Cebu_4_2
11th February 2017, 11:04 PM
thank god she wasn't shot in the head
https://parade.com/545964/kmccleary/life-is-good-the-story-of-mark-kelly-and-gabby-giffords/
https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/16681745_1232709056784350_7376849829257521567_n.jp g?oh=71b98702937371ae55836afa81c8b524&oe=59072582
Mark Kelly and Gabrielle Giffords are the kind of people who see every glass as half full. “Gabby has always been the personification of ‘the sun will come out tomorrow,’” says her mom, Gloria Giffords. “She manages to turn every negative experience into something worthwhile.” As for Kelly, “I knew I had a really dangerous job,” he says of flying combat missions (39 in Operation Desert Storm) and space shuttles (four times), “but you just convince yourself that accidents are not going to happen to you.”
Jeff Noble
(Jeff Noble)
So how do you cope when the worst does happen to you? Six years ago Giffords, then a U.S. congresswoman, was shot through the head while meeting with constituents outside a Tucson, Arizona, grocery store. Kelly, in Houston training for his next space shuttle flight, immediately got on a plane only to hear news reports announcing she had died.
The reports were wrong. Not only did Giffords survive, but her wit, her keen intelligence, her humor and her personality survived too. (“Ninety percent of people who suffer that kind of wound don’t survive,” Kelly says, “and the ones that do typically never get out of bed again.”) Giffords rides her bike regularly, does yoga, swims and has resumed a place in the public spotlight, this time with Americans for Responsible Solutions, an advocacy organization that works to reduce gun violence. She remains mostly paralyzed on her right side, has lost some peripheral vision and struggles with speaking, but the tragedy hasn’t changed the couple’s belief that life is good.
“Instead of focusing on the things that I can’t do, I’ve tried to focus on the things that I can do and live without limits,” says Giffords. “I have a mean left hook!”
“I believe the one-in-a-million thing won’t happen again,” Kelly says. “It’s like when I flew into space four months after Gabby was shot. She was the first female elected official in the history of our country to be nearly assassinated. So what are the odds that I blow up in the space shuttle a couple months later? The odds went down. That’s how I think about it.”
Sparks Fly
The couple met in the summer of 2003 when both were selected to attend a young leaders’ forum by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. They met again the next year when the group reconvened in Arizona. Kelly was 40, newly divorced, living in Houston with his two daughters; at 34, Giffords was 18 months into her first term as the youngest woman ever elected to the Arizona Senate, and loving life in Tucson. “I thought she was way out of my league,” Kelly says. A friendship bloomed; they emailed and chatted on the phone and turned to each other for dating advice. A few months later Giffords called and asked Kelly to come with her to see death row at the Arizona State Prison.
“The impression that stood out most strongly during that date was that she took her job very seriously,” Kelly recalls. “She had a compelling urge to learn everything she needed to know to represent the people of Arizona. If she was working on legislation that had to do with the death penalty, then she needed to visit death row.”
Courtesy Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Captain Mark Kelly
(Courtesy Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Captain Mark Kelly)
Giffords was smitten. “I remember Gabby telling me she met this fellow, and then she giggled,” says Robert Reich, former labor secretary and a close family friend who gave a blessing at the couple’s wedding. “I said, ‘He must be tall and dark and very handsome,’ and she laughed and said, ‘No. He’s short and bald, and I love him.’ ”
“It didn’t take me long to learn that Mark was the smart, supportive and sincere man I had been searching for,” Giffords says.
Their 2007 wedding, on an organic produce farm outside of Tucson, “was an extraordinary amalgam of military and Mexican and Jewish in a mix that has never occurred before in the history of mankind,” says Reich. After the wedding, Kelly returned to his job in Houston and Giffords to her work in Arizona and Washington, D.C., as a U.S. representative. The couple’s commuter marriage continued until she was shot on Jan. 8, 2011.
Now they live in a warm, colorful, Southwestern-style house in Tucson, where their life is filled with work, movies, meals with friends and ongoing speech therapy, physical therapy and yoga for Giffords. “There’s no doubt about it: The six years since the shooting have brought us a lot closer together,” Giffords says. “Now we live in the same place and see each other more than we ever did. It’s taught me how important it is for a relationship to have a strong foundation of loyalty and respect.”
Here’s what keeps them happy, healthy and moving forward.
Acceptance
“Sometimes I get droopy and reminisce,” Gloria Giffords says, “and Gabby will say, ‘That was then, this is now, Mom. Moving on.’” Kelly says he has had to work to get used to the fact that Giffords has physical limitations—“she walks at half the speed she used to”—and difficulty communicating. Giffords has nonfluent aphasia, which means she understands conversation clearly but struggles to speak in complete sentences. “To communicate basic ideas might take 20 times as long as it used to,” he says. “It requires a lot of patience. I never thought of myself as a very patient person, but I’m a lot more patient now.”
Positive thinking
“The injury Gabby suffered was horrific,” Kelly says. “It will affect her the rest of her life. If roles were reversed, I’d be a little bit bitter, but she isn’t. She pops up every day looking ahead and trying to figure out how to be a positive force in the world. She doesn’t get down; she realizes we can’t go back in time and there’s no undoing this. There’s no point in feeling sorry for yourself; all you can do is try to do the best you can with what you’ve got.”
Work with a purpose
Giffords and Kelly are believers in the Second Amendment right to carry arms, but in 2013, shortly after the Sandy Hook shooting, they founded Americans for Responsible Solutions. The nonprofit advocacy organization works to reduce gun violence. In addition, Giffords serves on the board of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, a nonpartisan advocacy and research center at the University of Arizona, and Kelly serves on three corporate boards and works with Worldview, an aerospace company he co-founded. They travel 60 to 80 percent of the year. “This is our way of serving our country,” says Kelly. “Neither of us works for the federal government anymore. We think public service is important, and this is our way to give back.”
Strong connections
“The best part of my life is the people,” says Giffords, whose mom and sister (Melissa, a preschool teacher) both live nearby. “Whether they’re in Congress or live down the street, my friends are constantly checking in and making me smile.” Kelly’s kids aren’t far away either: Daughter Claire, 19, attends Arizona State University in Phoenix, and his oldest, Claudia, 22, lives and works in Tucson. The couple likes to have family and friends over for dinner when they’re home. They also focus on time together doing things they both enjoy, whether it’s biking, sightseeing when they’re traveling or seeing movies at the theater a few blocks from their house. A favorite ritual: breakfast together at Bentley’s. “Gabby has gotten the same thing for four years: scrambled eggs with basil, spinach and cheddar cheese, and raisin toast with no butter and a side of fruit,” Kelly says.
Loyalty and teamwork
“People come up to me all the time and commend me for hanging in there,” Kelly says. “I always find that odd, because what’s the other option? In situations like this you don’t bolt and leave—the idea never even occurred to me.” But Giffords’ need for Kelly’s assistance doesn’t minimize her role as a partner who gives as much as she gets. “Mark and I come from very different backgrounds,” Giffords says. “He grew up in New Jersey, the son of two police officers. I grew up in Arizona in a family that sold tires. We both pursued careers in public service, but we’ve taken very different paths. Before the shooting, we balanced each other because I loved to talk and he was more reserved. When I was in Congress I often looked to him for his expertise in the military and science. He looked to me for my experience in politics, business and life. Now, Mark does most of the talking, but we still lean on each other for expertise. Our relationship has always been based on mutual respect and adoration for each other.”
How Kindness Heals
What can you do to help someone through a terrible time? Giffords and Kelly recall what meant the most to them after she was shot.
Random acts of kindness
“On the day she was injured, a soldier showed up at the front desk of the University of Arizona Medical Center and gave the person at the desk his Purple Heart, which he wanted Gabby to have,” Kelly says. “He wouldn’t leave his name. That Purple Heart lay in the bed with her the whole time she was in the ICU.”
Pick up the phone. Then do it again.
Aude Guerrucci/Picture Alliance/OPA/AP Photo
(Aude Guerrucci/Picture Alliance/OPA/AP Photo)
“President Barack Obama called every few days to make sure we had what we needed,” Kelly says. “I couldn’t believe he would take the time out of his day, not just to make one obligatory phone call but to call every few days for weeks and weeks.”
Express your love and concern
David Becker/Zuma
(David Becker/Zuma)
“I’ll never forget a letter I received from a World War II veteran who had also suffered a brain injury and wanted to remind me that ‘perseverance conquers all,’” Giffords says. Adds Kelly: “The setup on the front lawn of the University Medical Center that I’d walk through each night—the lawn was filled with pictures and flowers and notes, and that was incredibly helpful to me personally.”
https://parade.com/545964/kmccleary/life-is-good-the-story-of-mark-kelly-and-gabby-giffords/
https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/16681745_1232709056784350_7376849829257521567_n.jp g?oh=71b98702937371ae55836afa81c8b524&oe=59072582
Mark Kelly and Gabrielle Giffords are the kind of people who see every glass as half full. “Gabby has always been the personification of ‘the sun will come out tomorrow,’” says her mom, Gloria Giffords. “She manages to turn every negative experience into something worthwhile.” As for Kelly, “I knew I had a really dangerous job,” he says of flying combat missions (39 in Operation Desert Storm) and space shuttles (four times), “but you just convince yourself that accidents are not going to happen to you.”
Jeff Noble
(Jeff Noble)
So how do you cope when the worst does happen to you? Six years ago Giffords, then a U.S. congresswoman, was shot through the head while meeting with constituents outside a Tucson, Arizona, grocery store. Kelly, in Houston training for his next space shuttle flight, immediately got on a plane only to hear news reports announcing she had died.
The reports were wrong. Not only did Giffords survive, but her wit, her keen intelligence, her humor and her personality survived too. (“Ninety percent of people who suffer that kind of wound don’t survive,” Kelly says, “and the ones that do typically never get out of bed again.”) Giffords rides her bike regularly, does yoga, swims and has resumed a place in the public spotlight, this time with Americans for Responsible Solutions, an advocacy organization that works to reduce gun violence. She remains mostly paralyzed on her right side, has lost some peripheral vision and struggles with speaking, but the tragedy hasn’t changed the couple’s belief that life is good.
“Instead of focusing on the things that I can’t do, I’ve tried to focus on the things that I can do and live without limits,” says Giffords. “I have a mean left hook!”
“I believe the one-in-a-million thing won’t happen again,” Kelly says. “It’s like when I flew into space four months after Gabby was shot. She was the first female elected official in the history of our country to be nearly assassinated. So what are the odds that I blow up in the space shuttle a couple months later? The odds went down. That’s how I think about it.”
Sparks Fly
The couple met in the summer of 2003 when both were selected to attend a young leaders’ forum by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. They met again the next year when the group reconvened in Arizona. Kelly was 40, newly divorced, living in Houston with his two daughters; at 34, Giffords was 18 months into her first term as the youngest woman ever elected to the Arizona Senate, and loving life in Tucson. “I thought she was way out of my league,” Kelly says. A friendship bloomed; they emailed and chatted on the phone and turned to each other for dating advice. A few months later Giffords called and asked Kelly to come with her to see death row at the Arizona State Prison.
“The impression that stood out most strongly during that date was that she took her job very seriously,” Kelly recalls. “She had a compelling urge to learn everything she needed to know to represent the people of Arizona. If she was working on legislation that had to do with the death penalty, then she needed to visit death row.”
Courtesy Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Captain Mark Kelly
(Courtesy Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Captain Mark Kelly)
Giffords was smitten. “I remember Gabby telling me she met this fellow, and then she giggled,” says Robert Reich, former labor secretary and a close family friend who gave a blessing at the couple’s wedding. “I said, ‘He must be tall and dark and very handsome,’ and she laughed and said, ‘No. He’s short and bald, and I love him.’ ”
“It didn’t take me long to learn that Mark was the smart, supportive and sincere man I had been searching for,” Giffords says.
Their 2007 wedding, on an organic produce farm outside of Tucson, “was an extraordinary amalgam of military and Mexican and Jewish in a mix that has never occurred before in the history of mankind,” says Reich. After the wedding, Kelly returned to his job in Houston and Giffords to her work in Arizona and Washington, D.C., as a U.S. representative. The couple’s commuter marriage continued until she was shot on Jan. 8, 2011.
Now they live in a warm, colorful, Southwestern-style house in Tucson, where their life is filled with work, movies, meals with friends and ongoing speech therapy, physical therapy and yoga for Giffords. “There’s no doubt about it: The six years since the shooting have brought us a lot closer together,” Giffords says. “Now we live in the same place and see each other more than we ever did. It’s taught me how important it is for a relationship to have a strong foundation of loyalty and respect.”
Here’s what keeps them happy, healthy and moving forward.
Acceptance
“Sometimes I get droopy and reminisce,” Gloria Giffords says, “and Gabby will say, ‘That was then, this is now, Mom. Moving on.’” Kelly says he has had to work to get used to the fact that Giffords has physical limitations—“she walks at half the speed she used to”—and difficulty communicating. Giffords has nonfluent aphasia, which means she understands conversation clearly but struggles to speak in complete sentences. “To communicate basic ideas might take 20 times as long as it used to,” he says. “It requires a lot of patience. I never thought of myself as a very patient person, but I’m a lot more patient now.”
Positive thinking
“The injury Gabby suffered was horrific,” Kelly says. “It will affect her the rest of her life. If roles were reversed, I’d be a little bit bitter, but she isn’t. She pops up every day looking ahead and trying to figure out how to be a positive force in the world. She doesn’t get down; she realizes we can’t go back in time and there’s no undoing this. There’s no point in feeling sorry for yourself; all you can do is try to do the best you can with what you’ve got.”
Work with a purpose
Giffords and Kelly are believers in the Second Amendment right to carry arms, but in 2013, shortly after the Sandy Hook shooting, they founded Americans for Responsible Solutions. The nonprofit advocacy organization works to reduce gun violence. In addition, Giffords serves on the board of the National Institute for Civil Discourse, a nonpartisan advocacy and research center at the University of Arizona, and Kelly serves on three corporate boards and works with Worldview, an aerospace company he co-founded. They travel 60 to 80 percent of the year. “This is our way of serving our country,” says Kelly. “Neither of us works for the federal government anymore. We think public service is important, and this is our way to give back.”
Strong connections
“The best part of my life is the people,” says Giffords, whose mom and sister (Melissa, a preschool teacher) both live nearby. “Whether they’re in Congress or live down the street, my friends are constantly checking in and making me smile.” Kelly’s kids aren’t far away either: Daughter Claire, 19, attends Arizona State University in Phoenix, and his oldest, Claudia, 22, lives and works in Tucson. The couple likes to have family and friends over for dinner when they’re home. They also focus on time together doing things they both enjoy, whether it’s biking, sightseeing when they’re traveling or seeing movies at the theater a few blocks from their house. A favorite ritual: breakfast together at Bentley’s. “Gabby has gotten the same thing for four years: scrambled eggs with basil, spinach and cheddar cheese, and raisin toast with no butter and a side of fruit,” Kelly says.
Loyalty and teamwork
“People come up to me all the time and commend me for hanging in there,” Kelly says. “I always find that odd, because what’s the other option? In situations like this you don’t bolt and leave—the idea never even occurred to me.” But Giffords’ need for Kelly’s assistance doesn’t minimize her role as a partner who gives as much as she gets. “Mark and I come from very different backgrounds,” Giffords says. “He grew up in New Jersey, the son of two police officers. I grew up in Arizona in a family that sold tires. We both pursued careers in public service, but we’ve taken very different paths. Before the shooting, we balanced each other because I loved to talk and he was more reserved. When I was in Congress I often looked to him for his expertise in the military and science. He looked to me for my experience in politics, business and life. Now, Mark does most of the talking, but we still lean on each other for expertise. Our relationship has always been based on mutual respect and adoration for each other.”
How Kindness Heals
What can you do to help someone through a terrible time? Giffords and Kelly recall what meant the most to them after she was shot.
Random acts of kindness
“On the day she was injured, a soldier showed up at the front desk of the University of Arizona Medical Center and gave the person at the desk his Purple Heart, which he wanted Gabby to have,” Kelly says. “He wouldn’t leave his name. That Purple Heart lay in the bed with her the whole time she was in the ICU.”
Pick up the phone. Then do it again.
Aude Guerrucci/Picture Alliance/OPA/AP Photo
(Aude Guerrucci/Picture Alliance/OPA/AP Photo)
“President Barack Obama called every few days to make sure we had what we needed,” Kelly says. “I couldn’t believe he would take the time out of his day, not just to make one obligatory phone call but to call every few days for weeks and weeks.”
Express your love and concern
David Becker/Zuma
(David Becker/Zuma)
“I’ll never forget a letter I received from a World War II veteran who had also suffered a brain injury and wanted to remind me that ‘perseverance conquers all,’” Giffords says. Adds Kelly: “The setup on the front lawn of the University Medical Center that I’d walk through each night—the lawn was filled with pictures and flowers and notes, and that was incredibly helpful to me personally.”