Spring Break

Shortly after my diagnosis, the owner of my company offered to cover flights to California for Spring Break for me and my daughters and stay with Laura who winters there with her mother and family. Laura is the VP of Business Operations and she is one of the most incredible people I know. She is firm, but leads with kindness and she has the most fascinating life stories.

They also offered me to take as much time as I need to get through this. I am incredibly fortunate to work for this company and have always felt this way even pre-cancer. The people I work with and the clients we support have a shared belief to Be a Force for Good. Sure it’s not always unicorns and rainbows and puppies – but at the end of the day all of the people I work with are good humans and although mostly all of us work remotely we are a tight group.

I booked the flights for the girls, but not for me as I was still being sucked into a black hole. The girls were so excited to go and hang out with Laura even though they had only recently met at our holiday party 3 months ago. I think this really highlights how special my work relationships are and how rare it is to really love what you do and where you work. While I am so grateful they were able to travel and have an incredible experience – I wish I would have known then what I know now and had been in a place where I could have planned better for all of this. It really sucks being in a career where everything you do is plan and manage and assess risk and when it comes to cancer – I’m like a shoemaker who doesn’t wear shoes – it has completely taken everything out of balance for me. Simple day to day life and decisions become really hard, like grocery lists & what to make for dinner. There have been many pizza and cereal for dinner nights in the past couple of months.

I knew that while I couldn’t make plans for myself at this moment, they needed a break not just from school, but from all the heavy things we’ve been through the past 2 years with Covid, online school, the shooting, fires – so many fires – and the most devastating one that happened on December 30th 2021 that took over a thousand homes and businesses and impacted not only our community, but people we know, our friends. We have had 3 fires less than a mile from us and evacuated twice in three months. Seriously, the devastation that my kids have witnessed in the last 2 years in incomprehensible, unintelligible and these amazing young women deserved a moment in time where life feels carefree.

I will be forever indebted to Laura and Eric for creating and providing this experience for my girls. Laura surrounded them with wide open arms and shared her home, her time and her family with them. Her brother-in- law taught them to surf and although I’m amazed (but not amazed because they are amazing at anything they try) they stood up on the board on their very first time learning to surf. They played card games and shared meals and very precious moments reminding them that life has so much to offer, that there are so many incredible experiences waiting for them, that family really does exist and I can go on and on about how important this trip was for my girls and it wouldn’t have been the same if I had been there. As a parent – you need to know when to let go of the seat when they’re learning to ride a bike, that if they never fall, they will not learn to balance. You have to let them feel it and experience it for themselves.