Today I was riding my exercise bike and reading “The Cure” which is about a desperate father, John Crowley, who loved his children and had committed his life to finding a cure for Pompe Disease.

Stephanie Snow Gebel

I read an excerpt towards the end of the book where John, an Ivy League graduate, had been able to pull together a $137 million company in one year.  It made me feel inadequate because I did not have the accolades that Mr. Crowley did. I felt sad because I should be doing more for my daughter.

I graduated from the University of Arizona, majored in Sociology with a minor in Exercise Physiology. I worked for the St. Louis Rams for 10 years as the Office Manager and Player Contract Administrator.  After the birth of my 1st daughter Merry, now 14, I was lucky enough to be a stay-at-home mom for her and my other three children.  As I was reading, I thought to myself,

“I wish I had the same qualifications as John Crowley and I wish I had the wealthy business contacts that he has. He made it sound so easy”.

Believe me, I have worked really hard, along with many others, to raise close to $800,000 for an “Ultra Rare Orphan Disease”, but at the end of the day, I still need more money. I need the kind of money that Mr. Crowley has raised to really make a difference. Honestly, the whole situation saddened me.  My mind started racing a mile a minute with these questions:

“What if I had gone to Notre Dame? What if my dad and mom were still alive? Oh how they would help. The contacts they would make, the money that my dad could raise. What if my dad never got remarried after the death of my mom? What if she hadn’t taken his inheritance after being married less than 3 years and estranged from him for over 1 1/2 years? Why didn’t she just give him the divorce he so wanted? Oh how I could have used that money to help this situation. What if just one wealthy individual made a donation of $1,000,000? That would change the trajectory of the current research that is taking place and would speed up the process and save these children from losing their lives and their dignity.”

I was overwhelmed with the constant barrage of thoughts running through my head. I am sure everyone has been here before with thoughts that keep multiplying, instead of working on the issue at hand. We try and think of how it could have been different. We re-direct our focus, which we think might help us momentarily, but it doesn’t at all. It makes you feel worse. I tried to keep riding my bike and continued to read, although, I was reading but you know how it is to read something but you are really thinking about something else. I put the book down, pedaled a little harder, closed my eyes and gave myself a pep talk. It was like the pep talks my mom and dad used to give me.

“This is your story Steph, not John Crowley’s, but YOUR story. Focus on the energy of today, not the energies of the past. Make the energies of today count”.

With this thought, I focused on how this energy will recharge, restore and replenish my mission, and that mission is to save Raquel and others like her.  With my pep talk, I felt better. I smiled and remembered the Chinese proverb that my old boss, Jay Zygmunt told me when I became a MOM “mom on mission”: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one small step”. And with that, I stepped off the bike and went back to focusing on being a MOM.