HalfStack, My Mom, Cancer
Note: I’m generally a pretty private person and rarely share much about my personal life. I’m doing this to share a bit about my Mom and how much her support has meant to me over the years.
For the past four years, one of my passion projects has been organizing the fun and unconventional HalfStack event in London. We tout HalfStack as an authentic, single-day, single-track, UI-centric JavaScript conference in a relaxed environment. Mostly this event is about bringing the JavaScript and web community together to share in the joy and possibilities of the platform.
This time around we’re bringing the HalfStack fun to New York, Vienna, London, and Phoenix. With less than two weeks until the event, we’re working on the last minute details to deliver an amazing event.
This year has been a bit different. Just a few weeks ago, my Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. :(
This is my Mom’s third major bout with cancer (her first was thyroid cancer when I was about 5 or 6 years old) so it’s somewhat familiar territory, but it’s the first time in a long time she’s had to go through this.
As strong as I may be, it’s still a significant challenge to keep marching on, focusing on all the things that need to get done to deliver an amazing event, when my mind pauses to think about everything that truly matters.
I’m reminded how my Mom has always marched on and persevered, overcoming a form of cancer in the early 80s that was at the time an almost certain death sentence. Her explanation has always been that she needed to be there for her kids, so she found a way to survive, the classic story of the mind taking control and making things happen.
As my Mom was recovering from her surgery yesterday, instead of wanting to talk about how she was feeling, she kept asking me about HalfStack, about how preparations were going (me: really well), how ticket sales were going for New York and Vienna (me: slow, developers are notoriously last minute), and more. My Mom, in her anesthesia-induced state, was more focused on giving me suggestions for how to get people to get their HalfStack tickets, which made me laugh.
My Mom is pretty much the epitome of the Giving Tree. My only real way to ever try to repay her kindness and support is to offer the same support to my kids, family, friends, and the larger JavaScript community with work on events like HalfStack and on open source software.
I feel like I’m rambling, avoiding working on some of the last minute conference preparations, but it helps to step back and reflect, remember how short and precious life can be.
I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of what I can and should do, and everything that comes to mind feels like a marketing gimmick, so I won’t go there, other than to say that I’m dedicating my efforts on HalfStack this year to Mom, who has always supported me in my endeavors, regardless of how unusual they may seem (e.g. dropping out of grad school to start SitePen, or starting a less traditional conference JavaScript in a pub in London). I hope to see you at one of our events to celebrate the JavaScript ecosystem, and those people like my Mom who helped us get to where we are today.
