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This is a story of broken hearts, Titanic alcohol damage, and second chances. It is a story I have been blessed to help unfold over the last six years; a story that joyfully, and brilliantly, is becoming very well known, despite its being started by epic unraveling thousands of miles away.

A little background: an eternal optimistic opportunist, I see 50 ways that something will work where most sane folks only see downside. Where others see a single thread, I see entire tapestries. It is a blessing and a curse.

I needed a thread or two back in 2006 when I was working on a fundraising race to raise awareness for fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), an umbrella term

used to describe the range of effects that can occur to an individual whose mother consumed alcohol while pregnant. The most severe form of FASD is called fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). FASD is not “a warm and fuzzy”; people do not get all whoopty-do about it. Most would rather NEVER hear about it, much less tell our sisters they can’t have a glass of wine for nine months. So when I heard about a particularly enthusiastic participant in the race, I was eager to meet her.

So I met Donnie Winokur, a wisp of a woman with intense brown eyes and wildcat mother energy; that “I-will-fight-to- the-death-for-my-children-and-kick-your-butt-from-the-grave” urgency that I, as a long-time single mom, had run on for years.

Donnie’s urgency was about learning as much as she could, and connecting with as many people as possible, to figure out what to do for a precious little boy who was in a world of hurt, hurt that was hurting everyone in his world.

The little boy was her son, a dream-come-true who’d been adopted, like his sister, from an orphanage in Russia, on what was a kind of second honeymoon for Donnie and her husband, Rabbi Harvey Winokur. “We didn’t try to get pregnant for long, opting instead, since we were older and this was the second marriage for both of us, to start the adoption process not long after we got married,” she said.

To cut to the chase here, Donnie and Harvey’s son and daughter, adopted in Russia and brought home to Roswell, GA in 1999, made them an instant family. The daughter developed beautifully, and today, at 13, is, physically and intellectually so much like her adoptive mother it is as though their souls were roommates in heaven for a million years before they were both made human.

The dream-come-true story with the little boy, however, started unraveling about the time he turned three, when epic meltdowns, mood swings, and rages grew with intensity as the little boy grew in size and strength.

After many consults with many doctors, the truth unraveled in the form of a broken umbilical cord. You see, the boy’s Russian birth mother might have been an alcoholic. Or not. Or she might not have known she was pregnant when she drank alcohol. Whatever the case, she’d had enough to drink at some point during her pregnancy with this precious child, that his brain had been hurt badly. Very badly. The very cord that gave him life also delivered deathly alcohol to his developing brain, affecting, in particular, the parts of his brain that regulate mood, emotions, memory, and the ability to communicate, discern, and deal with “no.”

I met a desperate Donnie Winokur a couple of years into her sometimes frantic search to learn about her son’s FAS, and to find anyone and everyone who might be able to help keep this family, knit together from oceans apart, from unraveling.

She was an enthusiastic volunteer. And opportunist that I was, I saw in her pain a face for this cause.  She became, once some trust was established, a willing accomplice. She, too, saw tapestries where others saw threads.

I asked for an interview. She let me write her story, using her talents as a journalist to help edit it, and her wildcat mom energy to be sure I told it tenderly.

I asked to feature her family in a video. She had words with the reluctant rabbi, who ultimately let us film in the synagogue.

I asked her to be on a fundraising committee. She did it.

I asked her to give me input on a book I was writing about stopping the cycles of addiction and abuse, my way of using my pain to help myself and others.  We cried. We laughed. Our friendship deepened.

I asked if I could write a fundraising letter about her story. We made money on the letter and gathered new advocates for our cause.

She told me she wanted to get a dog to help her son, a dog that would be the first service dog ever to help a child with FAS by sensing an immanent outburst and using its love to help calm the child in ways no human can. I told her I thought it was a great idea. She told me her husband was dead-set against it. I told her, from experience, that mothers do rabies-crazy things because we are so in love with our children, and to listen to her gut.

She and her precious father and children brought home fur-covered love – a rescued golden retriever named “Chancer,” because hers was his second family; his second chance at love – that helped her son and became the rabbi’s best friend.

We did another video. The CDC did a video about her family and their experience with FASD in hopes of raising awareness of the fact there is no safe amount of alcohol, or safe time to drink if you are pregnant or could be pregnant.

We had awareness-building and fundraising schemes, dreams, and roadblocks that, as we climbed over them, made us stronger. And a little tired. After all, we’d hit our 50s together.

She was working on three books and we were both run ragged by children and traffic and board meetings and life and events and she decided to put her focus into the books. We stayed in touch, with emails and phone calls and rushed lunches or coffees and even a rare girls’ night out, just two moms and a hot dog.

And now, six years from our first meeting, her story has been told in an incredible award-winning book by her daughter. And in a second book that will win awards and is the story of, and “written by” the dog. And now in an epic feature spread in nothing less than the Sunday’s New York Times Magazine section, written by a best-selling author who has woven this story and all its intricacies and miracles so beautifully, that I firmly believe there is a thread-for-thread matching tapestry of it hanging in heaven.

Author Melissa Fay Greene tells this story – that MUST become a best selling book and a major motion picture – in a way that makes Donnie happy because Ms. Greene tells the truth, explains FASD and FAS with painful and empathy-evoking accuracy, and lets the reader know that there is a special hero in Karen Shirk, the brave woman who could have died alone and lonely. But instead, as an optimistic opportunist whose optimistic opportunist nurse knew that puppy breath is a wondrous healer, she founded 4 Paws For Ability, the organization that accepted and trained the dog who became Chancer, who has brought some peace and joy to this family that has been through so much, and has much to come.  

I invite you to get a second cup of coffee or tea and read this story (link below). Savor every word of it because you will want to read more. And more. And you will want, I believe, to see it told on a big screen. I know I do.  

And so I am throwing out a thread here to another optimistic opportunist – or opportunistic optimist – who perhaps knows Steven Spielberg, or someone who knows Steven Spielberg, and will help Donnie do what she is so very, very good at doing: making sense of her family’s pain by using her experience, strength, and unfailing optimism to help others. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/magazine/wonder-dog.html?pagewanted=all Wonder Dog - A golden retriever was the only thing that could reach a raging, disconnected boy. - by Melissa Fay Greene

http://www.thechancerchronicles.com/invisible.html - My Invisible World - life with a brother, his disability and a service dog by Morasha Winokur

http://www.thechancerchronicles.com/nuzzle.html -  Nuzzle – the love between a boy and his service dog by Chancer Winokur

http://www.thechancerchronicles.com/index.html - Website with links to other publications, information, and opportunities about Donnie Winokur, her family, and Chancer, the "wonder dog."

Carey Sipp's first book, The TurnAround Mom – How an Abuse and Addiction Survivor Stopped the Toxic Cycle for Her Family, and How You Can, Too, guides fellow “children of chaos” to create the kind of sane and loving home life that helps prevent next-generation addiction and abuse. Her book is available at Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/TurnAround-Mom-Addiction-Survivor-Family--/dp/0757305962/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317756315&sr=8-1

Read more articles by Carey Sipp here..

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