Foreword

      Everyone knows that life is tough—for some more than others. My mom always taught me that the true test of your character is how you react when things are going badly. Beginning at a very young age, I remember sitting on Mom's bed having hour-long discussions about life, death, and religion. Mom said that true religion was being true to your family, trying not to hurt anyone, and helping others as much as you can. I can remember having those discussions at the age of ten. Ten years later while I was serving in the army and stationed in Italy, my mother was murdered in her antique shop back home in Hot Springs, Arkansas. I cannot remember dealing with that grief because I had to be strong for my father.

      After that horrible tragedy, I established the attitude that I had had my tragedy of a lifetime and that was it for me. On Memorial Day, May 28, 2001, our seventeen-year-old daughter, Thea Kay Leopoulos, was run off the highway by a reckless driver careening out of control, and our precious daughter was killed. Less than a year later, my older brother died of a rare illness. In 2004, my wife's father died on the night of November 27^th, the birthday of our oldest son. The day he was buried, my wife Linda's mother died from brain cancer. She was buried three days later . . . on Thea's birthday, December 6^th. (And just to add one more note: The day Thea was killed was Linda's brother's birthday.)

      Many say that losing a child is the worst thing that can happen. That is true. It blows a hole in your heart and you are never the same. Many people avoid you. Your life as you knew it is over. People think that after a time you should get over it. Every day is a struggle to get up and hopelessness is a feeling you cannot shake. There is nothing you can do to get out of the nightmare and make things the way they were before.

      The interesting thing is that those bedtime chats with my mom on death, life, and religion stuck with me. As parents, Linda and I taught our children to never give up on their moral values and to always believe in themselves. Character means to deal with life's adversity by learning from the adversity and to help others with what we learn. When Thea was killed, there was no choice but to practice what we preached, for our boys were watching—and so was Thea.

      Linda and I took Thea's seventeen years of light and established the THEA Foundation (www.theafoundation.org). The past five years have been nothing short of amazing. Fifty-five scholarships amounting to over $600,000 have been awarded to graduating high school seniors in Arkansas for their talents in the visual and performing arts. We know they will gain the confidence to lean forward into their lives to pursue their dreams.

      The thought of leaning forward into life when times are hard seems totally impossible, even if you want to try. But you know—Mary Anne is right. You can lean forward because you must in order to survive in a healthy way. In this motivating book, Mary Anne gives example after example of how she navigated through a difficult childhood and kept on leaning forward throughout her life to become a bright light in this difficult world. Mary Anne set her own circumstances into motion—ones that helped her live a positive life. She articulates how she made the best of a challenging family life by embracing the simple actions of others who gave her gifts of kindness, friendship, and compassion. Instead of focusing on what she did not have, Mary Anne learned to build a positive attitude about life from the outward gestures of love that were shown to her by others. She learned meaningful answers to the meaning of life and shares her recipe with us in this book. Mary Anne also shares her poetry and personal journal entries that she kept along the way as a reminder to herself about where she began her adventure and where she is today.

      My congratulations to Mary Anne on presenting an outstanding book of her life's experiences and the lessons she learned, and my gratitude to her for generously allowing me a “Thea moment.”

       —Paul Leopoulos