The Boy With A Golden Heart

You never know what I’m going to do next. It’s usually something long and difficult like walking 500 miles across Spain on the Camino de Santiago, or competing in the Wakiki Roughwater Swim without a team or coach to help me train. Training for a competitive 2.5 mile swim event while living in Arizona was a little challenging. The 25 meter pool doesn’t prepare you for the swells of the ocean or not being able to grab the side of a pool when gasping for air. Most recently, I mentored business people in Poland for a program designed to increase their English language skills. I traveled by myself for 32 days throughout Poland and loved it. 

My latest big challenge was writing a children’s book. Yep. Not the organizing book that you’ve all been begging me to write, but a children’s book. It’s a story inspired by my grandson Matteo who is on the autism spectrum. He gets bullied in school. One day he was crying and I told him he should think of himself as a knight with armor that protects him from the unkind words. I reminded him he has a golden heart. That conversation kept percolating in my mind and I began to write.

When Matteo read the book for the first time, he smiled in places and held back tears in others. The next day he jumped around the house and said, “I’m so excited that I have something now to look forward to in my life.” That made it all worthwhile.