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I love September 14^th.  It’s without question, the best day of the year and it’s been that way since 1976 when September 14^th became my birthday.

I was born in KW Hospital, which is now Grand River Hospital, in Kitchener, Ontario;  the first child to two people who were born to be parents, Russ and Donna Woloshyn.   Additionally I was born to 4 loving grandparents and became the 2^nd of 4 grandchildren to Bill and Audrey Little and the 4^th of 12 grandchildren to Tom and Sophie Woloshyn.   23 months after I was born, to the day, I got a great pre-birthday present, in my baby brother Cam.

I have always sought big attention for my birthdays.  I have always believed that your birthday is an important day, as it celebrates the day you became part of the world and well that is a pretty critical personal milestone. 

I have also loved the fact that my birthday was early in September, as it was always right at the beginning of the school year.  People were ready for a party and I always got a chance to throw a big one.  I remember my 7^th birthday.  My parents rented ponies – yes ponies.   They had invited the entire class and I didn’t know that the ponies were coming, but my parents couldn’t wait.   Unfortunately it poured rain that day so instead of pony rides; my dad had to make an emergency trip to the public library to rent a projector to play movies.  We have a picture of my dad suppressing  frustration as he tried to set up the reel to reel while I lead a group of screaming kids around the projector in a game of ring around the daddy.  

In university my birthday always fell during the first week of classes which brought a week of back to school festivities.  My friend Trish said to me a couple years ago “Woloshyn, I don’t actually know when your birthday is as we normally just celebrated for a week.”   I don’t quite have the stamina to go a whole week anymore, but I remember fondly the 5 weeks I spent celebrating my 5 birthdays during my time at UW.

My 19^th birthday was particularly pivotal for me.   I had just moved into residence at the University of Waterloo.  There was a bus trip to a bar downtown and my whole floor piled on the bus after we celebrated with cake in the lounge.   Another floor piled on the front the bus and started singing Happy Birthday.   I jumped up in the back of the bus and yelled “It’s my Birthday too!” and interrupted the new floor.  The birthday boy jumped through the crowd, we hugged and finished the song and I think we probably bought each other a drink then went our separate ways.

6 months later I had been selected as an orientation leader and went to our first leader party.  One of the new leaders also on my team was that birthday boy, Matt Iley.   We laughed about our previous meeting in September and quickly became fast friends.   6 years later, Matt was the person who introduced me to one of the most important people in my life, my partner Jared.   Who knows if we would have had such a strong connection without that fateful night on the bus?   I am looking forward to dinner with Matt this month to celebrate our birthday together for the first time in years.

I celebrated my 30^th birthday in Calgary.  I had just started the job I am currently in as the Director of Integrated Client Services at the University of Calgary.   I was in charge of a new team, that I had only been the leader of for 3 short months and we had just the week before launched our new department.  Unfortunately our launch was anything but smooth.  It was, well, nothing short of a disaster and the team was quite stressed.  I was pretty sure that they weren’t too fond of me because of the less than smooth transition we were experiencing.   I had tried to keep my birthday a secret as I knew there really wasn’t any time to do anything birthday related.  There were far too many problems to solve.   But they found out.  I remember sitting at a service desk, as dozens of students were trying to access our service, many of whom had been waiting far too long for help.   I felt embarrassed but was trying to focus on completing a form for the student in front of me.  The student suddenly looked over my shoulder and smiled and pointed.   I turned around and my team was holding a chocolate cake and a large helium balloon of Mr Incredible that they had all signed.   They sang Happy Birthday and I knew they were standing behind me despite our challenging first few months.  Although I could feel the eyes of all those students staring me down and thinking “Get on with it, I need some help”, I put those feelings aside and let myself be recognized.   I still have that balloon in my office to remind me that you need to recognize the day you came into this world, no matter what.

I have had lots of people asking me what I am doing today for my birthday.  My response has been “I am doing chemo.”   Tonight is my last night of my second round of 5 day chemo (more information about my treatment can be found at http://alysonwoloshyn.com/treatment-updates/).   Although I expected that I would feel good, which I do, I decided to play it low key this year.   My brother, sister in law and aunt joined me on Saturday with my parents for a wonderful dinner and the opening of birthday prizes and   I have dinner  with Matt (the birthday boy) and some other friends from Ontario that I rarely get to celebrate my birthday with, after the big day.   So even though I might not be doing anything special today, as with tradition, I continue to find a way to extend my birthday over the course of a week.

I have always been a big giver of gifts.   I love giving gifts and birthdays give me that opportunity.  I have been told I am a great gift giver and I love watching people open the perfect gift I have selected.   In fact there are few things that make me happier than giving a gift.  Yet, I have felt uncomfortable with people buying me gifts or putting out what I want for a birthday to friends and family.  I have felt that I really don’t need anything and that my wish list is full of silly wants (which of course is the reason for presents). I would much prefer the person’s company or well wishes rather than a tangible present.  I know how hard people work so I felt uncomfortable asking people for things I wanted and maybe didn’t need.  So most often when I asked the question “What can I bring?” to my party, I would reply “Just bring yourself.”

However I do need something on this birthday.   I need my medical team to continue to find ways to keep me healthy and keep me celebrating more and more birthdays.   Additionally I know that I have friends and family who don’t know how to help and are waiting for me to give them a way to make a meaningful impact for me.  I explained to some friends over the long weekend my discomfort in asking them to do a number of things for me (which they did).  My one friend Lisa said “Are you kidding Alyson, if you told me to send you a Red Pepper, I would send you a Red Pepper”.  My friends all agreed that my providing them with a list of ways they could help made them feel empowered, where before they felt powerless trying to figure out how they could help.   They wanted to give me something tangible to help.  This message has been reiterated to me from many friends and family and when I think about it, I know I would feel the same way.   Although it still feels uncomfortable to ask for presents, I thought my birthday would be an easy time for me to work on putting out there, what I really want.

So I have decided to start a new birthday tradition.  In lieu of gifts this year I asked friends and family to consider donating $33 to recognize my birthday at http://albertacancer.ca/woloshynwarrior.    These are truly gifts that keep on giving, as the money raised will support research to help conquer cancer.  The gifts also help me reach my goal to cover the costs (although I don’t have to cover them) of my chemo therapy, which is an important gift I receive today.  Finally these gifts are another reminder of all the people who stand behind me, and I can remind myself that I am not alone in this journey.       

I hope it’s a tradition that will bring me many happy returns.