Layla Grace was a happy, healthy little girl ... always sweet as pie and a little cuddle monkey too. She was the inspiration for her mom, Shanna Marsh, who started a fun website called Baby Wears Prada. Shanna befriended and supported the handmade and the design communities through her site, blogging and promoting all things cute and cuddly for babies.
Ten months ago Shanna and Ryan Marsh were delivered shocking and devastating news. Layla Grace had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called
Neuroblastoma,... stage 4 with a very poor prognosis.
Shanna has shared her family’s journey in touching and inspirational posts at
LaylaGrace.org.
The New Year brought the discovery of new aggressively growing tumors in spite of all the debilitating treatments. The doctors narrowed Layla's life expectancy to 2 months at best. Layla’s little body fights pain with diminished strength and waning energy, but her spirit is still bright and loving. Shanna and Ryan’s faith and prayerfulness and the kind loving support of so many friends are their solace in the fading hours of Layla’s life.
It was early last year that Shanna befriended an online handmade seller
RuffleButts and it was from this lady’s blog post yesterday that I learned that she and her husband were contributing $5000 (
FaceBook.com/RuffleButts) to the FightForLayla Fund.
All the money in the world will not heal Layla, nor will it ease the anguish and heartbreaking sorrow for the Marsh family. But financial assistance will lift the costly burdens of travel, childcare for the other children, hospital meals,and the growing $100,000.00+ medical bill that insurance doesn’t cover. Shanna and Ryan need to be at Layla’s side, physically, emotionally and spiritually.
You and I will never meet the Marsh family, or even each other, but we are all now tied together, maybe more than if we lived on the same street. Friends are connecting with friends. Through prayer, you and I have been tapped on the shoulder by the story of Layla.
Although I may not have all the details of Layla exact, this is as it was sent to me today by Carmen of
The Decorating Diva, LLC. Our hearts ache to do something. We have all thought, at least once in our lives, “But for the grace of God go I ”. Here’s a chance to be grateful that it is not us living through this nightmare and Pay it Forwar. Carmen and I, along with iCraftGifts.com Admin and a number of other sellers are formulating a 3 part plan. We are hoping you will open up your hearts and help.
How You Can Help:
1) Go to
Direct donation to Fighting for Layla Grace and make a donation of any amount that has the number 4 in it. I picked $44. After you have done that, leave a brief comment here, in this blog post, with words of encouragement for the Marsh Family. Tweet this post and encourage others to help. Comments will be entered for 3 giveaways for $100, $60 and $40 gift certificates to spend in
PillowThrowDecor. Comments for giveaways will close March 13
th.
2) Please follow
@payitFOURward on Twitter and use hashtag #LaylaGrace because we want to send you a message for next week when we will be selling/auctioning off a collection of 10 very unique girly “Layla Pillows”. Here’s a sample pillow.
That will be the second blog in this
Pay It Forward for Layla Grace series. All followers of
@payitFOURward will be entered into at least 3
home décor giveaways provided by Decorating Diva, which will be drawn March 15
th.
3) Starting next week in the third "Pay it Forward" blog we will be posting a list of all iCraft sellers that will be providing one or more items for sale with proceeds being donated to the Fighting for Layla Grace Fund. In fact, you can already replacement using “
Layla Grace” keyword for items being donated by our sellers.
To keep things simple, you can purchase directly from the icraft seller and they will remit the funds as a donation through Paypal. We are going to do our best to mobilize as many sellers as quickly as possible for next Monday morning. Stay tuned for more details here in our blogs. Don’t forget to follow
@payitFOURward.
We hope that you can, for a moment, imagine standing in the shoes of Shanna and Ryan Marsh and give from the bottom of your hearts, anything that you can, financially, prayerfully and/or words of encouragement.
Cheers, Christine
Please send all cards, well wishes and donations to the Marsh family at:
LAYLA GRACE MARSH
12320 BARKER CYPRESS RD, SUITE 600 #264
CYPRESS, TX 77429
If you would like to contribute online with a credit or debit card, you can do so via paypal here:
http://tinyurl.com/kvee97