What's your 'why'?

Borrowed from the lovely Ange Takats status post this morning - 

"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." - Mark Twain

What's your 'why'?



That's a big question. What is your why? I have thought about it and come up with the following, to care, to help and to create. Its a very simplistic answer but I will expand on it.

To Create:

I have in my life been interested in many different creative arts. I learned to sew, embroider and knit at five years old. My grandmother did tatting, I always wanted wanted her to teach me but didn't have the opportunity to learn from her before she passed away. I have drawn, painted, and sculpted. I have been in choirs,  musicals and cabarets  I have written my own lyrics and music, performed and made an EP. I have written poetry and stories. I have been taking photographs since I was young and continue to do so. I have carved wood and built furniture.

Aside from arts, my husband and I have taken our two families and blended them to create one whole family. I also LOVE to bake :) 

To Care:

I have always cared for my younger siblings. When I was a teen both of my parents were diagnosed with cancer. I cared for my parents and my siblings through the two final years of my high schooling. I then went on to care for a girl with Rasmussen's syndrome.

I cared for my own children and step children. Cared for a friends daughter for 5 days a week. When my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer I took on caring for her and for my father who was also quite ill. When my mother slipped into a coma before she passed away, my brother and I took shifts sitting with her and our dad so that he could get some rest and not have to worry about her being alone when she passed. I was sitting with my father when she did pass away. He left the hospital and came home with me. He lived with us for 18 months before he bought his own house and had found the strength to carry on. 

I have cared for friends in difficult situations, given a roof over theirs heads when they needed it. I have done the same for my youngest brother. I continue to care for my father, keeping an eye on him and monitoring his health.

To Help:

Some of the things under to care also fit here. There are some others though. 

I raised funds for the Toowoomba Asthma Foundation as an early teen. I joined Amnesty International in high school as I was (and still am) horrified by injustice in the world. I have campaigned for things I believe in like Peregian Originals. I continue to raise funds for research into cancer and brain tumours.

I am an administrator of a support group for people all over the world who have or have had the same type of brain tumour as I did. I am also now planning to point my education in the direction of neuroscience/neuroanatomy in the hope of someday living in a world where brain tumours are detectable, the mortality rates are minimal, there is a cure for brain tumours or brain tumours no longer occur.
I'm sure if I sat and thought about it longer I could come up with more. I will leave it as it stands.

What is your why?