Hi there, it’s Claire. It’s been a while. I’m here to update you all on what I’ve been up to and what we’ve been up to at Claire’s Place Foundation. It’s been a pretty amazing year so far with awards and more. There’s been lots of exciting things happening this year and hopefully many more to come. Let’s catch up!
Soaring Spirit Award
On March 12th, I got to attend an event hosted by Looking Beyond LA and was awarded with the Soaring Spirit Award! I was never really the child to get awards for things, because I was always in the hospital. I could not even get a participation award for soccer or anything, because I was never able to follow through much as a kid. Instead of trying to do what everyone else did, I started doing public speeches and spreading love, and all of a sudden, someone wants to award me? It’s a cool example of doing what’s best for you and not following in the steps of others.
It was five hundred women who were all elegant and successful, and they all seemed to get something out of my speech. They said that they had these Ah ha! Moments from what I said, and that made me feel awesome. The award itself was great, but it was just amazing to speak in front of them. My entire life I’ve never gotten a soccer trophy, but I can get this Soaring Spirit Award doing something that is so much bigger than me.
10 Best South Bay Teens
This April I got featured as one of the 10 best South Bay Teens in Our South Bay magazine. I’ve done a couple articles with newspapers, but I’d never been in a magazine. It was sweet to be honored and recognized by the people in your community. I mean I had just moved there, and I did a speaking thing because of the hospital here, and they picked up on me. Hey, we think you’re amazing. Would you like to be a part of this? I feel like everything that’s happened to me in my life—all the publicity and the speaking and outreach that I get to share with Cystic Fibrosis has come when I’m not trying very hard. I’m just kind of living and all this amazing stuff comes from it. They contact us, and we get more opportunities. It’s like a vicious cycle but awesome—an awesome cycle.
Clarity Award
Keeping the awesome cycle going, I got to be on the giving end of an award from Claire’s Place Foundation in May! There was a man named Chris Bland and his wife Mabel in Castro Valley. They are just the sweetest people ever! Toward the beginning of our foundation, they would send us a large amount of support and financial aid. They believed in me and the foundation from the very beginning! He found me on facebook and through the Positively Positive videos. He was one of our first supporters. A couple years later as we’re getting our bearings as a foundation, we realized that they were there from the very beginning, and we wanted to thank them. Not just for the financial support, but because they thought what we were doing was important.
One of the most important things while starting a foundation or a business or anything is that you need to think that it is important and worthwhile. This is not a job choice, but something that you want to do for the world. It’s something worthwhile, and we wanted to honor them for that. So we thought up the Clarity Award. We went up to Castro Valley and presented it to his fire station.
I didn’t really realize how much of what I do affects people that don’t even have cystic fibrosis, but it’s a lot more than that. Keep the awesome cycle going! Spread some love, and see what comes back to you. Be on the lookout for more updates, because I’ve got lots more coming!