Texan Mosaic

When a wife and mother of two only had weeks to live, she knew what she had to do for her family. 

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She planned to write an everlasting message to leave for her daughters so that they might know truth, courage, and ambition beyond their mom’s fight with breast cancer.

Veronica Waldrop’s heartwarming poems were written to inspire her daughters after she passed and is now an empowering book, “The Nuff,” that daughters across the nation can read to show them how to be the beautiful and fearless young women they were made to be. 

Waldrop’s story begins when she graduated from Levelland High School and continued her education at South Plains College. She earned an Associate of Arts degree in English in 1999.

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While she attended SPC, she was involved with a variety of activities on campus. She sang in ensembles in the country music program in the Creative Arts Building, and was also involved with Campus Ambassadors.

Waldrop then transferred to Texas Tech University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English, with an emphasis in creative writing.

Before graduating from TTU, she studied abroad at Seville, Spain, where she expanded her interest in Latin-American studies.

Waldrop later enrolled at the University of Florida on a full scholarship, where she earned a master’s degree in Latin-American studies 

“Veronica loved the creative side of writing,” said her father, John Sparks, who served as Professor of Journalism and chairperson of the Communications Department at SPC before retiring in 2012 . “She just did a lot of interesting things.”

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Waldrop was diagnosed with Triple Negative Breast Cancer in August 2015. Two years later, she and her husband found out the disease had returned and metastasized in June 2017. She passed away in November 2017.

During the final weeks of her life, Waldrop wore a unicorn costume around the house to help raise her daughters’ spirits. “The Nuff” is what defines the imperishable spirit of Waldrop’s life that she wanted to pass along to every ‘Nuff’ across the nation, “a strong and beautiful girl with a powerful heart and brain.”  

According to her husband, Will Waldrop, she wrote the first couple of lines of the book right after the birth of their first child, Natalia.  However, the majority of the book was written months before her passing. 

“During the last months of her life, she worked diligently to finish the poem as a lasting message to our daughters,” Waldrop said. “Now, daughters everywhere know that they are enough, just the way that God made them.”

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The message was so impactful that Waldrop knew it had to be shared with not only their daughters, but with children and adults everywhere.  

Since his wife’s passing, Waldrop has been working diligently with Tailwind Publishing to ensure her legacy lives on. 

“We were fortunate enough to partner with HEB, and their team did an amazing job creating an environment for children to instill this message into them by reading the story in over 300 of their Texas stores,” Waldrop said. “They truly stood behind the mission and continue to today.  The impact it is having on children across the country is amazing, and we can’t wait to continue to see the lives it will touch.”

Waldrop’s parents attended an HEB event on Feb. 22 in San Antonio  which consisted of three days of people coming from around the area to read the poems to children.

“The only place you can get the book right now is through HEB stores,” Sparks said. “It was really something to see the little kids sitting around while somebody read the book to them.”

The Nuff shares a message with girls that encourages authenticity, self-assurance, and strength to teach them that they are not defined by their achievements or challenges, but they are already, and will always be, enough.