One of our ambassadors, Nushelle de Silva, shared her Trail Story with us.
We hope this inspires you to join our movement to fight against cancer as a united Sri Lanka. If you are reading this and you are not from Sri Lanka, you are certainly welcome to join us as well. Trail is for anyone who believes in the power of positive change, and the ability to make a lasting impact through a collective effort. This is why we Trail — we hope you will too!
“All of us knows someone who’s taken up arms against that many-headed hydra, cancer. My own memories of dealing, as a seven-year-old, with my brother’s battle with leukemia range from prosaic to painful. I hoarded factoids about ALL1, watched with a mixture of fascination and fear as my mother swabbed his central line, and more than once cried myself to sleep, both resentful that the decision to treat him in Sydney meant I saw my mother and my brother only for a few weeks at Christmas, and filled with guilt about my resentment.
And yet I knew we were incredibly lucky to have the choice at all, and equally lucky that this all-too-common story of separation and uncertainty culminated in reuniting and remission. In the past few months, I’ve heard about the many Sri Lankan families for whom the choices are fewer and harder, or those who can do nothing but make the bed at home more comfortable, because the trek down to Maharagama (for how long? to what end?) is economically impossible. I wish I had been able to put my own troubles in perspective as a child, because I can’t – even now – imagine what that must be like.
When asked to be an ambassador for Trail, I was overjoyed, even though writing this post was hard because it reminds me, so sharply, of how monstrous cancer is. I love Trail’s mission – in bringing together people of all religions and ethnicities to walk from the North to South of Sri Lanka, to make cancer treatment more accessible to all, it effectively takes a swing at another monster that has caused our island so much grief.
There’s something about cancer that makes everything lopsided and distorted, so my personal Trail is for its opposite: the little things, for the precious snatches of the everyday. The shared jokes, the familiar quirks, the repeated habits. The moments we take for granted and forget. If there’s something I learned from those two years, it’s that embracing a sense of normal really cuts that monster down to size…and every pledge, every footstep, every brick, each one of us together, strengthens that fight for normal.
If you’d like to help me raise funds to reach our goal of $5 million, please donate to my profile here: https://trailsl.com/walkers/?walker=337
Every bit helps!”
~ Nushelle De Silva