Hey there. My name is Debbie Godawski. I am honored that you are spending time on my website. My hope is that this will be a place where you find valuable information, inspiration, support, and encouragement.

We all have a story. A wondrously complicated, ever-evolving story. Each one is comprised of highs and lows and everything in between. I feel compelled to share my story and my journey. Doing so brings me joy, a sense of purpose, and healing.

Up until November of 2012, life for me had been pretty “normal”. I had experienced, by most accounts, the typical and expected life events. From growing up with a brother and a sister, to graduating from college, to getting married, to having two babies. Fast forward a few decades and those babies grew up, married the loves of their lives, and began their new chapters. Of course, there are a lot of missing pieces in that timeline, but the highs and lows were fairly predictable and recoverable.

Life has a way of throwing us curveballs. Most of the time, we can adjust and eventually move on. However, sometimes we are hit right smack in the gut with such force that we are never the same. We aren’t sure how to recover, or even if we ever will. We are left grappling with the pieces of our “new normal”, trying to figure out how to move forward. Life threw a high-speed torpedo at me and my family that we never could have imagined, and it turned our world upside down.

That was over ten years ago.

I never in a million years thought I would be a part of the brain cancer world. However, twenty-seven days after our healthy, athletic, fun-loving 26-year-old son married his sweetheart, he had a seizure. This led to finding the tumor and his diagnosis.

This has been quite the journey to say the least. This changed the trajectory of my life, my identity, the way I existed.

Everyone deals with life’s curveballs and destructive pitches in their own way. I went from disbelief to anger to depression to paralyzing fear. For many years, I lived trying desperately to make it from day to day. To be totally honest, for many of those days, all I could manage was to make it from one minute to the next.

And then . . . a few years ago, I started feeling a sense of hope again. I was able to breathe again. I could smile and laugh and play again. On most days.

After a very long season of struggling to navigate and adjust to my “new normal”, I now feel led to share my story. My prayer is that my experience and what I am learning will be of value to others.

While life still throws those curveballs, I am now at a different place physically, emotionally, and spiritually. My journey continues to evolve. I still struggle. However, I now see the sunrise through the clouds. I have hope. I have a new-found sense of purpose.

Thank you again for joining me here. I promise to do my very best to share information that will cause you to think and rethink, will encourage you to push yourself outside of your comfort zone, and inspire you to kick the norm by the wayside and shoot for the stars.

P. S. Both of my babies have now made me a grandmother to four incredible little humans. I am embracing this season of my journey. And my son, with a lot of hard work, is now thriving and on his path of helping others.