Ten years ago I was diagnosed with ALS. Right at this moment, I feel a profound sense of gratitude, meaning, and responsibility in my life. I have a trust that I am exactly where I am meant to be, and I intend to live wholeheartedly for every breath that remains.
ALS has made me more vulnerable than I could ever have imagined. It’s humiliated my body into a pathetic and alien heap of skin and bones. It has annihilated my mind. Causing anger, frustration, and suffering that I had never known prior to January 5th, 2011.
ALS is a remorseless disease. Yet, my heart remains. My Soul remains. From vulnerability, my Soul offers strength. From humiliation, my heart brings resilience. From annihilation, my Soul has purpose. From suffering, my heart knows compassion and is driven to serve others who suffer.
In 2011, Michel and I founded Team Gleason, to help others live productive and meaningful lives. The talented and passionate staff at Team Gleason provides and develops innovative solutions to anyone and everyone who is working to live the most difficult life I can imagine. Whether it is providing the world’s most cutting edge assistive technology, or advanced equipment, or sharing the day to day methods and procedures we have learned and developed over the past ten years, Team Gleason provides real solutions to real people, right now. We help people with ALS to ‘live impossible’. Serving and helping others live in this way is not easy, but it is so wonderfully fulfilling. Awesome.
My family, Gray Gray, Rivers, and Michel, is my most important, yet my most difficult work, under the circumstances. It’s also difficult for them, but despite everything, this is the most meaningful work I have. Within me, there is an everlasting sense of commitment and responsibility to those three. A couple more decades, at least, if they’ll have me. One day at a time. One moment at a time, knowing intimately how fragile and precious human life is.
I love my family unconditionally and eternally. When I am able to share that perfect Love with them, it brings me profound, ridiculously incomprehensible joy. At the end of each day, laying in bed, before I close my eyes for the last time, I have a deep sense of contentment and peace. Joy overwhelming.
I trust that my future is greater than my past. My past has been pretty fucking epic, so I have extraordinary expectations for my future, our future.
-SG
