Haley Pollack 
Hi, everybody. Thank you guys so much for having me. I was saying earlier that this is really special for me. I am a colon cancer survivor. I was diagnosed with stage 3C colon cancer in 2018. I had a six month old baby and a three year old at the time. And first Colontown was really helpful for me in that experience and has continued to be a community that I’m a part of. So this is really special and I love seeing some familiar faces and names and faces that I don’t know the names and names that I don’t know the faces. So it’s all very cool for me. But so Bright Spot Network was really founded out of my experience and the experience of my cofounder diagnosed with little kids. We couldn’t find the resources that we needed online, we were connected by a common health care professional who saw essentially two young moms who are like flailing. Both of us had babies. My cofounder was diagnosed with breast cancer while pregnant. And when we connected, a lot of what we connected around was the common experience of cancer and little kids.

Haley Pollack 
And so I’m going to share my screen and share a little bit more about Bright Spot. But I just wanted to share kind of where it’s coming from. So our mission is to provide young cancer survivors who are parents of small children with a safe space for individual and familial healing, recovery and reconnection. And we do this in a number of ways. Here are our families experiencing some of the things that we do. I’m just gonna go through some of the different program offerings that we have, and then I’m happy to take any questions. But one of our cornerstone programs is Bright Reads. We offer free age appropriate children’s books on big emotions, cancer, grief, and loss. One of the things that we know is that talking to kids about cancer is really important. And for young kids it’s important even if they’re really little and they’re hearing about cancer in the background, hushed tones, all of that kind of stuff. And so we offer kids’ books about cancer. But the other thing is, is that kids that can express their emotions and can use language to talk about how they’re feeling are also going to handle their parent’s cancer diagnosis and treatment in healthier and kind of more well rounded ways. And a lot of the ways that little kids express their feelings about their parent’s emotions, as many of the people on the call might know, is through really big emotions. And so we also offer books just to help kids talk about their feelings. We have a financial assistance grant. So we offer $500, barrier free grants, for families in financial need. The eligibility is it to be in active treatment or recent survivorship, so within a year of your last treatment, and to be the primary caregiver for a child zero to six years old or currently pregnant. And things that are important about this grant is that you don’t need to have receipts, it’s not like a gift card, it’s like $500 cash that goes straight to you. We know that families need money to spend that money in the ways that they see fit for their family. And so we want to respect and trust the families that we work with. And so we offer this grant and the grant was closed as we were inundated with applications, but it is back open as of yesterday. We offer an art kit box. Actually Julie was the first person to get one of our art kits. And she provided really great feedback. So we offer this art kit box that has six art projects in it, the art box goes straight to you and you and your child can just do the art together. To echo something that Dom said, it’s really just fun. It’s an opportunity for parents and kids to do something fun together. We hear feedback from families that this was the first time I felt like a mom again since I started my treatment. Everything is included, you don’t need to go to the store to get the glue, you don’t need to go to the store to get the crayons, it’s all there just to connect. And we know that parents and children that are able to connect in the midst of a crisis, both the parent and the child are going to handle that crisis in a better way and feel better. We also offer kids’ groups. This is new in the last eight months. We have two groups. One is for small kids, zero to five. And that’s really a circle time that’s to be attended with a caregiver, so with a parent. That is Bright Circle. Then Bright Club is for kids five to 11 or five to 12. And that’s an opportunity for kids to come together, these are all virtual, kids to come together, connect with other kids learn some coping mechanisms, talk, hang out, maybe learn some mindfulness, but really just an opportunity for kids to see other kids who have a parent with cancer. And then we also offer support groups. So we have virtual support groups for parents in active treatment, for partners for stage IV parents and for parents in long term survivorship. We also, every October, we have a parenting with cancer webinar series. And we offer other webinars throughout the year that are specific to parenting younger kids.And then finally, we offer Family Resource Navigation. So Carissa Hodgson, our Director of Programs, an LCSW, she will get on the phone with you and just talk about how to organize your medical support team, how to talk to your kids about your cancer, maybe a change in your diagnosis that you aren’t really sure how to broach the topic with your kids, Carissa will get on the phone with you and talk through all of that, and also connect you to other resources like the folks on the call today if that would be helpful. And then we also have a bunch of different web resources. So we have Petunia the Pig Has a Port. We have a bunch of different coloring pages that are just meant to like normalize a body that has cancer, so maybe it’s a goldfish that can’t remember something or we have a an otter that has an ostomy bag. So just a bunch of different coloring pages that you can just sit down with your kid, maybe you’re on the couch, maybe you’re in bed, or maybe you’re not and you’re just coloring together, just a way to connect, but also at the same time to give you an opportunity to talk to your kid about what’s happening. We also a bunch of developmental resources about what your kid might understand or how they might react to your cancer. And then at the top, here, we have this coloring book that is actually customizable. So you can drop in your own family photos, you can name your family, you can name your parent who is the parent with cancer, mom, dad, babo, whatever you call that parent, and go through that book to really make it a child’s book to help to empower your child in the midst of this crisis. And we also have a video series and a bunch of other web resources available. So I think that that’s the long and short of it. It is and I am just really glad to have this opportnity to talk to everybody and feel free to reach out with any questions.