I am so deeply thankful for this day of 40 degree temperatures and sunshine. As you know, you have been creating a lot of intense winter weather and on this one day, I was hoping that we'd have moderate temperatures and no storm.
Why? Well you know the answer because, well, after all, you are a goddess....
We will be sending out thank you's but I want to publicly thank everyone who have made tonight's event possible:
To Karis Antokal -- thank you for your strength, your passion, your commitment and your being a little nuts to making your first endurance event the Boston Marathon (that's pot calling the kettle black right?). Thank you for being you and it is an honor to co host this event with you. Thank you to your family for donating the autographed Tom Brady Jersey for the take a chance drawing tonight and thank you to your mom for bringing you into this world 29 years ago on 3/2!
To Limelight Stage and Studios manager, Henry Wong for saying yes without hesitation when I asked if we could have our event at your venue. To Chris, the house manager who said we could set up anytime after 4:30pm and said he is so happy to welcome us to Limelight for our event. And to all of you who are coming out to Sing Boston Strong tonight!
To Kevin Fitzgerald, owner of Jacob Wirth Restaurant -- thank you for your incredible generosity in making sure that everyone goes home a winner! Kevin donated a $50 gift certificate, four $25 gift certificates and as many $10 gift certificates as people who attend the event up to a total of 80 people. We'll have a drawing at the end of the evening.
To our donors for the Silent Auction Items:
Rick Penn for his donation of Celtics Tickets (face value $350.
To Marathon Sports Brookline for hosting me last Saturday to promote the event. For your generous donations of a $30 gift certificate and giving us a pile of gloves to sell and keep the proceeds for Spaulding.
To Rick Leskowitz for your donation of The Joy of Sox Movie DVD's which will be used for our Silent Auction and a Take a Chance Drawing.
To my dear friend Lee Woodruff who always comes through for me donating 3 books autographed by Bob Woodruff and herself.
To Julie Ingalls who is the marketing director at Stapleton Floral Design - thank you for the $75 gift certificate and the gift of your friendship through the years.
Thank you to my husband and daughter for being support crew to me as I once again took up the reins for fund raising for Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. Hey at least this time we're not in training too!
And thank you to Spaulding Rehab Hospital for being there for me since October of 2006 when I faced an uncertain future and was terrified of what was happening to my body. I would not be where I am today in my healing journey were it not for your place of healing.
Here's to a wildly successful event tonight as we raise our voices and Sing Boston Strong to raise lots of money for Spaulding Rehab!
Two weeks ago I had the incredible pleasure of hearing Lee Woodruff speak at Brookline Booksmith. You can read about in my blog post, "Be In The Moment."
I have spent these last two weeks with Maura and Pete, Sarah and Ryan, Roger and Margaret, Stu and Erin and Alex riding a wave of emotions as they all reel and respond to the accidental death of Maura and Pete's son James. No spoilers here that's for sure. Lee's first novel is a riveting story that draws from the universal experiences of the human condition.
"Those We Love Most", in Lee's words, is a story about resiliency. "It's about the best parts of us; the secrets we choose to keep and how the ones who love us can move us past the hard places and orient us in the right direction." I read "Those We Love Most" before turning in at night and on the beach. I couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen next yet I didn't want the story to end. Someone asked Lee if she missed the characters once she finished the book. She emphatically said, "No!" I did experience a sense of completion and closure when I turned the last page. I do miss everyone with whom I shared an intimate journey of loss, of love, of life.
Lee captures the essence of the complexity of relationships in the younger and older generations. She reveals the internal world of the characters providing us with a window to their souls and a window to the community that surrounds them. In her acknowledgements, Lee lists the experts with whom she consulted to ensure correctness of details that draw us into the believability of the plot.
Even in times of darkness and as characters face their own shadows, the tender love in Lee's heart and in the characters' hearts ultimately prevails.
Lee read the following passage from "Those We Love Most" at her book signing: "Although in her dream James couldn't speak, she knew that from the moment he had left himself in the hospital, floating briefly above his broken body, his job had been to stay close to them, a sentry watching over the ones he loved at the house, until the time was right. Maura understood that this new version of her son, ethereal and physically insubstantial, no longer fathomed what it was to be tired or heavy or bound by gravity. She could intuit, as a mother does, his growing anticipation for what would come next, a buoying sense that another warm place was waiting that would feel as good and secure to him as living with his family had felt.
In her dream, James was now entering their bedroom, although Pete was there next to her instead of lying in James's room as he was in real time. Swirling around his father's sleeping form, James dove down burrowing himself in his chest. She watched Pete's even breathing rise and fall, and then he stilled for a moment and rolled serenely onto his back. James moved now to Sarah's room and dipped down into her crib, tenderly caressing his sister's face, her curls blowing back form her sleep-damp forehead as her hand rose involuntarily and relaxed its fist. James appeared to be zooming faster now, with a greater sense of urgency, moving into Ryan's room, and Maura was inexplicably keeping pace, she was with him, observing it all form the inside out. She watched as he circled the room's perimeter once, past Ryan's books and games, the discarded clothes on the floor and moved to the bed to embrace him before retreating....
He continued up past stiff air currents and colliding weather patterns and up,up, up...and then all at once Maura's forward movement dissolved as a golden warmth infused her veins, a glow and there was a sudden sensation of uncoupling, like the second firing of a rocket ship in space. She observed James continuing above her as one watches a meteor, with a consuming sense of wonder....
And in Maura's dream, as her son broke through the byzantine darkness to join the universal light of a trillion twinkling stars, all that had once been James expanded and then burst into a million particles of explosive, refractive love." (excerpted from pages 177-179).
Head out to your neighborhood indie book store to pick up your copy of Lee Woodruff's first novel. Treat yourself to a fro yo while you're at it. Savor this wonderful novel which is a perfect beach or before bedtime read as the gentle summer breezes caress you as you enter the world of "Those We Love Most."
From my heart to yours
With total love and deepest gratitude, Mary
"What does it mean when you 'like' someone or something on facebook? I always feel so pathetic when I ask someone to 'like' my page as if it really means something. Does it mean something?" Lee Woodruff asked looking right at me as she began her talk to share with us her musings on life and writing her first novel, "Those We Love Most". {Thank you to Tom McManus for taking these amazing photos to capture the evening} at Brookline Booksmith on Wednesday evening.
I met Lee Woodruff two weeks before I ran the 2009 Boston Marathon as part of Spaulding Rehab's Race for Rehab Team. We, team members, received a message from Ashley Bronson, the special events coordinator at the time encouraging us to hear Lee and others speak about traumatic brain injury and the partnership between Spaulding and the VA treating returning veterans with PTSD and TBI. I distinctly remember telling myself that I didn't need to go to that. I no longer worked at the VA. I was no longer a social worker. But I got another reminder that it would be wonderful to have the race for rehab team represented at the event. Okay Universe, I'll go.
It was an inspirational afternoon as Lee talked about her journey with her husband, Bob Woodruff, after he was critically injured in the Iraqi war. A panel of experts followed her talk discussing the latest treatments for PTSD and TBI. In 2008, one of the members of the Race for Rehab team was running in honor of a veteran whose family fought and won having the VA pay for their family member's care at Spaulding. He was at the event along with his family who I met at the pre race pasta dinner in 2008. It was stunning to see his recovery. They encouraged me to share my story with Lee. We made a wonderful connection. She is the embodiment of warmth, kindness and sincerity.
The next time I saw Lee was at Brookline Booksmith for the book signing of "Perfectly Imperfect."
I was stunned that she remembered me. She asked me how my marathon run was!
We stayed in contact via email and via my comments on her blog. She was incredibly generous to donate signed books for our fund raising events.
When I saw that her first novel was being released and she blogged about independent book sellers, I asked her if she would like to have a book signing at Brookline Booksmith. I worked with her publicist and the events coordinator at Booksmith to make it happen.
Lee spoke of relationships, resiliency and the importance of sharing our stories. She is hysterically funny, able to laugh with herself and is deeply honest. She shared with us that on her way to Germany to see Bob who was in a coma and it was uncertain whether he would live, she brought a very dark book with her, "We Need to Talk About Kevin." Someone asked her why she was choosing to read that before going to visit her husband in intensive care. She said because no matter what you are going through, someone is going through something worse and it puts our pain in perspective."
She talked about how she is amazed at the resiliency of the Spirit to overcome anything in life. In "Those We Love Most" she takes us on that journey of healing and forgiveness after a 17 year old accidentally hits and kills a little boy with his car. She spoke to what happens when we 'take our eye off the ball' and are not living in the moment.
Lee said that more than anything else, when she does a book tour, she loves hearing the stories from the people who come out to hear her speak. She cares deeply about life, about people, about truth and living an authentic life. I was so surprised when she walked in and took her place at the podium that she remembered me although it had been two years since we last saw each other. I remember writing on her blog after reading Perfectly Imperfect that I feel as though I've made a new friend; that I felt as though I was having a cup of tea with her and we were sharing stories.
She is a friend in every sense of the word. There aren't a lot of words that need to be exchanged but there is a sense of kinship and connection whenever we are together. I asked a question about how Bob is doing now and she said, "Really well....I mean I'm his wife so I notice things but he's doing great -- you know - you know the capacity of the brain to regenerate..." I sure do ... Lee delivers a message of hope, healing and possibility while acknowledging the angst and grief inherent in life.
She read a passage from the book which describes what she believes happens when we leave our physical bodies. I got goosebumps.
When it came time for the book signing, she gave me a huge hug, apologized that her schedule was so crazy and we didn't have time to get together for yoga this time and said I looked wonderful. She genuinely wanted to know how I was doing.
I let her know I am doing really well in so many ways and we are so blessed. I let her know that we are healing from Marathon Monday. I told her where we were and her eyes filled with tears. No words were needed. She said she was so glad that we got out safely and are doing well. I asked her if she could please sign the book to Mary and Tom -- she said you bet I will and then looked behind me to thank Tom for coming out and it was wonderful to meet him. (She had told us she was in a huge rush to drive back to New York after the signing so we were fast, slick and to the point).
She signed our book, "Be in the moment." We know all too well that life can change 'in an instant' and that all we can do is to live fully in the moment that is right now. What a blessing to spend beautiful moments with Lee Woodruff. I cannot wait to dive into "Those We Love Most." You know I'll be writing a book review. Pick up your copy at your local independent book seller today.
There Comes a Moment from Songs of Freedom:Poems From a Healing Odyssey Volume II:Seasons of the Soul now available along with Volume I:Elements of Healing on Amazon
There comes a moment
a culmination of moments really
when Truth becomes stronger than fear
when heart breaks open into wholeness
and the power of love crushes all that went before.
There comes a moment when the soul and heart's desire
becomes crystal clear
and you lovingly hit yourself on the forehead
why didn't I see this before?
There comes a moment when the old ways no longer serve
and you realize
you cannot possibly serve two masters
the two masters being fear and love.
There comes a moment when playing small
and staying in the 'comfort zone'
becomes intolerable
when passion burns so brightly
lies are consumed in its flames.
There comes a moment when you wake up
to the magnificence of who you really are
and tears of joy, relief and release
like an ocean wave on a hot summer's day
bathe you in the waters of rebirth.
There comes a moment
and that moment is now.
From my heart to yours
With total love and deepest gratitude, Mary
