When Life Hands You Lemons, Make Lemonade

By Gabby Morales

To me personally, nothing is more inspirational than when children are the ones creating a change. The innocence that goes behind an idea, the fact that they never take no as an answer or even think about not fulfilling their dream is truly what we, adults, lack. We always wonder about failure or how we are going to fail at whatever we put our minds to. We always hesitate to make our dreams come true and always follow it up with “Well, I didn’t have enough of this or that.” Our motivation is easily broken and if we see that others have already accomplished our idea, then we take that as a blow to our creativity and suddenly what we aimed to do is no longer a driving force in our hearts. In our minds our ideas become unoriginal and not worth our time. I’m guilty of all these as I’m sure many of you are as well. What happened to the motivation we had as children? What happened to that drive we all had which made it possible for us to make our dreams come true? Alexandra “Alex” Scott is one of those children who never thought of the word “no.” Being diagnosed with cancer before her first birthday, it wasn’t until she was 4 years old that she decided that she would do something to help children who were in the same situation as her. Alex, along with her parents’ help, opened a lemonade stand and started collecting money so that doctors could find a cure. On her first day as a lemonade vendor she collected $2,000 and from then on every year after that people would see little Alex and her lemonade stand, trying to collect money for her cause.



This idea spread and people started their own lemonade stand in honor of Alex and all those children who have to battle cancer at such a young age. Sadly, little Alex was taken from this world at the age of 8, yet her life carries on in her organization, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF), which as of 2004, when Alex passed away, raised $1 million for the cure.


Now, thanks to that beautiful and simple idea, the organization has raised over $35 million and $12 million of that money has come from lemonade stands alone. Alex is just one of the many children who have blessed the rest of us with their idea. She didn’t have incredible riches or resources that went above and beyond everyone else’s. It was Alex who decided to make lemonade after life handed her lemons.