I was 48, accustomed to phone calls from Robin Leach, beckoning me to adventurous, exotic places. But one phone call from Chicago, bringing tragedy, changed my life. That moment, the darkest I’d known, ultimately illuminated a whole new world, moving me – and my family – to an unknown continent on the other side of the world, and throwing me headlong into the most rewarding adventure of my life…
I’d had a successful career as a television producer/director, an 18-year marriage that friends envied, and two beautiful teenage daughters. Life was good, if not exciting. My future was neither frightening nor particularly exciting. Was this all there was?
My life had been about caring for others. Trying to be the perfect friend/daughter/wife/mother, but too often feeling I was never good enough.
My stepfather always said, “Man plans, God laughs.” He must have gotten a belly full. After a year in the hospital, my stepfather died, and life sent me careening around curves I never anticipated, out of control as I headed for a triple whammy that threw my off course completely. In May 2004, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Shortly after I completed radiation my mother, the one person who’d reassured me that I was doing great – that I was great – died unexpectedly while we were celebrating my daughter’s birthday at Disneyland. Just when it seemed my throat could open enough for me to hum again, the call about Karen came.
Karen was a best friend like no one else… organizing funeral details when I was too paralyzed to do so, browbeating oncologists before my first radiation treatments, to not screw up…or else. I’d been there for her too…when at 19 she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, when she was in rehab, for the 3am topples off the wagon. For more than 30 years, Karen had been there for me, understanding me in a different way from anyone else, not buying my “perfect child” image for a minute.
February 5, 2004…I had just walked in from carpooling. The phone rang and it was Andy, Karen’s brother and an old friend. Karen had had outpatient shoulder surgery that morning and hadn’t come out of anesthesia. My stomach dropped to my knees.
I got on the first plane to Chicago, arriving before the rest of her family. Several days later Mitch, Karen’s older brother, arrived from South Africa. For two weeks we took turns napping on the cot in her room and sitting bedside, he told me stories of the HIV-positive mothers he treated every day in Cape Town. He shared his dream, a program he called mothers2mothers, that would educate, counsel and support these mothers in an effort to prevent the transmission of the deadly virus to their unborn babies. He had a vision but recognized that he needed help to turn his dream into reality. I told him about the boredom I felt, the desire to live new experiences, find real challenges.
Karen died and my strength deserted me completely. All I wanted was to get into bed and not get outI took anti-depressants, made it to work every day and carried out my responsibilities. And wondered how I would survive.
Mitch and I kept in touch. Sitting vigil together, watching Karen not be Karen anymore, had made us close again. And one day an invitation came…come to Cape Town and see what he was doing. Just come.
I went. And fell madly, irrevocably in love with the women I met…their spirit, their courage, and their joy in life despite their HIV status, the cardboard shacks they called home, their lack of water, electricity, plumbing, and food. How dare I feel sorry for myself? I who had so much. I was shamed. On my second day, long before the jet lag had begun to dissipate, I called my husband, Jeff. Without much hope of his agreement, I said we had to move to South Africa, I had to take the reins of this fledgling grassroots organization, I had to start a new life. To my shock, my wonderful husband only said “when?”
Six weeks later, Jeff, my 12 and 15 year old girls, and our two dogs landed in Cape Town. The next day I began the work that would become my life’s passion.
Together with Mitch, we set out to realize a dream. From Day 1, it was a roller coaster…exhilarating, scary, and the most fun I had ever had. Opening our first real office with a skeleton staff consisting mostly of committed volunteers from the Princeton-in-Africa program, with no budget and no assets, I felt completely over my head but also completely alive, and in a weird way, feeling like my brain was working hard for the first time in many years. It was amazing!
Let me tell you what I think is the greatest injustice of our time…that there are fewer babies born with HIV/AIDS in the U.S., UK and Europe combined than in a year than in a single African clinic. There isn’t a reason in the world why a baby should be born with the virus…it is easy and cheap to prevent. It comes down to caring for the only people who can stop this tragedy…the mothers.
mothers2mothers uses education and empowerment as tools to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS during pregnancy, combat stigma within families and communities, support a mother’s adherence to medical treatment, and reduce the likelihood of AIDS orphans.
Located in clinics that offer medical treatment to women living with HIV, mothers2mothers fills the gaps left by public health systems, providing a secure, warm environment where women can feel safe to share their fears and feelings about their children’s health, disclosure to their partners, friends and family, and the feeling of helplessness engendered by being alone, pregnant and infected with HIV/AIDS.
We knew mothers2mothers would work but that first year we had nothing to sell it on other than enthusiasm and faith. For office furniture, I scavenged the streets of the townships, getting mugged as I tried to purchase an ancient desk, collecting castoffs from people who seemed to have nothing…but muggings are for another blog and another day.
Mitch and I ran from country to country, enlisting the support of local ministries of health, other nonprofits, and a handful of believers. Gradually, people started to join us, trusting us with their money. The donations started small and for every $5,000 we would do a mad victory dance. Our first corporate donor, Johnson & Johnson, belied everything I’d ever thought about big pharmaceuticals. The people from its Corporate Contributions department supported us not just with funds, but guided us in ways to make us legitimate, steering us to more effective ways to prove results.
So much more to share about that first year in Africa and the beginning of my new life. Reinventing myself took time and that was just the beginning. That year saw a White House visit, the launch of my public speaking career (not an easy thing to initiate when you’re pushing fifty!), and an incredibly difficult decision to move back to the US with my family.
It is now five years later…together with Mitch and our third partner, Gene, we have grown mothers2mothers into a multinational nonprofit with more than five hundred sites throughout South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Malawi. We employ almost 1,400 HIV-positive mothers, and reached about one million moms last year with our messages of empowerment and education. We have been visited by First Lady Laura Bush, then Senator Obama (during his campaign) and Senator Pelosi, countless members of Congress, Kenneth Cole, Bono, Beyonce, and Elton John. We have been honored at the White House, briefed the Senate, and won the prestigious Skoll Entrepreneurial Award. I was even included in Kenneth Cole’s new book, “Awearness.”
Do I miss the glamour of television? What do you think?
(In future installments, I can’t wait to tell you about some of our moms…how they reinvent themselves all the time, from powerless to powerful, and from hopeless to hopeful. I hope their stories inspire you as much as they do me, each and every day.)
This was my story and I hope you will want to learn more about mothers2mothers. To do so, please check out www.m2m.org.