Meet Lee Anne Stone

We recently connected with Lee Anne Stone and have shared our conversation below.

Lee Anne, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

I have always been someone who put their head down and got to work when it came to achieving my goals or simply just getting something done. I think it is just part of who I am, but in 2009 my resilience was tested in a way that I could never have imagined.

On June 15, 2009 my husband and I had our second child, Isaiah. From the moment Isaiah was born, he was HARD. He was fussy, cranky, happy, sad and mostly all at the same time! At first, we just thought he had colic so we set out to try to find the best way to help ease his tummy issues and give him relief so he would sleep. There were many nights in the first few months where 1-2 hours a sleep at a time was the norm. Add to that, that we also had a 2 year old at the same time and we were a mess! What an exhausting time.

What came next was something I never saw coming….when Isaiah was 4 months old he had his first grand mal seizure. That seizure lasted 22 minutes. What followed were tests, doctors visits, endless hospital stays, diagnosis’s and many many more seizures with one seizure occurring when he was 10 months old that lasted for one hour and 18 minutes and resulted in a medically induced coma. My husband and I dug in and did everything we could to try to take care of both of our boys.
When Isaiah was 11 months old he died in his sleep from SUDEP (sudden unexplained death due to epilepsy). Throughout the medical journey over the past 11 months no one told us that death was a possibility with what we were dealing with.

The days, months and years following taught me the most about resilience….I believe losing a child is one of the very worst things someone can go through in life. But with everything in life, how you respond to things is the most important thing. My husband and I could have fallen in a downward spiral and take the “poor me” route, but instead we found the strength through each other, our faith and our other son to turn beauty into ashes.

Helping others through ISF has truly shown us that by helping others you can heal. In life there are so many joys and so many heartaches. ISF has taught me that those two things can co-exist — and that ultimately helping others through their heartaches shows that joy will always win.

What we learned through Isaiah’s short life was that neurologic care for children in Oklahoma was not up to par. We had the resources to be able to travel to other states and other hospitals to seek care for Isaiah, but every time we were hospitalized in Oklahoma, we saw the lack of resources available to Oklahoma families caring for someone with epilepsy.

We started the Isaiah Stone Foundation in 2012 with the mission to care for families in Oklahoma who are caring for a child with epilepsy. Our reach has also expanded to funding research to find a cure for epilepsy through CURE Epilepsy.

Over the past decade, we have:

Supported over 305 Oklahoma families with $475,000 in family grants. These grants are everything from travel expenses to get to doctors appointments or clinical trials, grocery bills for the KETO diet which is helpful in reducing seizures, paid medical bills and for prescriptions, help with rent and bills for those who need it, and many other things.

Distributed more than 47 life-changing seizure-detecting monitors

Contributed over $460,000 since 2016 to advance groundbreaking research on the SCN1A gene and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome through CURE Epilepsy

Allocated $21,500 in scholarships to empower Oklahoma’s youth

For two consecutive years, we have organized a one-day epilepsy conference for Oklahoma families, featuring the state’s leading neurologists and medical professionals.

We have established partnerships with the OU Neurology team, Bethany Children’s Health Center, the Oklahoma Epilepsy Foundation, CURE Epilepsy, various device companies, and other organizations dedicated to making a positive impact on families in Oklahoma.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

In addition to the Isaiah Stone Foundation where I sit on the Board of Directors (we have an Executive Director, Chelsea Watkins who is amazing and such a good resource if you have more questions about ISF!), I am also the Director of Women In Gaylord at the University of Oklahoma.

This program was created almost three years ago and provides the female students in the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication with opportunities for leadership development through a variety of programming and coaching. The undergrad population is 72 percent female and this is a group to help support their journey through college. We focus on professionalism, networking, fellowship, personal and professional leadership development, management, team work and overall support as they navigate life in college as well as out of college, but personally and professionally.

I am a graduate of the University of Oklahoma with a degree in Journalism and it is such a blessing to be back at the college where I got my start and give back to these amazing students. I am also a Certified Academic Life Coach, so I spend a lot of my days visiting with the students and helping them with their goals, finding internships that work for them, and just being a listening ear for their lives.

I am married to my husband Renzi of almost 19 years and we have three boys, Jackson, who is 17 and a junior in high school, Walker, who is 13 and in the 7th grade, and Isaiah (who passed in 2010.)
I always joke that my home life is a frat house with boys and male things all of the time, so having this job where I get to spend time with girls is quite a break from my home life! haha!

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I have a couple of life philosophies that I try to stick to all of the time.

(1) DO IT NOW. There is never a perfect time to do anything. Just do it. Volunteer. Take that job. Make that call. There is only now, and we do not know what tomorrow will bring, so you might as well do it now.

(2) LAUGHTER: Find humor in every situation. One of my favorite quotes is from the movie, “Steel Magnolias.” “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.” Life is funny-why not find the humor or the good in every situation?

(3) KINDNESS: Always be kind. Be good to people for no reason. Say hello to everyone. Look people in the eye. People are going through things-you don’t know what they are going through so be KIND to them.
At the end of the day we can endure much more than we think we can so why not help others, sit with the broken and give your time to those in need.

Advice:

As women we are always pulled in a thousand different directions; when we become mothers, the pulling becomes even more. What I have learned is that you have to value your time, your skills, your goals. Make sure you choose how you invest and grow yourselves wisely.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

One of my favorite authors of all time is Shauna Niequest. Her books have been so helpful to me in so many areas of life-she writes in such an endearing and catchy way that I feel like she and I are sitting down together chatting as I am reading her words.

Her book, “Bittersweet,” played (and continues to because I refer to it all of the time!) such a pivotal role in my development and resilince in learing the balance to becoming a working mother, the things that happen as we age, the things that happen as our children age and our relatinoships with others.

Here are a few of my favorite inserts from “Bittersweet” that I have adopted in my daily life.

“When life is good, say thank you and celebrate…and when life is bitter, say thank you and grow.”

“Everybody has a home team: It’s the people you call when you get a flat tire or when something terrible happens. It’s the people who, near or far, know everything that’s wrong with you and love you anyways. These are the ones who tell you their secrets, who get themselves a glass of water without asking when they’re at your house. These are the people who cry when you cry. These are your people, your middle-of-the-night, no-matter-what people.”

“When things fall apart, the broken pieces allow all sorts of things to enter, and one of them is the presence of God.”

“I believe that suffering is part of the narrative, and that nothing really good gets built when everything’s easy. I believe that loss and emptiness and confusion often give way to new fullness and wisdom.”

“Bittersweet is the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful, that there is a sliver of lightness on even the darkest of nights, a shadow of hope in every heartbreak, and that rejoicing is no less rich when it contains a splinter of sadness. Bittersweet is the practice of believing that we really do need both the bitter and the sweet, and that a life of nothing but sweetness rots both your teeth and your soul. Bitter is what makes us strong, what forces us to push through, what helps us earn the lines on our faces and the calluses on our hands.”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.isaiahstonefoundation.com
• Instagram: @leeannestone @isaiahstonefoundation @women_in_gaylord

Image Credits

Lee Anne head shot (Shannon Love Photography)
Beth Jansen (professional pics of Isaiah and Isaiah, Lee Anne and Jackson)