This TED Talk features video game designer Amy Green, recorded live at TED NYC 2017.

Two months ago, my kids and I huddled around a cell phone, watching the live stream of the game awards, one of the video game industry's biggest nights.

They announced the nominees for the game for impact, an award that's given to a thought-provoking video game with a profound pro-social message or meaning.

They opened the envelope, and they read the title of our video game, an award for impact. It was almost funny, actually, because I always

thought that winning an award like that would have this huge impact on my life, but I found that the opposite is true.

The big nights, the accomplishments, they fade. But the hardest nights of my life have stuck with

me impacting who I am and what I do. In 2010, my third son, Joel, was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive brain tumor.

And before that year was finished, doctors sat my husband and I down and let us know that

his tumor had returned, despite the most aggressive chemotherapy and radiation that they could offer him.

On that terrible night, after learning that Joel had perhaps four months to live,

I cuddled up with my two older sons in bed. They were five and three at the time,

and I never really knew how much they understood.

So I started telling them a bedtime story. I told them about this very brave night

named Joel and his adventure fighting a terrible dragon called cancer. Every night, I told them

more of the story, but I never let the story end. I was just

building up a context that they could understand and hoping that our prayers would be answered,

and I would never have to tell them that that night who had fought so bravely was done fighting

and could rest now, forever.

Fortunately, I never did have to finish that bedtime story.

My children outgrew it.

Joel responded better than anyone expected to palliative treatment,

and so instead of months, we spent years learning how to love our dying child with all of our

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