Meeting Lee Woodruff at the most recent Westchester Women's Leadership luncheon (organized by State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins) was not what I expected. The title of her incredible book, In An Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing, does not at first glance give one the insight into the tough cookie Lee truly is. Oh, don't get me wrong - she's beautiful, inside and out, kind, gracious and very warm. But when she speaks about her husband's (famed journalist Bob Woodruff) harrowing and near fatal trip to Iraq when a roadside bomb exploded next to the vehicle he was in, Lee Woodruff tells it like it is and speaks her mind unapologetically. She is the kind of woman that speaks my language.

What I mean is this: she doesn't mince words but she's not hurtful. She's direct and clear and you walk away a better person for having heard her talk to you.

It is a very, very difficult position to be in, given our American celebrity-crazed culture, to have a crisis strike your family and to have it be public. When Bob Woodruff was critically injured, Lee was a working mom living in CT and trying to keep the pieces together of her family in our manic-intense, New York Metropolitan Area existence, let alone with a famous television journalist on assignment in Iraq.

As Lee shared with us the blow-by-blow of the days following the explosion and injury, she kept us rapt with the horrific details, we were right along with her, we were all in tears as she described her daughter seeing her daddy for the first time in the hospital (he was totally unrecognizable from the brain injury, swelling, and surgery). She's an incredible story-teller, but for me it was the inter-woven commentary that makes Lee worthy of so much more than being designated the smart-wife-of-famous-journalist-who-writes-a-book.

Because Lee is responding to her new calling. Her life has been forever changed, her soul has been forever impacted, and rather than retreat to previous existence and as much normalcy as possible, she is on the road advocating for Veterans Rights and improved medical facilities and support for the men who are shattered, physically in their brains and emotionally and psychologically in their brains. She is embracing the fact that she and her family will never be the same having come out on the other side of their nightmare. She is an unconventional minister, of sorts, speaking truth to power with wisdom and grace. I love it.

She also gave us a few helpful pieces of advice when you have someone in your life going through living hell:

1)Please, she says, no "pity face." It pushes the suffering spirit away, it makes them feel pathetic and as if they can't talk to you. "I'm so sorry" is just the first instinct and we mean well but it accomplished nothing. Be present, be available, be real.

2)Never, Never say it's "God's will." Even if you believe that's true, it's incredibly unhelpful and will not be well-received. Leave the preaching to a minister (and even they will not have the right words many times).

3)When you tell someone, "Please let me know what I can do," all you are really doing is creating more work for the person who is suffering. It is better to find out their schedule and offer to take the children to the movies and for ice-cream or to walk their dog or send over some fresh fruit (easy on the lasagna, folks, the freezer may be jammed-packed and it will just spoil - if there are kids in the house, better to send brownies).

4)Speaking of food - coordinate a meal drop-off so that 15 people don't bring food on the same day. And don't call the house 2 days later and say "did you get my lasagna?" it just creates more work and also produces guilt. Just give it and leave it and follow up with a call 3 months down the road and don't mention it. No neediness projected onto a soul in need.
5)(this was a good one for me) Please don't say, "You are so brave." All it does is make the person feel like, "Oh, crap, now I have to appear brave and I don't feel brave at all." It's much better to say, "Wow, this is really awful. This truly sucks. I am praying for you, I am with you." That means you actually enter into the reality of the situation with that person and it allows them to feel less alone in their unhappiness. Lee said that a friend she can let herself cry with and be herself with is pure gold.

To hear someone speak with such candor was so helpful to me. I think everyone in the room was knocked out by her intelligence and wit and the book is terrific. But Lee Woodruff possesses so much more than what can be effectively marketed through a website or at Barnes & Noble. She's an authentic woman with a story to tell and serious work to do. You go girl. Thanks for inspiring the heck out of me.