The Difference Between Boy and Girl Playdates
I have two boys and one girl. After many years of playdates, I’ve discovered quite a few differences between the two.
Boys play outside with minimal supervision.
Girls play organized activities after arguments have been settled. (It’s better to have ideas lined up ahead of time.)
Boys play upstairs with Legos with minimal supervision.
Girls will do a craft under careful watch, if all materials have been equally distributed.
Boys play video games with minimal supervision.
Girls play board games with a referee.
Boys run around the house with reckless abandon, using their imaginations and going with the flow like professional improv actors.
Girls play dress-up as long as they do not wish to be the same princess, or if there are two matching costumes.
Boys are loud.
Girls chatter nonstop.
Boys love potty humor and fart jokes.
Girls love to speak with fancy accents during tea parties and make-believe.
You may need to intervene once in a while with wrestling boys or they will unknowingly beat each other to a pulp.
You will need to intervene often with girls as they all fight to be the boss, and none want to be bossed.
Boys will yell and scream one moment, then get over it as they transition to the next game.
Girls will passively-aggressively argue, bringing each other to tears as the drama ratchets.
Boys will need to be dragged away from activities to have a snack, after which time they will inhale a feast and leave a mess.
Girls will help prepare a feast, eating a taste of each, leaving a full plate. (I suggest baking as long as there are two eggs to crack.)
Boy playdates will make your head spin, happy for their fun, but grateful for a glass of wine when they are over.
Girl playdates will stress you out, grateful for the fact that they still like each other, but even more grateful for a strong drink.
How “The Bachelor” Backfires By Turning Hot Men into Tools
I love watching The Bachelor. I love making fun of the fools the early contestants make of themselves and trying to pick the winner if there are any real connections through to the end.
This season, I was SO EXCITED to watch because I just loved Sean from Emily’s season. I mean, how could you not love that confident, masculine, blond Texas hottie? He was handsome, respectful, and had his act together. I was hooked!
Then this season began and I started to lose some of that attraction to Sean.
I don’t think it is Sean, really, who has changed. I think it’s the fact that The Bachelor can turn even the hottest of guys into the biggest tools.
The Bachelor backfires on men.
Most people think that a man who starts off surrounded by 25 beautiful, single women cannot possibly be anything but lucky. It’s every man’s dream, right? But as the season goes along, this show requires men to behave in ways that are just not natural.
The producers try to please us women, their target audience, by forcing men to have numerous deep conversations about their feelings. They guide the men into probing into the women’s childhoods and really connecting with them by identifying how their pasts have shaped who they are today.
It’s every woman’s dream to have a man who would talk and listen like that, right?
Except, no.
Sure, we dream of our husbands actually listening and comprehending how rough our days at home with the laundry and kids are. We wish they would stare into our eyes, probing for truths so they can truly understand how we feel and why we feel the way we do. We complain that men are horrible communicators and turn to our girlfriends to gripe about how much they are frustratingly and annoyingly, MEN.
Then we watch The Bachelor, and have the deep sensitive man handed to us on a gorgeous shirtless platter and we come away feeling…disappointed.
The truth is, watching Sean (even in all of his shirtless glory) deal with bickering women and having those sensitive moments over and over again just bleeds the attractive maleness right out of him!
The hottest Sean moment of the last few weeks was watching him bite his tongue, seething, wanting to punch Desiree’s asshat of a brother. THAT Sean was hot. THAT Sean was honest. THAT Sean was acting like a man.
I found Sean more attractive in that moment, even though he held back and resisted the urge we all had to beat that boy to a pulp (we’ve seen his pecks, we know he could do it). He remained level-headed and did the right thing. But he gave us the glimpse that he is still a guy.
And that, truthfully, is what is attractive about men. I’m sure some women will disagree with me and insist that they want that sensitive, transparent man, but not me. Give me a man who still has enough testosterone flowing through him to make his blood boil when confronted with a jackass like Desiree’s brother.
I’ll put up with the rest of what drives us crazy about our husbands. At least I know my man is still a man.
Oh, and ABC? We love shirtless Sean, but a porn-music shower scene while the credits roll is just icky. That’s how you market to men while they watch women. Next time, show us Sean being a real man and we’ll be sure to tune back in for more.
My Letter to Sue Paterno
Last week, Sue Paterno’s letter to Penn State’s football lettermen was circulated a few days prior to the release of the Paterno Report.
Today, at 3:00PM, Sue Paterno will be on the Katie show discussing the Paterno Report’s findings and will give her take on the Sandusky scandal, the media’s handling of it, and on Joe Paterno himself.
I am a fan of the Katie show and an even bigger fan and supporter of the Paterno family. If I had known the day that Sue Paterno’s interview was being taped, I would have gone out of my way to arrange babysitting coverage so I could attend in person. I would have loved to sit in the audience and listen to Mrs. Paterno. I would have raised my hand when Katie asked for questions and comments. I wish I could have been there.
Since the taping wasn’t announced publicly, I missed it and will have to watch this afternoon with the rest of the world. But, had I been there, this is what I would have said to Mrs. Sue Paterno.
Hi, Mrs. Paterno.
First, let me say how sorry I am for your loss. I don’t think nearly enough people acknowledge Joe’s passing and how much you and your family must miss him. I’m so sorry.
My name is Stacey and I’m a Penn Stater. I graduated in ’97 and had the pleasure of meeting your husband twice in person during my four years at Penn State. He was a wonderful man and a gifted leader.
Like so many who knew the truth of who Joe Paterno was, I have spent the last year defending him both in individual conversations and on my blog. I’ve been frustrated over how the media reported the Sandusky scandal and disgusted with how quickly the public, the Board of Trustees, and the NCAA took the Freeh Report as gospel and used it to slander Joe.
Even some of my fellow Penn Staters were convinced that Joe was involved in some kind of conspiracy or cover-up, despite knowing how he lived his life, led his team, and encouraged everyone he met to do the right thing. It shocked me to see how even those who knew better, began to believe the lies.
I had one tear-filled conversation with my brother, who is also a Penn Stater, when the news first broke in November of 2011. Neither of us knew all of the facts yet, so we both were reeling. “Could this be true?” we asked each other. “How could this be true?” We were struggling to make sense of it all when none of it made any sense.
In that conversation, my brother and I expressed to each other how much of our own personal identities were tied to our vision of Joe Paterno and what it meant if this man, whom we knew, respected, and admired, was involved in something as sinister as a cover-up of child sex abuse. We know now that Paterno was NOT involved in any such cover-up or conspiracy, but that conversation sticks in my mind as one example of how many of us were rocked to the core by the news. We did not know then what we know now. None of us blindly defended Joe Paterno then. We believed what we were told on the news and we were crushed by what we thought was Paterno’s fall from grace.
As time passed and we realized that the news was full of more fiction than fact, we regained our faith that Joe Paterno was, in fact, the man we believed him to be. Our confusion turned to anger as we found ourselves defending him to people who knew nothing about the facts of his life and only believed what they were fed by the media.
In a conversation with a good friend and a fellow Penn State fan, he said to me, “The thing is, Stacey, you didn’t KNOW him. You knew OF him. Now that he’s gone, no one will ever really know the truth of what happened.”
My response to him then and to everyone else with similar feelings and doubts is this:
We DID KNOW him. We still do KNOW him. We knew him when we were students and we cringed when he, Joe Paterno, made public his own players’ wrong-doings. We threw our heads back and cursed him for either sitting out, or kicking star players off the team because we knew it would make it harder to win football games. We couldn’t believe that this old guy, this old-fashioned traditionalist didn’t know enough about modern college football to coach like everyone else. If the school would allow it, and the NCAA would allow it, why couldn’t our football coach just shut up and allow his players to behave that way and still play?
Back then, we were young and cared more about having a winning football team than we cared about what kinds of lessons we should be learning from Paterno’s style of coaching.
Now, however, we see those as examples of exactly who Joe Paterno was. In our moments of greatest frustration with the man, he was teaching us. We weren’t his football players. He didn’t even know our names. But he was teaching us.
“They ask me what I’d like written about me when I’m gone. I hope they write that I made Penn State a better place, not just that I was a good football coach.”
When I did have the opportunity to meet him during the summer of 1995, I remember our conversation. He asked me what my major was, and I told him it was Education. “Secondary Education with a concentration in English and Communication,” I told him proudly.
“There aren’t enough great teachers in the world,” he responded. “Education majors are some of my favorite people. You don’t know how important you are to kids. I hope you continue to have the same passion for teaching after you graduate that you have now.”
It was a short conversation of only a few minutes, and we both continued in our separate directions. In hindsight, I wish I had asked him to sign something for me, but it didn’t even cross my mind. What did cross my mind was that I just had a conversation with Joe Paterno and he never once mentioned football to me. He asked about ME and spoke of the importance of education and good teachers. Wow.
You see, Mrs. Paterno, we still know Joe. We know who he was and what he stood for and we know that, had he known what was happening with Jerry Sandusky, we know he wouldn’t have hesitated to report it, follow-up on it, and make sure that those kids were safe from that monster. He wouldn’t have cared about bad publicity for Penn State. He would have done the right thing. He might have even been criticized for doing it, but he would have done it anyway.
THAT is what we know.
Thank you so much, Mrs. Paterno, for using your own family’s resources to do what no one else has done. To try to learn the truth of what happened.
Thank you for finding Jim Clemente to shed light on the horrific reality of child sex abuse criminals and raising awareness of how they operate so we can learn and keep things like this from happening again.
Thank you for doing exactly what you said in your letter to the football players: “Don’t give up. Don’t be afraid. Do the right thing. And make sure your actions serve the greater good.”
And thank you, Mrs. Paterno, for sharing your husband with all of us for all of those years.
Sincerely,
Stacey Maisch
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Related Posts:
This is the House that Joe Built
Paterno’s Last Gift to Penn State
The First Key Points of the Paterno Report
The Paterno Report was just released this morning. I finally made it through the document in its entirety. To me, these initial key points cannot be overlooked. (The bold highlights are mine.)
The Freeh report missed a critical opportunity to educate the public on the identification of child sexual victimization, and instead used the platform created by this scandal to sensationalize the blaming of Joe Paterno.
The Freeh report ignored decades of expert research and behavioral analysis regarding the appropriate way to understand and investigate a child sexual victimization case.
Mr. Jim Clemente is one of the leading former FBI profilers of child sex offenders, and himself a survivor of childhood sexual victimization. As Mr. Clemente bluntly put it:
- “The SIC failed to properly factor the dynamics of acquaintance child sexual victimization cases into their investigation. Consequently, the SIC misinterpreted evidence and behavior and reached erroneous conclusions. Any investigation will reach the wrong result by using the wrong approach and by interpreting the facts through the wrong filter.”7
- “There is no other way to say it: on the most critical aspects of the Sandusky investigation, the SIC report is a failure. It does a tremendous disservice to Penn State, Joe Paterno, and the victims of Jerry Sandusky.”8
- Expert analysis shows that Jerry Sandusky was a “skilled and masterful manipulator,” who deceived an entire community to obscure the signs of child abuse, using a variety of proven techniques. Those techniques included: perpetuating an image as a playful “nice guy” who was a foster and adoptive parent with kids around him at all hours in all types of capacities, leveraging his position as a respected member of the community, and creating a children’s charity to legitimize his credibility in interacting with kids.
- Expert analysis shows that Jerry Sandusky fooled qualified child welfare professionals and law enforcement, as well as laymen inexperienced and untrained in child sexual victimization like Joe Paterno. Sandusky’s techniques as a pillar of the community created a proven psychological and cognitive impediment for them to recognize the red flags and other signs that Sandusky was a child molester. Joe Paterno himself knew very little about Jerry Sandusky’s personal life and did not know private details about Sandusky or his victims. For decades, Joe Paterno respected Sandusky’s talent as a coach and professional colleague and recognized Sandusky’s widely-stated passion for helping kids, but the Freeh report missed that they disliked each other personally, had very little in common outside work, and did not interact much if at all socially.
- Expert analysis shows that while signs of Jerry Sandusky’s child molestation existed with the benefit of hindsight, at the time of the 2001 shower incident reported by graduate assistant Mike McQueary, information was conveyed to Joe Paterno in terms that were too general and vague for him to disregard decades of contrary experience with Sandusky THE RUSH TO INJUSTICE REGARDING JOE PATERNOiv and to conclude that Sandusky was a child predator.
As summarized in former FBI profiler Jim Clemente’s own words:
- “Given my 30 years of education, training and experience working, evaluating and assessing child sex crimes investigations around the world, it is my expert opinion that Paterno did not know, or even believe in the possibility, that Sandusky was capable of sexually assaulting boys. At worst, he believed that Sandusky was a touchy-feely guy who had boundary issues. This fact is clear from his repeated statements before he died.”9
- “[Paterno] did what he believed was reasonable and necessary to address the situation based on his understanding of the facts, and his position at the time. Paterno did what most people who cared about children would have done in the same situation. More than a decade later, and in hindsight, Paterno showed his concern for the victims when he stated he, ‘wished [he] had done more.’”10
- “Paterno, like everyone else who knew Sandusky, simply fell victim to effective ‘grooming.’ [Grooming is a dynamic process of seemingly innocent, positive public behaviors by the offender, aimed at gaining the trust of the targeted child, parents and the community.] As an expert behavioral analyst and based on my review of the evidence, Paterno did not believe that the information he received from McQueary amounted to Sandusky being a predatory child sex offender.”11
- The Freeh report is uniformly biased against Joe Paterno. For the authors of the report, there are no gray areas. They ascribe motives to people they never met or interviewed, and interpret ambiguous documents with a clarity and decisiveness that is impossible to justify.
I think Clemente’s reports are invaluable. His credibility is irrefutable. He is an FBI profiler who spent his life hunting for and prosecuting child sex offenders, and he’s a survivor of child sex abuse himself. He’s a 22 year EXPERT and he says that Sandusky is in the top 1% of criminal grooming masterminds. Again, he defends Paterno saying:
“Expert analysis shows that Jerry Sandusky fooled qualified child welfare professionals and law enforcement, as well as laymen inexperienced and untrained in child sexual victimization like Joe Paterno. Sandusky’s techniques as a pillar of the community created a proven psychological and cognitive impediment for them to recognize the red flags and other signs that Sandusky was a child molester. Joe Paterno himself knew very little about Jerry Sandusky’s personal life and did not know private details about Sandusky or his victims. For decades, Joe Paterno respected Sandusky’s talent as a coach and professional colleague and recognized Sandusky’s widely-stated passion for helping kids, but the Freeh report missed that they disliked each other personally, had very little in common outside work, and did not interact much if at all socially.”
Basically, if Sandusky fooled the experts who are tasked with recognizing these criminals, why would we expect Paterno to have seen it differently?
Please take the time to read the Paterno Report in its entirety. After the whole world took the Freeh Report as gospel and rushed to judgement based on that one, now proven incomplete, report, it is only fair to take the same amount of time and energy to read this thorough report in response.
The complete Paterno Report is on Paterno.com.
The Paterno Family’s Response to the Freeh Report
It has been a little over a year since the Penn State lost Joe Paterno to cancer. Those of us who knew the truth of who Paterno was were heartbroken and continue to miss him.
We had to sit by and watch while the world’s media outlets tried to tear down this man, this pillar of Penn State, while they linked him to the Sandusky scandal. We had to watch while one paid-for, faulty report was taken as gospel without any fact-checking or basic journalistic principles. All of the major media networks, along with smaller outlets, personal blogs, and venomous commenters swallowed the Freeh Report whole and without question.
Now, one year later, the Paterno family is ready to respond.
Unlike the rush-to-judgement media, Penn State’s Board of Trustees, and the NCAA, the Paterno family acted rationally and responsibly. They took the time to investigate and find out the truth. They stayed out of the spotlight, much like Joe tried to do throughout his life. They mourned their loss privately, but took steps to seek the truth.
Tomorrow, however, they will publicly respond with the results of their investigation. Joe’s wife, Sue Paterno, has sent this letter to all former Penn State lettermen. The lettermen have asked that it be shared publicly.
February 8, 2013
Dear Christian,
For the past fourteen months I have refrained from commenting publicly about the Jerry Sandusky scandal and the related actions by the Board of Trustees, Louis Freeh, the President of Penn State and the NCAA. There have been many times, of course, when I wanted to speak out, but I needed time to deal with the loss of Joe and I believed also that this was a situation that demanded careful, thoughtful, objective analysis. The last thing Joe would have wanted is for me to become just one more voice making claims and assertions that were unsupported by the facts.
The crimes committed by Jerry Sandusky are heartbreaking. As a mother of 5 and grandmother of 17, it is incomprehensible to me that anyone could intentionally harm a child. I think of the victims daily and I pray that God will heal their wounds and comfort their souls.
As this story unfolded, Joe and I believed strongly that the first priority must be to uncover the full truth. Despite the Board of Trustees’ rash and irresponsible decision to fire Joe without ever speaking with him, we remained hopeful that the investigation they initiated with Mr. Freeh, along with simultaneous investigations by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, The Second Mile and other entities, would produce a clear and comprehensive record of what transpired. We also hoped that these investigations would result in an actionable set of lessons that other institutions could use to help prevent similar tragedies from unfolding. Sadly, neither outcome has developed.
When the Freeh report was released last July, I was as shocked as anyone by the findings and by Mr. Freeh’s extraordinary attack on Joe’s character and integrity. I did not recognize the man Mr. Freeh described. I am here to tell you as definitively and forcefully as I know how that Mr. Freeh could not have been more wrong in his assessment of Joe. I knew Joe Paterno as well as one human being can know another. Joe was exactly the moral, disciplined and demanding man you knew him to be. Over the years I watched as he struggled with countless personal and professional challenges. Never – not once – did I see him compromise his principles or twist the truth to avoid bad publicity or protect his reputation. Joe was tough, sometimes difficult, always opinionated and extremely demanding. He was also scrupulously honest, rigidly moral and absolutely unafraid of the consequences of doing the right thing.
After the Freeh report was released I knew immediately that the situation demanded further review. Unfortunately, the Board’s response was to panic again. They embraced the report without reviewing it. They never met with Mr. Freeh or his investigators. They asked no questions and challenged no assertions. Although they never officially voted to accept the report, they endorsed its findings and allowed the NCAA to impose unprecedented sanctions. To claim that this ill-considered and rash process served the victims and the university is a grave error. Only the truth serves the victims. Only the truth can help prevent this sort of crime from occurring again.
Although it was not something I ever imagined doing, I directed my lawyer, Wick Sollers, of the King & Spalding firm in Washington DC, to undertake a review of the Freeh report and Joe’s actions. I told him to engage the best, most respected experts, to take whatever time he needed and to go wherever the facts led. Sunday morning at 9am we are releasing the full Report by Wick and his team of experts. The report and additional information will be available at Paterno.com.
I will not attempt in this letter to summarize the Report of the experts except to say that they unreservedly and forcefully confirm my beliefs about Joe’s conduct. In addition, they present a passionate and persuasive critique of the Freeh report as a total disservice to the victims of Sandusky and the cause of preventing child sex offenses. I hope you can take the time to review the report and share it with friends and family.
In closing, I want to address two issues that have come up frequently over the last year. First, some critics say it is no longer appropriate for me or my family to comment further on this case and that the Freeh report and the actions of the NCAA should close the book on the Sandusky scandal. This cannot happen. The Freeh report failed and if it is not challenged and corrected, nothing worthwhile will have come from these tragic events.
Second, there has been endless speculation about what my family and I ultimately want to achieve. Is it the return of the statue? The restoration of Joe’s wins? His name on the football stadium? On this point I also want to be clear. Joe Paterno’s legacy wasn’t a statue, a winning record or public adulation. He was grateful for the many accolades he received but he never believed they defined his life. His legacy is his family and you his players. How you live your life speaks louder than any report. The great fathers, husbands and citizens you have become fulfill the dreams Joe had. All that we want – and what I believe we owe the victims, Joe Paterno and everyone who cares about Penn State – is the full record of what happened. On this point, I know the advice Joe would give. Don’t give up. Don’t be afraid. Do the right thing. And make sure your actions serve the greater good. This is the path I will continue to follow.
I thank you for your support and kindness. My heart and home will always be open to you.
Sincerely,
Sue
The time has come to learn the truth. And I, for one, cannot wait.
Tune into ESPN Sunday, February 10, 2013 at 9:00 am (EST) to “Outside the Lines” for the release of the Paterno family Counter Report to the Freeh Report
Read More on the Center Daily Times.
Sue Paterno will also be on the Katie Couric show discussing the Paterno family’s findings on Monday, February 11 at 3:00PM EST on ABC.
“They ask me what I’d like written about me when I’m gone. I hope they write that I made Penn State a better place, not just that I was a good football coach.”
Hey January, Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out
I am ready to say, “Good riddance!” to the entire month of January, 2013.
As if the lice epidemic in my children’s school wasn’t enough to make my scalp itch and have an irrational fear of hats, we were lucky enough to experience a whole host of other issues.
In this one month, my family succumbed to SEVEN bouts of strep throat and two cases of the flu. All in a span of three weeks. I put more miles on my washing machine and dryer this month than I have in the six years we’ve lived here. But even the lice, strep and flu epidemics we endured couldn’t prepare me for the crazy bad luck of January 31st.
Per my plans, this was to be the first day in three weeks that I had a normal day, without either a sick kid or sick husband home with me, without being sick myself. The plan was to do laundry, scrub floors and wipe every touchable surface with antibacterial disinfecting wipes in the house. To attempt to get the house germ-free (again) before anyone else could come down with anything new.
At least, that was the plan. Reality had something different in mind.
Power Outages Caused by Hurricane Sandy, 2012
As has been evidenced before by the 7-day power outage of October 2011, and the 10-day power outage after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, our small town has a history of mature trees in tenuous positions near exposed power lines. Last night’s wind storm caused one of the two elementary schools to lose power today. Since we lost so many days from Sandy, we can’t afford to make up any more, so the district got creative. My kids, who go to the elementary school with power, would have an early dismissal so the students from the other side of town could get a half day of school in our building.
That meant, my full day in an empty house just got cut three hours short. Oh well, time to roll with the punches, like all moms do.
On my way to pick up my sons from school, my cell phone rang. Seeing it was my daughter’s preschool, I broke the law and answered the phone while searching for a parking spot. My daughter was sobbing during her first cooking enrichment class and was having a hard time with transitioning from one room to the next.
I sat at a red light with my phone to my ear, trying to determine which direction to turn. Right to park for my boys’ school pickup, or left to go rescue my daughter from cooking class? As I glanced in the rear-view mirror, I saw a police car behind me. Seeing him turning right, I turned left, headed for my daughter. A quick conversation with the preschool’s phenomenal Director had me reassured that we should wait to see if my daughter could calm herself down before rushing over to pick her up.
Turning back around, I parked at my boys’ school and went in to pick them up. Instead of standing outside of the building like usual, I had to go inside and visit each individual classroom to sign out my two and my neighbors two children for our carpool. Upon entering the building, we find out that the other school did get their power back, so those students weren’t coming to our school after all. But it was too late to contact parents, so the kids had the half day anyway. Lovely.
Two more back and forth phone calls with my daughter’s school to make sure she was okay, and four classroom trips later, my laundry was clean but wrinkling in a basket, and my house was no less germy than yesterday.
As I pulled back up our street to be home for the afternoon, I discovered cones barricading me from getting in my driveway.
“Sorry, ma’am. You’ll have to go around.”
“But I live in that house RIGHT THERE,” I explained, pointing to my driveway, which was blocked by 5 utility trucks working on a water main break right outside of my house. I watched them move two of the trucks out of the way, to reveal the damage. I pulled into my driveway, splashing the minivan through a bubbling, brown river of mud pumping out of the side of the street.
I apologized to the men that I would need to pull out and back in again in about thirty minutes. Then asked what happens when we reach below freezing temperatures again tonight.
“We hope to have it fixed by then, ma’am,” was all I got in reply.
I finally got to my daughter’s preschool to pick her up from her rough first day of cooking class. She bounded out with a huge smile on her face, wearing a sparkling crown and holding a container of homemade scones.
The teachers motioned me aside to tell me they had finally figured out what had her so upset during the class.
“We told the children, ‘Today, we’re going to England!’ to get them excited about learning about London while we baked our scones. Every time we changed rooms, Allie thought we were actually leaving and taking her to England, so she started to cry that she wanted to go home. I don’t think we’ll say that again to the children!”
February, you can’t get here fast enough.
My Selfish Prayers
I believe in the power of prayer.
I frequently pray for guidance, strength, and blessings for friends, family and our community. Many of my prayers are said silently in the dark of night as I settle in for sleep. Others are shouted at the top of my lungs in desperation. But whether whispered or shouted, thought privately in silence, or written down, I do believe that every prayer is heard.
I’ve been praying extra hard lately for a local family going through an unbelievably hard time right now. This family, the Healeys, live in the same small town I do, and run a well-known music school here. My prayers for them have been for their daughter, Brooke, who was recently diagnosed with a brain tumor. This tumor, called a Pontine Glioma is on her PONS, an area of the brain stem that controls the heart, breathing, digestive system, etc. They have been told that this is inoperable. They will be starting radiation and have already started steroids. The radiation will hopefully shrink the tumor. However, after she’s been given all of the radiation she can handle, it will likely grow back.
Brooke is a beautiful little 4-year-old girl. When I pray for her, I pray for a miracle. I pray that the doctors will discover something in her biopsy scheduled for tomorrow that will change her prognosis. I pray that she will make it through the tests and treatments ahead of her in good health. I pray that her body and spirits will stay strong. I pray that her parents will be blessed with the strength and hope they need to travel this road with their daughter. I pray that our community will continue to give all of them the support they need to make it through the toughest days ahead.
And then I pray my selfish prayers.
I pray in gratitude that my own 4-year-old daughter and her two older brothers have healthy brains and bodies. I pray for added blessings to protect them from any such future tragedies. I pray in relief that I do not have to face what Brooke’s parents are living through.
These prayers of gratitude, blessings and relief seem so supremely selfish, but I can’t help it. I just don’t know if I could handle it if I were faced with something similar. I just don’t know how any mother can handle it. I simply cannot comprehend it.
So I pray my selfish prayers. And I continue to pray even harder for a miracle for the Healey family.
Please add your prayers to the many that are going out to Brooke and her family. You can follow her story on the CaringBridge website set up for her here.
In addition to prayers, please consider donating to the family through NJ Heartworks (be sure to put Brooke Healey in the notes section), and wear gray on Fridays in honor of Brooke and for brain tumor support and awareness.
