AudreySpirit blog — AudreySpirit

Being the parent of a medically complex and fragile child. And all too often absent parent of her brother. The hardest job was my honor, the hardest job inspires AudreySpirit.All Audrey wanted to do was strategize about Labor Day Sales, hang out with friends and start her freshman year of high school. Her older brother, Peter, was also beginning his freshman year away at college. I so wanted to help her get ready for her new school experience and help Peter love college life. I was so tired, I didn’t even feel tired anymore. Tired was just my state of...

Families tell us that they keep at least one AudreySpirit shirt in their car just in case a trip to the hospital becomes necessary.  This gives their child confidence and empowerment from having their very own, reliable choice for dignity and modesty – at any time. Kids with chronic complex conditions often have health problems interrupt their plans and may have to stay in the hospital without any advance notice. Their unique medical dilemmas can make them feel alone since their diagnosis or treatment options do not nicely fit into a single known group (such as asthma or diabetes - Audrey had both plus many...

A few weeks ago I was invited to talk on our local NPR radio station's Up To Date Program hosted by Steve Kraske and was joined by Dr. Jeff Hornsby, Interim Director, Regnier Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation UMKC;  Ryan Bennett, Vice President of Idle Smart; and Mike Farmer - CEO of Leap.it. One of the radio program listeners, an executive of an apparel manufacturing company with international reach, contacted me to offer AudreySpirit his help (as a personal philanthropic gesture!). I met with him and the level of executive and practical guidance he's willing to provide and connect me to "insiders" is no less...

The logo is an evolution of a drawing created by Audrey Grace. As Donna recollects: “The logo is an abstract design by graphic artist, Lee Orrison, based on an original artwork Audrey created. Children’s Mercy Hospital's Teen Advisory Board (TAB) was involved in a project to update posters in the hospital cafeteria. As a member of the board, Audrey brought posterboard home from the teen meeting and drew the picture of a cheerful, welcoming and colorful mouse with an elaborate background. At the following TAB meeting, she turned in her mouse poster. It was mounted in a prominent location in...

About Autoimmune Disease"Autoimmunity is really complex and the group of conditions that fit within autoimmunity are very diverse. They often don’t have a ‘name’ that people recognize and are often really hard to explain. They are not ‘contagious’ – like many people think about ‘diseases’ but are life altering, lifelong and, in the most severe cases, life threatening."  Mara Becker, MD and Keith Mann, MD were gracious enough to share this information about autoimmune disease to help kids understand it better.  Both doctors took great care of Audrey and are among her biggest heroes. Audrey's school peer and dance colleague, MiKaylee, is working...