Day 217: Rene Giacalone

May 5, 2010 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“… it’s the same with the Honeysuckle Foundation … recognize there’s a volunteer or somebody who’s sort of on the edges of what we’re doing … I listen and I watch and I see, because their need might be getting involved with us.  And it’s sort of like a symbiotic relationship where we’re helping them, they’re helping us, and everybody walks home at the end of the day feeling really good.”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Rene, for agreeing to part of the Project today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Rene Giacalone: Hi, thank you Toni.  My name is Rene Fesler-Giacalone.  I am the Executive Director of The Honeysuckle Foundation for Children with Cancer.  I am the mother of three children, one of them being a cancer survivor, and I am the author of the book Alicia’s Updates: A Mother’s Memoir of Pediatric Cancer.

Toni: Thank you very much for agreeing to be part of the Project, Rene, and when you think of inspiration, who do you think you inspire, and how does that happen?

Rene: I believe I inspire pretty much everybody that comes in contact with me, and I’ve only gotten to learn this over the past few years.  Only because I am very headstrong, and I believe that people are here to make a positive change in this world.  And each day I get up, I like to think I’m doing something positive and inspiring to make this world a better place.

Toni: How does that happen?  What do you do?

Rene: Well, I think people are our best resources, and everybody I come in contact to is a potential networking opportunity, somebody I can market to, somebody I could get to volunteer for our projects.  And basically the power of the people is something that I use at every turn, whether it’s somebody at the post office that I’m just making small conversation with to the big donor that wants to fund a project for our foundation.

Toni: Tell me a little bit about the foundation.

Rene: The Honeysuckle Foundation for Children with Cancer was started eight years ago — actually the wish of my youngest daughter, Alicia — when she was battling bone cancer.  We’re a grass roots organization.  What we basically deal with is the psychosocial and emotional aspect.  We don’t deal with research.  We deal with the families at hand – you know, what is it like to go through cancer when you’re the sibling, when you’re the parent?  How does it impact the community?  What does it mean as far as schooling and education and things of that nature?

Because good medicine is key, but the whole emotional and psychological aspect is just as important in my mind based upon our experiences, and our program’s fairly unique in that because, again, we’re really not doing any research.  It’s all about patients now dealing with cancer now.

Toni: Wow, I was happy to hear you said that your daughter is a cancer survivor.

Rene: Yeah.  We are very fortunate, yes.

Toni: This almost seems a silly question based on what you’ve just described your organization to be, but I think getting into the details is just going to be incredible.  The second question of the Project is how do you help other people explore their own potential?  I could see this having a major ripple effect throughout the families, the people who are dealing with this as far as their own potential in many ways.  Can you help us understand what some of that might be and what that might look like?

Rene: Well, the one thing that we attempt to do, and I think it really taps into everybody’s wish and desire to be helpful, and … we all know children and, you know, we became basically the face of pediatric cancer for anybody within my network.  And it was very interesting, because by reaching out to people through our own experience and asking for help, not being afraid to say “Gee, we’re really low on groceries, could somebody do a grocery run,” or “You know, my other children need a ride to their soccer game,” and really just putting it out there to our network, people just jumped all over it.  You know, they couldn’t do enough.  And through this experience I’ve recognized that, you know, people say they want to help, but unless you give them specific instruction as to what you need, they’re not going to know.

Well, it’s the same with the Honeysuckle Foundation, and pretty much my life now is I see that there is something I need or that would be helpful, or I even recognize there’s a volunteer or somebody who’s sort of on the edges of what we’re doing, you know?  I listen and I watch and I see, because their need might be getting involved with us.  And it’s sort of like a symbiotic relationship where, you know, we’re helping them, they’re helping us, and everybody walks home at the end of the day feeling really good.

Toni: Wow, so really exploring other people’s potential in this relationship that you have with the Foundation but also what you’ve been through, that potential comes in the willingness to help, finding a place that they can help, others can help, and also showing people that it’s okay to ask for help.

Rene: Exactly, exactly.  People have this, you know … people say oh, you know, they want to help, and then the people that are on the receiving end don’t really want to, you know, clarify, and they sort of discard it, you know?  People are our best resource and, you know, our adversity happened to be cancer.  Everybody’s got a, you know … I always say the cross to bear.  It’s just, you know, it’s a little bit lighter if you have people help you.

Toni: Absolutely.  Rene, what inspires you?  What do you need to be inspired?

Rene: Any child I see.  I look at kids, and I can get myself into a state where I’m thrown back eight years ago when Alicia was sick as a six-year-old and that experience, and I can imagine it on pretty much any child I come in contact to.  If I have a time where maybe I’m not as inspired as I would like to be, it doesn’t take very much for me to go back to that place that started this all where I said I was not going to let cancer minimize our life, it actually was going to empower us, and we were not going to let it destroy who we were and make us sad and make us retreat.  It actually made us spokespeople, and it made us be out there.

I can be the face for the cancer parent and do it proudly, because there are so many other people that just can’t do it.  And that’s the one gift I believe I bring to the table is being outspoken and being an advocate and being a voice for the next set of parents that are coming along that don’t know what’s down the road regarding their child’s health.

Toni: Rene, the Get Inspired! Project has a theme that’s fleshing out from my perspective, and people that are following the Project will have their own perspective, but from mine it’s about people that are either uncovering what their purpose and their passion is or have fallen into what their purpose and their passion is and then they’re following it.  You were thrust into a situation, obviously not something that you sought, but were you always an advocate?  Did you always feel that way?  Did you always come to the table that passionate?  And when this was put in front of you, how did you have the courage to move forward and then go past it so that you could help others?

Rene: I have always been an advocate with things my children … you know, there were smaller issues and things within school, and I like to get involved.  I think that’s everybody’s obligation being part of a society and trying to be a good role model for my children, so I’ve always attempted to get involved.

What’s made this really so much of a bigger project and undertaking is the severity of what you’re dealing with, and again, me recognizing early on that I needed to use my voice in a positive way, you know, way to get my family through this and to get my daughter through this and everybody around us in a fairly intact way.  Not destroyed by it, not emotionally scarred by it – you know, wiser, because obviously you can’t go through this and walk away and say “All right, you know, life as it once was.”   Everything has changed – the dynamics, relationships – you know, everything has changed, but I like to think for the better.

I have the voice, I have the desire to be helpful and be involved, but I truly believe that the experience itself has helped uncover just the full potential.  I always, you know, listen to the … in my mind, you know, I don’t want to suffer from “only if I could have, would have, or should have.”  Okay, I have my opportunity now to do something.  I don’t have a guarantee for tomorrow.  None of us have.  I learned that first hand with my daughter being sick, so each day I get up, I have to tackle it as though it was my last.

Because of that, there is a little bit more of an urgency and “Let’s get it done” and, you know, rah-rah type of mentality.  But at the end of the day, I think it’s a fairly good one because I’ve met people I never would have met, I’ve written a book which I never would have done, and I’m being interviewed by you for Get Inspired! Project that if it all hadn’t fallen into place, this interview wouldn’t have even been happening.

Toni: You’re knocking my socks off here, and there’s a word that I’ve written down.  Certain words come to me during these interviews, and the word that I just underscored about a thousand times is fierce, and I’m hearing that passion and that purpose, but I’m also hearing you being very fierce in your belief that this is the right thing to do.

Rene: Yeah, I have to agree with you on that one.

Toni: So Rene, what do you do now to explore your own potential — to be this voice for parents and families?  What are you doing to explore your own potential?

Rene: Well, the big piece for me right now, because obviously as a not-for-profit — and we’ve been working in the New York metropolitan area there, and obviously the economy has hurt all of us non-profits — but my book is really something we’re trying to get into the hands of not only pediatric cancer parents, but pretty much any parent.  Whether it’s juvenile diabetes or it’s autism or something, the book itself deals with very raw emotion of “You know what?  It’s okay to be upset about your adversity, but it’s okay to live your life at the same time.”

We really are working, and I’m not at liberty right now … I’m even working with a company.  We’re trying to get my book into pediatric hospitals, so it’s there as a resource, and it basically is more of a, you know “Okay, get up, you have to get up today, and you have to deal with that, and here’s somebody that went through it – if they went through it, I can do it, too.”

Toni: So you are really just … your potential, exploring your own potential at its core is really just the sticking with it no matter what, and …

Rene: Yes.  No matter what.

Toni: … and looking for those ways to move your book through to the people who need it and finding people who will hear you.  And I will say that I would like to showcase your foundation as well on the homepage of the Get Inspired! Project.

Rene: Well thank you so much.

Toni: I think that’s pretty amazing.  I cannot thank you enough, Rene, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be part of the Get Inspired! Project and to let those of us know about your foundation and help make other people aware of it.  And for showing up today, we cannot thank you enough.

Rene: And thank you, Toni, I do appreciate this opportunity.

Toni: Good luck to you.

Rene: Thank you.

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