Riding for Roses

Founded in 2001 by two child life specialists with pilot funding from the Lance Armstrong Foundation, Austin-based Wonders and Worries provides an array of therapeutic activities geared toward children, youth and families coping with chronic or life-threatening illnesses. They offer counseling, therapy sessions for children who have parents with cancer, training classes in child parent relationships (filial therapy is the official clinical name for the technique), and other services.

Last week, we started the eight week course in filial therapy and it looks to be a huge help. Therapy advantages aside, it’s very comforting just to interact with other familes who are dealing with life threatening illenesses. We’re the only family in this group that has a child with a life threatening disease. The other families in our class all have either lost a parent, or have a parent with a life threatening disease. Despite that, we share a lot of issues in common when it comes to dealing with our children and their newly required maturity that goes beyond their years. It seems like half our class has kids who are five, so Spencer loves being in the child care group while we take the class, which includes only the adults.

Wonders and Worries, and other organizations supported by the LAF, offer much needed support to cancer survivors and their families.

Over eighty percent of your donations to the LAF goes to directly fund the mission of supporting cancer survivors. Please donate to support cancer survivors and organizations like Wonders and Worries.