I Am Advocating For a Friend. Please Help.

Whether out of laziness, embarrassment, or the feeling that I’d be asking too much of others, I’ve missed out on many meaningful opportunities in life. But at this stage, I’m moving beyond all that misplaced hesitation and simply doing what needs to be done.

Today, I’m advocating for a friend whose daughter, Shannon (pictured here), is in urgent need. My friend's family has traveled from Israel seeking experimental treatment for Shannon’s stage 4 glioblastoma—a disease often labeled "incurable." As you can imagine, without insurance, their bills are overwhelming. They need immediate funds for food, in-home care, rent, and all the other necessities life demands.

I’m asking anyone who feels moved to help to donate here: https://www.mealtrain.com/trains/ld1w3d

I’ve personally given to this campaign and can vouch for its legitimacy. Please spread the word!

Thank you.

Peter

For more context, here's something I posted recently about Shannon and her family on my Substack

We stand together — you, me, and the rest of humanity—under the vast dome of the sky, which each day shifts from shades of blue to shades of black.

Everyone of us is offered a choice: Do we escape our limitations to join one another in love and empathy, in unity and solace, in kindness and forgiveness—or do we stay confined, separated from each other in hatred and indifference, in division and bitterness? The escape hatch, then, must lie in choosing the former more often than the latter.

Physically, we are, of course, individuals—separate beings dwelling in our own skin. Our native condition is one of division; our first instinct is to feel disunity. Spiritually, however, we are profoundly interconnected, entwined in ways that transcend our physical boundaries. Yet feeling and knowing this innate connection is nearly impossible. In today's world, with the relentless speed of technology and constant distractions, the gap feels even wider. How, then, do we even begin to cultivate the will to seek it, to find that path back to the unity that resides within each of us?

Some weeks ago, I wrote about Eric, a new and dear friend I met during morning prayer services at my local synagogue. At first, I saw him as someone who wished to be left alone. And so for almost a month, I kept my distance. It was only when I gathered the courage to walk through my own escape hatch that I approached him. In doing so, I learned that like all of us, Eric deeply longs for connection. His daughter Shannon, a beautiful twenty-five-year-old woman, is fighting for her life in a nearby hospital. Eric had come all the way from Israel to get Shannon into a program offering experimental drugs that, with hope, would either save her life or at the very least, give her more time.

Though simply walking toward someone, asking their name and how they’re doing isn’t typically thought of as a significant achievement, it has proven to be quite significant for me. In that moment, I managed to lose a degree of my separateness, gaining a glimpse—a microcosmic hint—of what it might feel like to touch the liberating aspiration I’ve just described: to join one another in love and empathy, unity and solace, kindness, and forgiveness.

Since then, Eric has found community. A young man who’d never met Eric set up a meal train, ensuring food is delivered daily to him and his family. Eric has discovered what he calls "miraculous" sources of funding to help him through these unimaginably difficult and costly challenges. He has also found friendship. In his humble way, Eric often mentions that he is thankful for me. I have tried my best to contradict him. It is I who am thankful for him. I am the one who has truly gained something.

Last week, after spending time in the hospital room with Eric, his wife Yael, and his daughter Shannon, Eric walked me to my car and began to share his thoughts and feelings about the future. Quite uncharacteristically, I simply listened. For once, I didn’t barge in to offer my own thoughts and opinions. I stood there with Eric under the shade of a large ficus tree, absorbing his words as they poured out. I could feel something welling up inside me. I couldn’t name it then, and even now it’s hard to put into words. It was, I suppose, a glimpse of what happens when we let go of ourselves—when, with a quiet kind of courage, we loosen our grip on our own identity and open ourselves to the experience of being connected to the collective humanity we all share.

When I returned home, I debated whether to send Eric the following text message. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I overcame that initial reluctance. With his permission, I will share what I wrote to him in the hope that it might inspire you—and myself as well—to look for the escape hatch more often.

After we spoke yesterday I got in my car '

and wept like a child. I didn’t cry only from sadness,

I want you to know — although there is an ocean

of sorrow to be had — but from an overwhelming

sense of beauty, an immense and unspeakably

powerful sense of mystery and wonder.

How it is that we came to meet?

How is it that a rabbi in the remote corner

of the Negev desert told you to come this way?

How is it that you found those he said would help you?

And mostly, how is it that I have been so elevated

by my proximity to you and your family.

As I mentioned before: the love, the concern,

the connections are overwhelming.

I suppose what made me cry

was that I suddenly found myself

in the midst of a revealed miracle.

How I pray that this miracle has

yet to reveal its full force.

When I returned home with my eyes still red.

my wife was worried. I said, don’t be.

This is additive, this is a blessing.

This is the core, the very kernel

of life itself.

I bless you my brother. ??

At some level, the role of the “artist” is no different from the role of every human being. Perhaps it’s not so much a role as it is a constant search, a search for that escape hatch — along with a willingness to pass through it when called upon to do so. After all, who among us is not an artist of one sort or another?