Behind The Wish: Sophie Mullane
Meet Sophie Mullane, a highly-motivated Sydney volunteer since 2018.
Sophie enjoys making a difference in the lives of Wish families.
Behind The Wish is our series of inspirational reads diving into the everyday superheroes involved in creating life-changing wishes.
LIFE MOMENTS
Melbourne-born Sophie gets engaged
I was born in Carlton, Melbourne but I moved to Sydney when I was 3 and grew up in the Ryde area.
I moved out of that area a few years ago to the Lower North Shore. It’s a nice spot, really close to the water. No plans to leave anytime soon!
I studied a Bachelor of Communication Design, and I did some freelance work as a graphic designer. I did that part time while also working in a bookstore.
It was quite hard to juggle them. I have since moved into doing full-time design work in a content agency where I work in magazine publishing. Even though the world is very much moving to digital, I like that magazines haven’t died yet and I hope they never do!
I just bought my first place a year ago and I got engaged a few months ago.
At the moment my world is all about planning a wedding which is overwhelming but very exciting at the same time. My focus now is to settle down, enjoy work and be surrounded by family.
My partner Josh proposed to me in Melbourne. We went for the Easter long weekend and did a road trip to the Yarra Valley. We did a wine-tasting and a lunch and at the end of the day went to a lookout at and he proposed there.
We tried to take some of our own photos and they weren’t very good and then a girl came over and said ‘did you just get engaged?’ and we said yes and she said ‘I have got a camera here do you want me to take some photos?’ and she took all these really nice professional photos for us.
It was a complete fluke she happened to be there.
Picture: Moments after Josh proposed to Sophie.
JOINING UP
'Everyone in the room had cried'
A friend named Anneliese sent me a message one day saying there’s an information day on for Make-A-Wish and she didn’t want to go by herself and asked if I would come with her.
I said, ‘sure I’ll come along and keep you company’ and there were volunteers from lots of different branches there.
They all gave a presentation and played videos about Make-A-Wish. They had the Iron Man video and then it was mostly listening to the volunteers talking about their own experiences since joining Make-A-Wish.
By the end of it everyone in the room had cried at some stage. The presentations were amazing, and everyone was very moved. They said if you want to put your name down for a Branch you can sign up today. So, Anneliese and I signed up then and there and joined the Western Sydney Branch.
She (Anneliese) left the Branch this year as she had a lot of other stuff going on, but she must have stayed about six years. We did a lot of our wishes together as we lived close together, we were like an inseparable tag team.
Picture: Sophie and friend Anneliese joined Make-A-Wish at the same time.
I am the Branch Secretary of the Western Sydney Branch.
Make-A-Wish is the sort of place you don’t need to overly commit to – you can come and go as you need to.
Volunteers are from different walks of life. We have volunteers with grown up kids and people who have joined fresh out of uni.
It’s the sort of place where if things happen in your life – like you start a family – you can take leave for a year or two but you’re probably always going to want to come back in some sort of capacity.
I couldn’t pick just fundraising or wishes to do. At the start the fundraising was really good to get involved in but with COVID we weren’t doing much fundraising, so I started focusing more on wishes.
But then, of course, they also ended up being impacted by COVID.
The Western Sydney Branch often does carols, that’s one of our biggest fundraisers of the year at Christmas time.
FIRST WISH
Glitz and glamour for 18th birthday
My first wish was quite memorable. I came in when pretty much all the work was done, so I was an observer for the wish presentation.
It was a girl named Andrea's 18th birthday.
I think her wish was captured when she was 16 so it was two years in the planning. Make-A-Wish had booked out this room for her 18th birthday. I thought we would go along, present the wish and that would be about it. But we were invited to join the party, to mingle, and have some dinner. Her family were just so welcoming and so excited the wish had finally been granted after two years.
Andrea had the most amazing time, so it was a pretty exciting one to have as a first wish.
It was very glitz and glam and she had a sparkly dress. A florist did an amazing floral arrangement, and she had so many friends and family there.
I think because it had been so long in the making there was so much anticipation built up. But she’d been so involved in the planning as well.
Picking out everything she wanted. She had a lolly bar stall. She had puts lots of thought into it, so it was nice to see it all come together.
Picture: Sophie with Andrea on her wish day.
When I was driving home I just felt it was such a rewarding experience. At the end of each wish, you just want to go and do it again.
You just want to grant another wish as soon as you can. You just want to keep having that exciting moment at the end presenting and granting wishes.
You realise what a difference you can make. You have to remind yourself though that the build-up and anticipation is important, it’s not just that one day at the end.
COVID CLOUD
Pandemic throws a spanner in the works
During COVID so many of my wishes were travel wishes and we had to tell each family that their wish is obviously not going to happen at the moment.
We told them they could change their wish or if it’s what they really want then to wait it out.
And it was like three years between capture and when some of the wishes were going to be presented that we had to keep up the excitement.
That was hard, especially for the young kids who didn’t quite understand why they couldn’t have their wish. Then it was a matter of trying to find something age appropriate that was going to keep them excited.
One of my kids was five or six at the time so we were sending him activities and colouring in and that sort of stuff. We were reminding him it is going to happen.
Some wishes did change during COVID.
One of my wish kids was eight when we captured the wish and when she got to 11, she changed her mind and didn’t want to do a holiday anymore and wanted to do a shopping spree.
Having that long period in-between it was hard to keep up that excitement. The anticipation phase really adds to the excitement of the wish when it does get granted.
The two that I had during COVID were big ones. Sometimes you capture and quickly after grant the wish.
But over three years we were talking to these families and you got to see the kids grow up.
It was hard during COVID not seeing the other volunteers.
You would only see them online. And the fact we weren’t granting as many wishes … at that time all of mine were travel wishes. When new ones came in we couldn’t meet the families in person, only on Zoom, so it was hard to make that connection.
I had a cat wish during COVID, but we couldn’t go and give it to the wish child. A courier dropped it off.
So, I feel like there’s a bit more of a disconnect with the families because you never got to meet them and present them with their wish.
It was a bit more behind the scenes than normal.
It was challenging but I never considered leaving Make-A-Wish. I just assumed things would eventually go back to normal. I don’t think we really lost too many volunteers during COVID.
It would have been too hard to leave and have wishes that were not completed. I had those few wish kids waiting for their wishes, so I wasn’t going to leave. I wanted to be there when the clouds lifted and we could grant their wishes.
IMPACT
Make-A-Wish 'opened my eyes'
It’s interesting when you see wish children come back later on and they’ll speak at an event. In our branch we have the sibling of a wish child and previously we had another sibling of a wish child.
So, it’s not just the effect the wish has on a child, it’s the effect it has on all of their family: their siblings and parents.
They want to stay involved with Make-A-Wish. It shows what a difference a wish can make to a whole family.
I think Make-A-Wish has probably opened my eyes to things I have never experienced or considered before. I think I have had a very privileged and easy upbringing in life.
But it is really eye opening to walk into the homes of the wish families and they are so welcoming, they put out food for us and they are just so excited. To hear their stories, to hear from the wish children, I feel so lucky and fortunate.
You just want to be able to help in any way that you can. If you can do something small like granting a wish to bring some excitement, then you get a sense of fulfilment that you can make some little difference to someone’s life.
I think through volunteering you see quickly some children have to grow up. You are speaking to these kids who are facing such big challenges.
I previously worked at a company doing kids parties and vacation care.
Kids have no filter; they are so fun and are characters. Then to go into a home and there is a sick child and things are more serious. One of my wish kids came up with this wish that she didn’t want to go to hospital anymore and take medicine.
Obviously, you can’t grant that wish and you have to divert them, get them to come up with another wish.
That was such a big thing for a child to even be thinking about.
All the other kids before Make-A-Wish that I worked with were just living life and having fun. These sick kids have so much responsibility when they really shouldn’t.
I think Make-A-Wish helps you remember to take people’s feelings into consideration; you don’t know what anyone else might be going through behind closed doors.
Even though everything might seem to be fine, there could be a lot go on so sometimes I just remind myself about that.
Make-A-Wish has taught me how to talk to people from different walks of life. As you grow up, you go through high school then maybe work in retail and you’re always surrounded by people your own age.
And when you come into a Branch there’s people aged from 20 to 60 different genders, from different walks of life, but being able to connect with lots of different people helps when you go into a full-time job in an office.
It gives you confidence to speak to people, to come out of your shell to meet people.
EXCITEMENT
Sharing the Make-A-Wish highs with others
There is real excitement when you are about to grant a wish. There is a sense of achievement and fulfilment when you finish it.
Something really happy comes out of it at the end even if a child has a health battle.
The end result is always exciting and fun. A lot of my wishes have been travel wishes and you get text messages at the end of the holidays, and they will send you an essay about how fabulous it was and some pictures.
They just want to share everything about it with you. They know how involved we have been in the wish.
They have had an amazing time so you think that we must have done something good.
You feel like you have done something.
You just want to be able to share the wish with other people. I want to tell everyone about what we have just done, and I want them to be excited too. And I want to do it again, I want another wish to grant so I can see another child that’s that happy.
I think one of the plusses of Make-A-Wish is that the only commitment is going to our monthly Branch meeting. That is the minimum you have to give and that’s only an hour out of every month so it’s not hard to make time.
As you have wishes come in you spend more time doing things.
But we all have so much free time and we watch TV or whatever so it’s worth setting aside time to do something worthwhile like Make-A-Wish.
Anyone can come in with whatever capacity they have to give and that’s enough.
It’s such an easy thing to join Make-A-Wish, you don’t have to commit anything straight away.
Come to a meeting and just listen to the volunteers.
It’s a small commitment to make. You can work your way up to whatever you are comfortable doing – two wishes a year or one fundraising event, you are still giving something.
And you will still be making a difference.
No matter what you do, you will feel that sense of accomplishment from granting a single wish.
At the end of a long day if you have had a stressful day, you can go along to a meeting and you are just going to be surrounded by people talking about fun things. You can hear someone talk about the wish that they have just granted or the wish that they have just captured.
Make-A-Wish is a nice reminder that there are good things happening in the world.
And you realise your own problems really aren’t that big. You get grounded, it’s that little reminder you sometimes need.
You always leave a meeting with a new mindset, it’s always a nice little pick-me-up.
Sophie has been a proud volunteer since 2018
