Now you can carry her vast knowledge with you everywhere you go.

For 10 years Calendar & Directories Editor Mala Blomquist has put together the Valley’s best and most comprehensive calendar of family events.

Now you can access it as a free, downloadable mobile application. So you’ve always got the information you need in your pocket, purse, backpack or diaper bag.

Waiting in line at the bank? Use the time to plan your Memorial Day weekend.

Leaving a Mother’s Day brunch and wondering how to spend the rest of your afternoon? Scroll through the day’s events. Find something that sounds interesting? Touch the Google maps pinpoint to get directions.

To gather all this great information, Mala reads thousands of emails each week. She researches the websites of museums, galleries and event venues throughout Arizona. She networks with sources and follows every “rabbit trail” on the Internet. She’s meticulous, laser-focused, competitive…and really unhappy with herself if something slips through the cracks. (It rarely happens.)

That’s why I have so much confidence that Mala’s calendars are the best around. And now RAISING ARIZONA KIDS has another way to deliver them.

To use our mobile calendar, visit http://www.RAKcalendar.com on your Smartphone or tablet device and then save it to your desktop. You should see our icon (which looks like an old-fashioned desk calendar with the letters RAK across the page) pop up among your other icons.
We’ve got more detailed instructions—and screen shots to show each step—at raisingarizonakids.com/calendar.

The application is fully functional but still in the testing phase. We’re hoping you’ll check it out and let us know if you have suggestions for improving it.

Brie Hall of Chandler with her children Audrey (4) and Robert (6). Photo by Daniel Friedman

WE LOVE our annual Mother’s Day Cover Mom Contest but picking a winner is always the source of much agony and angst.

We had more than 60 amazing entries from people who took us up on the challenge of creating original LEGO® structures for a chance to win the contest—which included a two-day family stay at LEGOLAND® California. Whittling the list to 10 finalists was painful. With each entry we reluctantly crossed off the list, we knew a child somewhere was going to be disappointed. Ouch!

Every member of our staff participated in the judging, along with representatives from our sponsors. I even recruited a senior at Joy Christian School in Glendale who was shadowing me that week. (She recruited her mom.)

When we got to the final 10, we had to get brutal. It honestly came down to choosing from among those who had followed every letter of the instructions we’d posted with our contest. We all believe in logical consequences, right?

We are delighted to introduce our winner, Brie Hall of Chandler, and the creative structure she and her two children designed and built. You’ll also enjoy seeing the three entries we picked as runners up.

Whew! Glad that’s over for another year.

Denise told us about her son Matthew, then 9, and the challenges he faced. She told us about her first reaction to Matthew’s diagnosis and shared her frustration at autism’s many mysteries and inconsistencies.
I reread that story recently, struck by two thoughts: How much has changed in the field of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), and how much has not.

Sadly, the biggest change is a dramatic increase in the number of confirmed diagnoses (one in every 500 children in 2001, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, and one in every 88 children today, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). On the brighter side, there has been a commensurate increase in awareness, research, therapies and support for families. Much credit for that goes to dedicated parents like Denise who have advocated so tirelessly to support research and to find resources that maximize the opportunities and quality of life for all children on the autism spectrum.

A year ago, I attended the SARRC Community Breakfast, an annual event that brings people from all over the state together to learn what’s new in the field of autism and how SARRC is responding. Last year’s excitement was about the organization’s concerted push into supportive infrastructure—housing, jobs and career training that will be vital to independent living—for the rapidly growing (and aging) population of teens and young adults with the most challenging forms of autism.

I remember the sense of profound emotion that swept the cavernous ballroom at the Arizona Biltmore when Denise talked about the overwhelming prospect of Matthew’s future. What will happen when I’m gone? Denise has spent a good part of her adult life fighting on behalf of Matthew, who is now 21, and thousands of other young people like him. She will likely devote the rest of her life to ensuring he can manage without her.

Writer Mary Ann Bashaw spent a lot of time at SARRC in recent weeks. She learned about innovative new programs and talked with parents whose children are among the first to benefit from them. Her story is full of optimism and hope.

She did, however, find one aspect of her research troubling.

“While SARRC constantly strives to be of service to the Valley’s autistic and ASD community, there is still a stigma that comes with the disorder,” she wrote. “I talked with several parents who declined to be interviewed for this story about their child and their family life. Others changed their minds after an interview and asked that I remove their input. Their main concern was the potential fallout affecting their child—teasing, bullying, discrimination—by those who do not understand autism and the immense challenges it presents. The possibility that their child’s autism or ASD could be used against them to keep them out of college or withhold a job was not worth the risk. These are the labels of autism that SARRC works so passionately to dispel.”

Steven was at home when he found the loaded gun. He was just fiddling around with it, curious, when it went off. The bullet that entered his brain killed him instantly.

That was my first awareness of guns, and what guns can do when not handled properly. The experience set me up for a lifetime of fearful disinterest in guns. I could think of firearms only as instruments of heartache and death.

I grew up in a family that never owned or talked about guns, so I raised my two sons the same way. So deep was my head in the sand that it never occurred to me that there could be guns in the homes of the kids they played with. It sickens me to realize how ill prepared they were, how vulnerable they were had they stumbled upon a gun in someone else’s home.

LYNN TRIMBLE planned to write a story on gun safety later in 2013. But when the tragic school shooting occurred in Newtown, Conn. just before Christmas, she emailed me, wondering if we should fast track the topic.

We discussed how to approach it. We knew it was not our place to argue the reasons for random violence or the politics of gun ownership. Instead, we grabbed onto the area most important to parents, one where there is much agreement on all sides of an otherwise contentious issue: Children must be educated about the risks guns can pose.

Lynn interviewed local medical professionals and injury-prevention specialists. She talked with parents who own guns and parents who don’t.

I visited a shooting range.

I had never stood within mere feet of a loaded gun, never donned protective “ears” to shield my eardrums from the explosive pops of gunfire, never watched the intense concentration of someone aiming a loaded gun at a small target many yards away. I’d never talked with a family for whom shooting—as a sport—is so natural, enjoyable and rewarding. A family that respects and enforces safety protocols with a “no exceptions” intensity approaching reverence.

I came away from the experience with newfound respect for a sport I might not choose but certainly no longer fear. As a society, we must do everything we can possibly, realistically, do to keep kids safe from guns. That means different things to different families, but in all families it means open and honest communication. No exceptions.

WHEN THIS MAGAZINE was just getting started, our tiny staff congregated for weekly meetings over sandwiches and soup at a broad table near the front entrance of the Duck and Decanter on Camelback Road. That was a pivotal time in our company’s history, but I never figured anyone at the Duck had noticed our weekly gatherings.

Soon after she interviewed members of the family behind this long-time Phoenix gathering place, Gilbert writer Evelyn Hendrix emailed me. “Randy Mettler [a current co-owner] mentioned that the Duck and Decanter might have some meaning to you,” she wrote. “He said, ‘I believe we might have been something of a birthing center for RAISING ARIZONA KIDS?’”

It was nice to realize he remembered. And incredible to realize that this month launches our 24th year in publication.

With Andy at the top of Camelback Mountain on New Year's Eve.

The tow-truck driver must have wondered what he’d gotten himself into. When he rang the doorbell, I appeared wearing flannel pajama bottoms, an oversized sweatshirt and my worn (but super-comfortable) slippers. My hair was a mess, my face was red and my eyes were swollen.

With all the news about this year’s virulent flu, he probably worried that he was going to catch something by talking to me. But I wasn’t sick. I was sick at heart.

A few hours earlier, I had dropped my 27-year-old son Andy at the airport for his flight to Washington, D.C., where he is returning to live and work after a temporary job here in Arizona. It’s been a gift to have him around this past 16 months and I struggled with my emotions as I hugged him goodbye. Though he lived in an apartment half an hour from our home and traveled most weekends, my husband and I relished those Sunday afternoons when he’d show up to watch a football game and stay for dinner. I got used to having one of my boys “home” again. (Our son David lives in Chicago.)

Before he left, Andy arranged to donate the beat-up 1997 Toyota Camry he and his brother have traded off since high school. That car carried them safely to and from high school football practice and went with them to California when they enrolled in college. After David graduated, he towed the car across the country for his first job. When Andy came back to Phoenix last year, he drove the Camry, stuffed with all his worldly possessions.

The tow-truck driver was there to take it to an auction house. Any proceeds from its sale will benefit KJZZ.

I knew it would be hard to say goodbye to my son. I was not prepared to say goodbye to the car. The driver listened patiently as I told him the whole story but looked hugely relieved when I finally let him go.

As he winched the car onto his truck and drove away, I was overwhelmed by grief. A part of my life was being towed away forever, never to return.

When my boys were small I often got advice from older parents. “Enjoy every moment,” they’d say. “Before you know it, they’ll be gone.” How right they were.

This month’s issue is devoted to those precious first months in a child’s life. And it comes with a couple of its own “before you know it” stories.

Meleyna Nomura, who wrote our story about homemade baby food, is a mother of two who is studying to become a registered dietetic technician. It’s hard to believe she once attended the same high school—and played in the same orchestra—as my two sons. As a middle school student, her work ethic and strong writing skills made her a favorite of language arts teacher “Mr. Friedman,” now our staff writer and photographer.

And our cover mom, Melissa (Eddy) Campana, worked in both our editorial and marketing departments before she got engaged, got married and moved to Europe for awhile. (She speaks Portuguese, Spanish and French). Now back in Phoenix and the mother of a beautiful, 6-month-old baby girl, she’s probably got lots of people telling her to “enjoy every moment.” I’d be one of them.

As I sorted and stacked magazine by month and year, lining them up along our wide hallway, this February 2001 issue caught my eye. I had been corresponding with Mesa writer and frequent contributor Evelyn Hendrix about doing a story about the Girl Scouts organization, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2012. I wondered what these two specific girls were doing now? How scouting had impacted their lives?

I scanned the cover and sent it to Evelyn, who ran it by leadership at the Arizona Cactus-Pine Council, but came up empty.

The only information we have is what we published with the caption: “Brownie scout Nicole Campbell, 8, of Troop #742 in Phoenix and Junior scout Jacque Koenig, 10, of Troop #1842 in Phoenix.” The photographer was Brad Reed.

Exactly one week later, our new (and newly reorganized) office (in a completely different building!) also flooded. A plumber I talked to speculated that extreme water pressure in the complex was to blame. At that point, I didn’t even care. I just wanted out. I was done.

For the third time in two years, we evacuated our entire office and struggled to maintain schedules and deadlines despite no home base, delayed mail delivery, periodic lapses in phone and Internet connectivity and increasing difficulty staying connected as a team.

In the chaos of chronic triage that has almost become routine, I completely forgot about the 2001 Girl Scouts cover. Then I started editing Evelyn’s story, which will appear in our upcoming March 2013 magazine.

We would love to locate these girls. Can you help?

The timing was serendipitous. We welcome the beginning of each new year with a focus on pregnancy and birth; this issue offers all sorts of pregnancy advice on topics from male fertility to “gender-reveal” parties to the decision to bank umbilical cord blood. In February, we’ll turn our focus to babies.

So, just for fun, we posted a question on our Facebook asking Arizona moms what advice they would want to give to the royal “mum-to-be” about her pregnancy, which got off to a rocky start with , the very worst kind of morning sickness.

We were amused and touched by the responses. And that gave me an idea. I quickly circulated an email to the very experienced parents on our staff to see what they would say to Kate if given the opportunity. Here are some samples:

For both the prince and the princess: Learn all you can to be prepared for breastfeeding, find  support…and stick with it. Read to your baby starting now—in utero. Continue to make time to read aloud every day as your child grows. Listen, really listen to what your son or daughter has to say. Talk to your partner about how you are feeling; the first child is the weightiest change in a relationship. It stirs up feelings familiar and unfamiliar along the way, some you’d thought had been lost inside you. Share those feelings. Read all you can about parenting, learn to tune out the noise and ask questions of the people you trust. Soon, your own gut instinct will be right there with you, teaching you about the best way to love and raise up your child. And it will serve you well.—Vicki Louk Balint, medical writer, multimedia journalist and mother of four children, the youngest two of which are in college.

Once you start taking pictures of your little angel, get them developed often and put them immediately in their photo album—otherwise it backs up and the next thing you know they are in college and you have zillions of photos and no time to put them into books!—Catherine Griffiths, account executive, writer and mother of three children, two of whom are in college.

Trust your instincts. Eat healthy foods, get plenty of sleep and stay fit. Laugh often. Avoid stress. Choose done over perfect. And be yourself.—Lynn Trimble, arts writer and mother of three children, all of whom are in college.

Whatever you do, avoid reading the tabloids.—Mary Ann Bashaw, writer, copyeditor and mother of two daughters in college.

Know that ALL women in labor experience royal pain…and if all goes according to nature, a crowning! All mothers are queens—even in a democracy. So welcome to the realm where the only valid rule is love.—Mary L. Holden, writer, copyeditor and mother of two, one about to graduate college and one a law school graduate.

Mary couldn’t help adding a P.S.: Hire a nanny. I hear Mary Poppins still works in London.

We’ve had a heck of a tough year. Flooded out of our office in June (for the second time in two years) we faced 72 days of limbo and disconnection before we were relocated to a new office (in a completely different building) in August. Then, in October, another burst pipe forced yet another evacuation. As we send this magazine to the printer in early November, we are again working from our homes, and from a tiny, bedroom-size satellite office we established in central Phoenix.

Through it all, this team has hung together, even on incredibly frustrating and stressful days when we lost opportunities because of lapsed phone service or lost progress because of miscommunication and misunderstandings.

They say that life keeps handing you opportunities to work through the lessons you stubbornly resist learning. I keep wondering what I’m supposed to be “getting” from all this repeated damage and disruption.

It probably has something to do with learning to surrender control. Like many women with perfectionist tendencies (it goes with the territory when you’re an editor) I like to believe that enough planning, preparation and productivity will keep me safe. But sometimes you can do all the right things, for all the right reasons, and something bigger takes over. When that happens, you have no choice but to pick up the pieces, put one foot in front of the other and do your best to get back on track.

It also helps to remember that, no matter how tough your own challenges may be, someone else always has it worse. That really hit home as we watched families along the East Coast struggle for weeks without power or heat after Superstorm Sandy. They experienced the devastation of a real flood. We just had some water.
So as we put the final touches on this issue—with no real office, with most of our belongings in storage, with nothing but our fierce sense of accountability to each other to hold us together—I am feeling very proud of my team, and very grateful.

Mary Ann Bashaw with Joanne Cacciatore, Ph.D., founder of the MISS Foundation.

Every two years, grief experts and grieving families come to Arizona from all over the world. For three days, they participate in educational workshops, panel discussions and healing activities designed to support the most difficult of journeys.

The conference is hosted by the Arizona-based MISS Foundation, a nonprofit established to provide resources and support to families that have a lost a child of any age, for any reason. A Saturday afternoon “gratitude luncheon” is a regular tradition. It is important to founder Joanne Cacciatore, Ph.D. and the MISS Foundation board of directors to recognize organizations and individuals that have supported their work or helped build awareness of the challenges and taboos faced by grieving families.

This year, longtime RAK contributor Mary Ann Bashaw was one of four recipients of the organization’s highest honor, The Phoenix Award: Rising to the Service of Humanity. As she stood in the shadows, awaiting her turn at the podium, I was struck by a profound sense of events coming full circle.

Two years ago, I attended this same luncheon with Mary Ann. At that point, she was still exploring the idea of writing a story about grieving families. We attended a panel discussion earlier that day, at which several sets of parents who had lost children shared raw emotions and wrenching stories that left us shaking.

What we left with, however, was a sense of awe at the strength and resilience of these heartbroken parents—and a deep respect for the creative and positive ways they sought to honor and remember their lost children.

As I was driving home, I called Mary Ann from my cell phone. “This is more than one story,” I said.  She agreed. We decided to meet for breakfast to discuss a series of articles around the theme of “Finding Purpose in Grief.” And then she quickly told me to “get off the phone while you’re driving.”

Her stories appeared throughout 2011 and earned Mary Ann an Arizona Press Club Award in the Non-Metro Writing – Social Issues category.

Now, the MISS Foundation was recognizing her with an award given to “outstanding individuals who have made significant contributions to support and further the ideology and work of the MISS Foundation.”

As Mary Ann accepted her award, she gave an eloquent and impassioned speech. This series changed her. How could it not? She was accepted — welcomed, really — into the deepest, darkest emotions of parents around Arizona who have lost precious children. They entrusted her with their stories; she responded with sensitive, empathetic and ultimately hopeful stories acknowledging the fact that no one ever “gets over” the loss of a child; one simply finds ways to carry on.

Barely a month after our move, we were back to the carpet puddles.

For a brief moment as I was waking up on Saturday morning, I thought, “It was all a bad dream!” No such luck.

Our office — our new office, the one in a completely different suite, in a completely different building, the one we just moved into in August after 72 days of forced evacuation from the disastrous June flood in our prior space — is once again full of fans and dehumidifiers.

It's hard to tell from this photo, which I took with my phone, but that big ceiling tile at the front was bulging precariously from the weight of the water sitting above it.

When Circulation Director Brandy Collet arrived at work Friday morning, she couldn’t believe it is was raining again. Inside. She ran up the stairs to find the source of the water that was pouring down through our ceiling tiles. When she opened the door to the upstairs bathroom, she said, it was like watching a huge water fountain. Water gushing everywhere.

She called me, but I was still out on a bike ride and had left my phone at home. She saw the big “Flood 2012″ binder on my desk and found the phone number for our property manager, who promptly summoned a plumber and yet another restoration company.

We have a Flood 2010 binder, too. In June of that year, we faced a 56-day evacuation because of flood-related damage. (We subsequently experience two more, less traumatic, flooding incidents.) This past summer, after the fourth flood, we were out for 72 days. Now, after all the disruption and stress of that experience and a subsequent move, we’re once again without a viable work space.

We were not to blame for any of the prior flooding incidents and there is nothing we could have done to anticipate or prevent this one. It was freakish and completely coincidental. A plastic nut that secured a pipe in a bathroom upstairs simply cracked after years of wear and tear (and, no doubt, exposure to extreme heat from the lack of air conditioning during several months the building was empty).

When I called our insurance company, the adjuster started laughing, and then apologized, saying, “I know it’s not funny–but really?”

Our editorial and production rooms were hardest hit. Completely drenched. Bulging or shattered ceiling tiles, puddles on the floor, puddles on desktops, soaked papers. The hallway carpeting was soaked about halfway toward the front entrance. Some of the water seeped into the office Brandy and Production Manager Tina Gerami share. Only the sales room and my desk were spared.

The parts of the office that are dry are now cluttered with hastily moved furniture and boxes..

Senior Account Executive Catherine Griffiths and I managed to work there for a few hours Friday but it’s very hard to concentrate with the roar of fans and the clutter of hastily relocated furniture and boxes strewn about. We do not have access to restrooms until they can turn the water back on.

On Saturday and Sunday, while our staff was working Boo! at the Zoo at the Phoenix Zoo, the restoration company came back to drill holes in the walls that were affected and remove remaining ceiling tiles. I was told that it will be at least a week before we are dried out, and then the reconstruction work will have to be scheduled.

I started an email folder in June, when we were forced to evacuate from our original office space. I named it “2012 Flood,” to distinguish it from communication I kept from 2010 version.

I’ve changed the name on the folder to “2012 Floods.” Surely, with just two months and 10 days left in the year, there won’t be yet another.

Calendar & Directories Editor Mala Blomquist jokes that “we must have done something in a prior life to anger the water gods.”

Whatever it was, I hope it was fun. Because this isn’t.

We were just starting to feel settled after a summer of disruption and two moves. Now, this is what our art department looks like.

The impact of her story never left me — and not just because I spent several days immersed in her anguished, but beautifully expressed, sorrow. Her courage in facing her grief — in feeling it, living it, exploring it, expressing it and seeking something positive from it — shored me through a sudden and unexpected loss of my own. The very week I was editing “Sarah’s Story,” my father died of a cancer he didn’t even tell us he had.

Mary Ann Bahaw waits to accept The Phoenix Award. Photo by Claire Bashaw.

I couldn’t help thinking about the parallels yesterday, as I watched my colleague and friend, Mary Ann Bashaw, accept an award for a series of articles she wrote for us in 2011 about “Finding Purpose in Grief.”

Mary Ann was honored by the MISS Foundation with The Phoenix Award: Rising to the Service of Humanity during a “gratitude luncheon” Saturday at the Fiesta Resort in Tempe. The event was part of a three-day conference hosted by the nonprofit organization, which provides resources and support to families that have a lost a child of any age, for any reason. This year’s theme was “The Transformative Nature of Grief.”

Mary Ann was one of four honorees, including Kathy “KD” Frueh, president of The Kong Company, an international marketer of dog toys and presenting sponsor of the conference; Robert Neimeyer, Ph.D., an author, speaker and professor of psychology at the University of Memphis; and Wendy Halloran, an investigative reporter for 12News. The award is given to “outstanding individuals who have made significant contributions to support and further the ideology and work of the MISS Foundation.”

As Mary Ann accepted her award, she gave an eloquent and impassioned speech. This series changed her. How could it not? She was accepted — welcomed, really — into the deepest, darkest emotions of parents around Arizona who have lost precious children. They entrusted her with their stories; she responded with sensitive, empathetic and ultimately hopeful stories acknowledging the fact that no one ever “gets over” the loss of a child; one simply finds ways to live with it. To carry on. To honor and remember. To learn and grow.

Many in the room applauded loudly when Mary Ann mentioned the continuing taboos surrounding discussion of loss. Few knew that she, too, had faced a profound loss during her telling of their stories. A little over a year ago, as Mary Ann was putting the finishing touches on her last article in the series, she lost her precious mother to a long and heartbreaking illness.

Eric, Claire, Mary Ann and Hannah Bashaw; Mary Ann's dad, Jake Seabrook.

And yesterday, as she walked into the luncheon (greeted like a rock star by the many MISS Foundation members whose stories and lost children Mary Ann has experienced and cherished) she was facing a new grief. Just the night before, her friend of more than 20 years lost her husband to a heart attack following surgery for an unrelated cancer.

Mary Ann’s proud husband Eric, her beautiful, poised daughters Claire and Hannah (both students at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff) and her dashing and delightful father Jake Seabrook (the girls call him “Jake-o”) were with her yesterday. All of us were dabbing tears as Mary Ann concluded her speech. As always, I was struck by her ability to step outside of herself and say — with poise, gentleness, respect and reverence — exactly what others most need to hear.

Mary Ann’s 2011 series also earned a 2011 Arizona Press Club Award in the Non-Metro Writing – Social Issues category. Find links to all four stories here.

Mary Ann Bashaw with the sculptured glass Phoenix Award: Rising to the Service of Humanity." Photo by Claire Bashaw.

The speech Mary Ann gave as she accepted The Phoenix Award:

Thank you. I am deeply humbled by this honor.

Two years ago, at the last MISS conference, I sat among you in this room. I was not here as a grieving parent, but as a journalist, with the intent to write a story about the MISS Foundation for Raising Arizona Kids magazine, where I’ve been writing for almost 10 of its 23 years.

My editor, and the publisher of Raising Arizona Kids, Karen Barr, accompanied me to the luncheon in 2010. When we left that day, we knew that what we had just experienced, what we had seen and heard, warranted far more than a single article about MISS. So I wrote a series of articles in 2011 titled “Finding Purpose in Grief.”

In the first piece of the series, we introduced our readers to Joanne Cacciatore. I had the privilege of spending some time getting to know Joanne, who ended up being an invaluable resource throughout the series, as she put me in contact with MISS parents who, because they trusted Joanne, trusted me, a total stranger, to tell their stories. Time and again I was struck by the courage and honesty of these individuals who told me of the unspeakable loss of their precious children, who shared details of their dark and difficult journeys through grief.

I spoke to professionals dedicated to supporting grieving families. I wrote about perinatal hospice and how families try to cope as they face the loss of their unborn and newborn babies because of fatal fetal anomalies. I spoke to fathers about their loss, and wrote of their unique perspectives of carrying the burden of grief in a society that is not often tolerant of men showing emotion, of men’s tears. A father’s pain is no less real, no less visceral.

Parents shared with me the ways they grieve, their rituals, their personal expressions of grief as they search for their child’s light to help them navigate a path that they know will always be hard but on which they can eventually find some semblance of peace, wisdom, balance, acceptance.

Our magazine’s goal for this series was to inform our readers, so that they can in turn use that awareness as a call to action to practice compassion, patience and understanding in support of bereaved families in our communities. I am grateful that Karen Barr herself had the courage to run this series on a painful and tragic subject, one that might not sell as many magazines. But you, bereaved families, are all around us, and the loss of a child, YOUR child – still far too taboo a subject in our society – must be acknowledged.

Raising Arizona Kids magazine has a motto: “Real families – Real stories – Real life.” Your families’ stories of loss are real life. Your stories deserve to be told. MISS deserves every drop of ink, every keystroke, every volunteer hour, every scarce dollar, as this extraordinary organization works tirelessly to support families like yours.

On a deeply personal note, MISS has made me that much more aware of, and grateful for, the gift of my living children. Through MISS and Raising Arizona Kids, I found my voice to share your voices. I accept this award on behalf and in honor of your children, who have left you too soon. And may MISS continue its important work, serving families in Arizona and around the world, helping them through their darkest hours, and hopefully, ultimately, to brighter days.