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Change the World: When Someone Hurts

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Please Show Up as You Are Able

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I received a call last night from our friend, Jeff Brown. who relayed the tragic story of Aaron Anglin — a 24-year-old young husband and father killed in his car on his way to see his sister.

Lani, Aaron’s sister is a blogger. She’s a best buddy of our friend, April Groves. April tells the story of the accident on Lani’s blog and also points to the television reports. Her commentary explains how alive and joyful this young man was.

April also says.

Lani is my “BBF” – Best Bloggy Friend. Over the past months, we have become really close and her feelings are very important to me. Today, I ask them to be important to you.

Over at the Bloodhound Blog, where Jeff writes, the owner, Greg Swann has moved to action with April.

Aaron Anglin is survived by a wife and two very young daughters. The way I’m reading things, he died without life insurance, which puts those three ladies on a very hard road.
If you can spare something for them, put it in the form of negotiable funds — cash, cashier’s check or money order — and overnight it to:

Aleisha Anglin
c/o Lani Anglin
2719 Costa Azul Cove
Leander, TX
78641

April is working on setting up a donation account with Bank of America, and I’ll amend this post when that account becomes available. In the meantime, Jay Thompson has set up a donation system using PayPal.

But: I will promise you that there are people who will want to be paid now, and this young family will have immediate and ongoing needs. There was a time in your life when fate could have hit you this hard. Now is your chance to redeem that good fortune.

This morning Jeff emailed me this, the link at which you can get the button to support the family who survives young Aaron Anglin you see in my sidebar. Please, if you can, pick it up and place it on your blog and plass on the story. That small act matters a lot to one young family.

When the world seems so huge and all on my shoulders, I am humbled and heartened by the humanity of how we help each other when we are hurting.

Thank you April, Greg, and Jeff for being human.

I was asked to pass the word on, to ask the many people I know if you might help. So, now I do.

Will you help? Please. Someone hurts.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Just Show Up . . . BE There

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Meet Me for Lunch Tomorrow?

Change the World!

When I went to the UK for the very first time, it was on a business trip. It was escorted from publisher to publisher by a dear friend I’d known for 9 years a that time. He was a buttoned up Brit. I was an American with too much personality. He was my credibility with the rest of the British citizens and publishers I was meeting along the way.

I was such an interesting experience to spend this time with a friend of so many years and so much time spent talking on this side of the water. I knew him well. We had many times over cognac figured out how to solve all of the problems of publishing and the greater world. We knew each other’s foibles, idiosyncracies, and downsides, and still loved each other.

He knew how self-conscious I was about folks who pick up me at the airport. I knew that no one ever saw him in a shirt without buttons up the front.

Still it was revealing to see him in his natural habitat.

On the day before I left the UK, he dropped me at my hotel and said, “Shall we have a leisurely lunch before I take you to Heathrow tomorrow?”

I said, “It depends on who comes to the door.”

A slightly sad, shy smile crossed his eyes, not his mouth. He’d said from the day we met he loved the American sense of irony. That was his way of saying he liked the way I told him the truth.

“And what would the lady prefer?” was his answer.

“I’d like YOU to SHOW UP — all of you. Not that guy in the tie I’ve been with all week. If HE comes, I’m closing the door, eating lunch alone, and taking a taxi to Heathrow. That guy is boring.”

He said, “I understand.”

The next day, a man with a grin showed up. He was live, wearing a sweater over his buttoned up shirt. We had lunch at a bistro that served the most wonderful fruit brûlée. I can’t tell you what we talked about. I don’t remember, but I remember we laughed a lot.

He was there. It was real. It was what friendship is about.

He showed up and he has ever since.

I can’t tell you how my world has been better because of it.

It really means something when you know someone will be there.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

Change the World!.

Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.