challenging day (it’s right up there with statement accessories in my book!). Neutrals can look very chic and professional, but I’d argue that brights can, too (I wore a hot pink pencil skirt to interview at my current job). Vibrant hues also do more to cheer you up, and I’d say they can look more intentional. Black pants, white shirt? Just fine, but coordinating the colors of your blouse with your shoes and earrings? It takes a bit more effort (or at least looks that way). And, truly…when you’re wearing bright yellow, I feel it impacts your mood and that of those around you.

Flipping through InStyle or Glamour, hot new color combinations always seem to be featured. Personally, I say go with whatever colors you love and have in your closet! An outfit can be monochromatic (have a shade of blue exist in every part of your look), marked by one big pop of color (enter: shoes, necklace, purse, scarf, tights!), or playful (why not pair yellow and coral? navy and magenta? orange and blue?).

When it comes down to it, I think getting dressed should be fun, and color can be a big part of that. I paired a few similar (currently available) items below with outfits I’ve enjoyed in the past. Here’s to enticing spring to stick around by dressing for it!

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Shoes. /   Dress. /   Pants. /  Tights.