April 16, 2009

Renee Yohe and Me

My favorite organization by far is To Write Love On Her Arms [(TWLOHA) (www.twloha.com)]

twloha Pictures, Images and Photos

Renee Yohe is the reason for TWLOHA starting. She is the inspiration. She is also my inspiration, she has gone through so much and yet has made it through. In many ways she is my hero (as well as many other people's heroes).

The other day I just found out that I have a strange connection to Renee Yohe. I found out about the connection is through a tattoo she has.

Renee has two main tattoos:
The first tattoo is this one:
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The second is this one:
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The first tattoo I think is beautiful.

The second one, which is also shown in various stages of being done here:
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When I saw it the first time, even thought it was barely visible in the picture, I couldn't keep my eyes off it. Somehow I knew I had seen the picture before, but where. The picture stayed on my mind as I checked facebook messages and the like. I decided that I needed to find out what the tattoo was of. When I google something to the effect of "renee yohe tattoo" I got a search result with this quote:

"Renee has two tattoos: one, which we show in the story, is a rose that covers up the worse of her self inflicted cuts; the second is a rendition of a painting by the rock artist Michael Goddard, a portrait of his daughter, who died battling cancer, holding a rose. "In spite of all the odds against her ... she was still fighting", Renee said. "It just it really hit home for me just the idea of the odds being against me and having felt that I'd lost so much but there was still hope and still something worth fighting for that even if I was just barely hanging on." "
Quote from: (http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/09/12/1388886.aspx)


The picture on her left shoulder is drawn by an artist named Michael Godard according to the quote and it is of his Daughter Paige.

Here is the painting that the image is taken from:
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And a picture of her dad (long black hair) with the painting (and also some other guy, I don't know who he is):
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And also a link to Michael Godard's myspace and his website (mostly for copyright purposes):
http://www.myspace.com/michaelgodard
http://www.michaelgodard.com/

I knew that I had seen the picture before, and I had. This picture was my connection. Michael Godard was the father of Paige, who was my best friend for about two years during which she fought against a very aggressive brain tumor that eventually took her life.

So ya, I found this amazing connection. I want to leave you with the quote from Renee that was used in the quote about her tattoos. The quote is a very beautiful one, perhaps even more so to me since I actually knew Paige, but Paige's story can go out there to influence many more people's lives than just those who actually knew her.

" "In spite of all the odds against her ... she was still fighting", Renee said. "It just it really hit home for me just the idea of the odds being against me and having felt that I'd lost so much but there was still hope and still something worth fighting for that even if I was just barely hanging on." "



Emmy R.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's so freaky it's scary. I mean, what are the chances, Emmy?

Emmy R. said...

It's a small world after all...

(:

TammyM said...

I actually own this piece, its titled "Opaline" and Godard did this piece for the cover of Dishwalla's album also titled "Opaline". The guy you see in the pic with Godard is JR Richards, the lead singer of Dishwalla (who is now working solo). After attending Paiges funeral JR wrote an extremely emotional song titled "A Beautiful End". You can hear it here: www.jrrichardsmusic.com

Joey said...

word up.