To be American is to be raised on promises. If we work hard enough⎯if we make the right choices ⎯if we commit ourselves to certain values⎯a nice future awaits. Right?

Maybe.

Our future is often not what we planned or feel we deserve. What happens when we’re put on a path we don’t want to be on, and those promises we believed in turn out to be more complicated?

I’ve learned that life is full of curveballs. I anticipated a career in public service or business but had a major league curveball thrown at me when my son, Eli, was diagnosed with a horrible brain disease at 5 months old. It has completely changed my life in every way imaginable.

Eli, now 6, cannot walk, talk, feed himself or do anything independently. He suffers seizures, spontaneous hospital visits, and an endless slew of therapy appointments. I spend my days and nights taking care of him or restlessly worrying about how to cure his condition. I believe there is one, and I’m on a mission to find it.

This journey has taught me that while the unexpected might throw us off course, complicate our daily life, and make us reorient how we live, we can and must still choose to live, to seek fulfillment, to build strength amid adversity. 

We may not be able to escape the harshness of the cards we’ve been dealt, but neither can we be fully defined by them. There is space in our hearts to live with hope alongside pain. And I believe that in some moments, we even have the power to tip the seesaw toward hope by embracing our vulnerability and allowing the power of community to help us do together that which we cannot do alone.

This is who I am and what defines me. It’s why I believe…