Our Kindness Crusade

Today I'm grateful for my husband's help at school, where we just put up my final B2S board in honor of The Great Kindness Challenge Global Edition Day. We dedicate it to my new friend Jill, co-founder of 

 .

Please join me in signing up for their 

Great Kindness Challenge School Edition, 

which will take place worldwide the last week of January 2015.

Jill's board is all but complete. The pockets will hold 3x5 conversation cards with suggestions for action to help our littles superheroes soar as they crusade with kindness through the year. That makes the board interactive, which is perfect because it's strategically-placed in the cafeteria to provide food for thought 

while students wait patiently in line for their trays. 

UDPATED board ... complete with conversation cards,

one for each school day in the month of September.

Don't you love new beginnings?

Tomorrow marks the nineteen-months mark from the day that I was hit head-on from a drunk driver and handed a new beginning in my personal journey. I was invited to share my reflections in an upcoming Mothers Against Drunk Drivers newsletter. Here's a sneak peek at a portion of that post.

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When MADD Makes Sense

Next January, it’ll be two whole years since I was hit head-on at 3 o’clock in the afternoon by an intoxicated mother of two on her way to school to pick up her children, something that, at the time, didn’t make a bit of sense.

Nineteen months later, the healing process continues and I’ve finally weaned off of the anti-anxiety medicine that I needed for just over a year to combat the post-traumatic panic and stress. And still, it doesn’t make sense.

The state’s case against that driver and our civil suit to recover damages are both in the books and what’s left for me is an occasional visit to the chiropractor to try to restore complete, unrestricted movement in my neck and upper back as well as periodic check-ups with my trauma therapist. And still, I can’t make much sense of any of it.

Through all of it, the pain, the heartache, the trauma and anxiety, the court dates and the healing, my Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) representative was there, by my side, trying to help make sense of the incomprehensible: I could have lost my life that afternoon in that senseless collision.

It took about a month before I fully realized I would even want or need an advocate from MADD. The police officer who came by the morning after the collision to speak with me about my rights as a victim had given me a plethora of MADD resources available to me. “But I’m not a victim,” I remember thinking. I survived and I’ll be fine. Sure, it was horrific and I was in terrible pain, but I was going to be just fine. Or so I thought.

As the days turned into weeks, and I kept appointments to the treating doctor and orthopedist, to the physical therapist and to the trauma specialist, taxied to and fro by family and friends because with a broken wrist and broke ankle I wasn’t able to drive, feelings of devastation and despair began to overwhelm. That’s when I placed the call to MADD and sobbed through my story to the compassionate soul on the other end of the line.

Her name was Rosa, and within the week, I received a package filled with resources, my favorite of which ended up being a book called Crash Course. You might imagine that I didn’t feel like reading just then, so I tucked those things into my Hope Chest and didn’t think much about them for another month. When it came time to replace the vehicle and I started getting the run-around from the drunken driver’s insurance company, it occurred to use that we might need legal representation as well, and I found myself on the phone with Rosa again.

This time she offered to come to my office so that we could meet in person. We made an appointment and I eagerly awaited our visit. I think it was because I had the feeling that she got it. She understood my plight as she listened my feelings and concerns. She showed genuine empathy for me at a very dark and difficult time. When she arrived, she handed me a pile of resources, including a calendar and a Sesame Street book about grief and loss. At the top of the pile? You guessed it, another copy of Crash Course. At that point, I had a feeling that it was a text that I was supposed to read. And, sure enough, it couldn’t have arrived at a better time.

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I will let you know when it's published so you can read {as Paul Harvey would say} the rest of the story. On that note, I'm going to be on a blogging break for a bit as I've got some traveling and training ahead of me before my launch into our official Back-to-School days. I will be back toward the end of the month to showcase more inspirational people and share additional character-ed stories and strategies.  

Happy new year!