“You’re speechless! I don’t think I’ve ever been around you when you didn’t have something to say.”

“Ha! I’m not sure I like what that says about me.”

I hadn’t planned to write a post today because it’s been a long week, and I just didn’t have much to say. Then the executive director of the Epilepsy Foundation of Minnesota called me – and suddenly I was both speechless and had so much to say that I had to write a post!

I’ve worked with Glen a lot in the last three years, so it wasn’t strange to get a call out of the blue from him.

What was strange was his saying, “Someone just gave a donation in Cody’s honor. Were you aware of that?”

Um, no. No, I wasn’t. I clarified that he meant recently, and he said yes, just in the last week.

“No, I didn’t know that. That’s great!”

He sort of paused so I thought he was going to go into a different topic…except he shared with me the amount of the donation.

“Wha…???”

That’s way more zeroes than any donation I could ever give!

It left me laughing.

Crying.

And yes, speechless.

Yet the reason someone gave that much money to EFMN was because we have not been speechless about Cody’s epilepsy.

We have spoken out for the elementary school student who got teased on the bus about having seizures and now wants no one to know about an epilepsy diagnosis.

And the college student whose boss told her she was being dramatic and just trying to get out of working the late shift.

For the adults who fear losing their jobs if the company knew about their epilepsy…or the adults who have lost their jobs because the company did find out.

We are fortunate because we are in the position of being able to be open and share what this rollercoaster is like. Well, our version of the rollercoaster, at least.

So like being on a true rollercoaster, we cry out as we descend to the bottom and cheer as we reach the top.

And we will most definitely not be speechless.