This week was my birthday, a big one. I planned a day pampering with my best friend. I had to fill up every moment so I wouldn’t focus on the fact that there was no call from my mother waking me up. She always wanted to be the first one to wish me a happy birthday.

This has been one of the most challenging years of my life. I am still so sad and also relieved this year is almost over. So I want to stop focusing on all the bad and sad between the loss of my mother and the diagnosis of my son. Instead, I want to (and need to) focus on the things that I’m grateful for.

I am grateful…

• That if my son had to be sick it was in a year that my husband was working from home and he could attend school from a distance.
• That my son is now, with medications, in remission!
• That my mother is no longer in pain.
• That I have an amazing community of friends who continue to support me every day, even, and especially, when I am not at my best.
• That travel is coming back and hopefully 2022 will be the year we finally take my son for his bar mitzvah trip to Africa!
• That I get to do great work with great people and have a positive impact.
• That I have an amazingly broad and deep community of readers that tell me how my words and work has made a difference – that is everything!

So as I turn 50 at the end of this eventful year, I am looking forward with gratitude and initiating a $50 for my 50th year campaign. Full disclosure, two people I admire, Scott Osman and Shari Ciapka, showed me this concept and I am borrowing (stealing) their brilliant idea. Basically, I will donate $50 to a charity every week of my 50th year of life.

I have a few charities lined up for the first few weeks, but I welcome your comments with your favorite charities and why they are important to you and you just may see yourself and your charity highlighted.

50 for 50 Charity of the Week
Week 1: The Lupus Research Alliance

No surprise here why I am choosing this charity, my son has a new symptom of this incurable disease every week. My symptoms have become my normal. If you don’t know our story, you can read about it HERE.

Lupus is debilitating. It also affects each person differently as seen in my own home. That makes the disease very challenging as it is one of the more complex autoimmune diseases known to science.

The LRA is an amazing organization dedicated to funding research to find treatments and hopefully, eventually a cure. Join me in supporting the LRA.

Stay grateful and keep connecting,