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www.FredericksburgParent.NET 7 Pouches' Book Nook WRITTEN BY LENOR KRUK-MULLANAPHY Sharday Richardson Sometimes it's difficult to put feelings and thoughts about grief into words. Helen Keller may have articulated it best and brought many people comfort when she said, "What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us." Sharday and Mario Richardson, of Fredericksburg, have also tried to help explain death, particularly to young readers, in their first book, "The Sister I Never Met." The book features little Jo-Jo, whose hero is his sister, Moriah. She is the subject of his "show and tell" presenta- tion at school, and he shares the reasons he looks up to her. He does this without ever having met Moriah, though. The Richardsons tell the story from their own experience of losing their oldest daughter, Moriah, to brain cancer at the age of 5. It was an ordinary day in 2011 when a picture of Moriah was taken. The picture shows a healthy little girl with beautiful brown eyes and round cheeks. Little did her parents know, the day would change all of their lives for- ever when, a short while later at a doctor appointment, she was diag- nosed with Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG). It meant Moriah had an inoperable tumor on her brain stem. "The diagnosis of cancer was stunning, and, even worse, was the prog- nosis," says Sharday. "Moriah was given a 10% chance of living out the year. She passed away in 2013, which was two weeks before her fifth birthday. I vowed her death wouldn't be in vain." The Richardsons had more children, and they wanted to know how to identify who Moriah was. There wasn't a platform to help parents talk to younger children about a sibling's death. "One day, we are going to have to explain it more, so we wrote "The Sister I Never Met" to help—not only for our family, but to be a plat- form for other families as well," says Sharday. The Richardsons founded the Forever Moriah Foundation, a 501 (3) nonprofit organization, in 2018. Its mission is to help terminally and critically ill children and their families create beautiful memories that will forever live on in their minds. In addition, fighting childhood cancer is a priority for the organization, which features the grim statistics of the disease on its website. Childhood cancer is the number one disease killer of children in the U.S., and every two minutes a child is diagnosed with it. The average age of a child diagnosed with cancer is 6, and one in five children with cancer in our country won't survive. With a belief that hope is an integral part of a patient's ability to be physically healthy, the foundation is dedicated to providing hope and healing to the family as a whole through its unique and uplifting programs. To purchase "The Sister I Never Met" and other merchandise, visit the Forever Moriah Foundation at forevermoriahfoundation.org. For more information visit the website, email info@forevermoriah.com, or call 571-288-2024.