From a distance, my life appears to be a Song of Grief with more verses than a human heart can hold. Up close, I would tell you that the opposite is true. It is actually a Song of Hope with an entire choir helping me sing it with joy. The soloists who bring this song meaning and inspiration are; my husband of over 3 decades, and our 3 beautiful children. There is also a special singer who now shares her voice from heaven, my mother, Donna. These are the people who have helped me shape these events of sadness into a lifetime now filled with wonder and love. This is not a small task, you will see as you navigate this site. I seldom share my entire story with people simply because it is the stuff of horror novels, especially if you hear it in one sitting. Please pace yourself and only read the sections of this website that apply to you first. My goal in sharing my story piece by piece is so you can zero in on the area that helps in your own healing and begin discussions with your own choir.

I believe we are each here on earth to help others, through support, love, sharing, kindness, compassion and grace. Through the years, I have felt a deep calling to share my story. I know that the many challenges presented to me were meant: for me to seek and find hope in the midst of horror and to SHARE it.

When traveling the road of grief, there are three paths to choose: one of hate, one of despair, or one of hope. Each day you make a choice. When anger comes, and it will, you can overcome it, or let it overcome you. You can reach in, reach out, or reach up. You can listen to the self-talk inside your head and stuff the pain and try to forget; a sure road to loneliness and anger.  Or you can take the more difficult path, reach for healing and navigate through the pain to hope.

Currently, I am a mother of 3 (one child in heaven). I have a wonderful husband who holds my hand each day on this journey, and we have a wonderful network of friends, many strong partnerships with caring physicians helping us on our journey.  My professional background consists of years of lecturing general medicine, serving as the Dean of a private college, running children’s museums across the country, and presenting to countless groups about loss, disability awareness, coping with unexpected outcomes, and compassionate healing.

To relay my story, we need to go back to when I was a young graduate student, married 5 years and desperately trying to begin a family.  My husband and I are very goal orientated (still are) but we also often “leap” into life.  On the day we met, Todd told me we were going to spend the rest of our lives together (fairly overwhelming stuff).  I was eighteen and it was my first day of college.  I thought he was crazy.  He told me that I was the first person that made him believe there was truly love in the world.  Todd proved to be right in his conviction.   We married a few months later.  Since we married young, we knew that we wanted to be very intentional about how we spent those first few years, before we even considered beginning a family.  We made a list of goals that we wanted to achieve individually and as a couple before we began that journey of parenthood.  This list included things like:  complete our degrees, have a dog, own a home, drive a convertible and travel to Europe.  Plus I wanted to begin medical school.  Four years into our marriage when most of our list was completed or well underway, we decided to try to start a family (our darling puppy made us overconfident in our parenting abilities!).

And so the transformational journey of parenthood began.

Crossing the biggest metaphorical bridge of our lives…