“Connecting with people has always been essential for me,” says Holly Honarvar. She means this quite literally: every two weeks she lives, someone has to give blood to keep her alive.
“I hope my story inspires people to donate blood, for life is actually a gift to me,” she explains. “I owe it to people to give it back. When someone gives you a gift, you don’t want to throw it away.”
At just one year old, Holly was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder called thalassemia. That means her body does not produce healthy red blood cells, so she requires regular treatment and blood transfusions every six weeks, in which she gets three units of blood from three different donors.