Daniel Lubetzky

Something about growing your own veggies makes them so much tastier when you eat them. We grew these gigantic cucumbers and the boys and I were eating them last week and will do again next week, just whole, as a snack. They are crunchier, tastier, they just feel so fresh, so real, and so ours. I love growing veggies with my kids, showing them the magic of nature and life, getting them to work to harvest their food – I just love it. This summer we grew tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, basil, cilantro and radishes!

A friend shared this touching and enlightening expression of the experience of raising a child with a disability by Emily Perl Kingsley. She captures the experience in a way that enables others to understand and empathize with parents like her.

Spotted by Daniel Lubetzky, by Julianna Storch

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this…

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, the Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!” you say. “What do you mean, Holland?” I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy. But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to some horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place. So you must go out and buy a new guidebook. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It’s just a different place. It’s slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills,Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.” The pain of that will never, ever, go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss.But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.

Written by Emily Perl Kingsley

My Dad used to tell us a story he conceived about a little bird named Bimbambu when we were kids. It is one of my favorite stories – about a kindly bird who literally sheds all his feathers in order to help other animals fight the winter weather along the way, only to end up without any protection until all the animals come to his aid. This may very well have been one of the subconscious foundations for the creation of KIND and the KIND Movement, as it teaches the important lesson of exhibiting unbridled kindness to everyone we encounter.

And now my sister Ileana has brought the story of Bimbambu to life in a colorful and beautifully designed digital children’s book so that other parents can share Bimbambu’s lessons in kindness with their children too. The Kindle e-book edition is available on Amazon now (and I was able to view it on my Ipad by downloading the free Kindle reader), and I look forward to seeing the print copies in English, Hebrew and Spanish soon!

My father, Roman Lubetzky, was a rarity among survivors of concentration camps. Most of his fellow survivors either were immersed in the horror of the Holocaust and sadly embittered by it, or were determined to shut it out of their lives and never again talk about it.   My Dad would talk about it to anyone who would listen, and would reignite suffering as he recounted his experiences as a little kid from 9 when the war started to 15 when he was rescued from Dachau. 

And yet he always talked about it with humanistic positive hope for the future, emphasizing the importance of building bridges and preventing the suffering of any human being.  He taught me compassion for the Palestinian cause, just as he was a fervent believer in Israel as the one homeland of the Jewish people.

Ziad Asali, whose latest article is here, is among the very few people I have ever met who reminds me of the moral courage that my Dad had – to proudly wear his historic pain on his shoulders, not to recriminate and as a way to guilt others, but as a responsibility to forge a better way for his people and for humanity.

Most Palestinians and Israelis would want to move on with their lives and would accept a two state solution.  But not enough people take it upon themselves to bring it about.

In the meantime, passionate minorities with far more extremist perspectives – that would deny the right of the other side to freedom, dignity, respect, security, and a State of their own – take it upon themselves to speak loudly – as often evidenced by those who take the time to express mean comments on these boards, from either extreme side.

Only if people like Ziad Asali lead the way will this conflict and the suffering that comes with it come to an end.  Anything other than a two state SOLUTION is just an illusion that will condemn those who live there with continued hatred and war.

During a tornado, Stephanie Decker demonstrated extraordinary heroism as her house collapsed on her and her children.  Stephanie saved her children’s lives by wrapping them in a blanket and laying on top of them as their house was minimized to rubble. When she was found by neighbors, her legs had been severed but her children were unharmed.  Our thoughts are with Stephanie as she recovers and she will always have our admiration.

Spotted by Daniel Lubetzky, by Adeena Schlussel

This quote is anonymous, shared with me by my sister, Ileana:

"I love you so much more today than I did yesterday, and yet, I never loved you any less."

A few years ago some ‘happiness’ researchers contended that parents were actually less happy than couples without children because of the sorrows and headaches accompanied by raising children. I remember thinking that is the most ridiculous and superficial analysis I’ve ever read. Of course there are challenges. But they underline the exponential rewards.

Now comes a new analysis about what truly constitutes happiness in a well-rounded way. It debunks the equation of temporary moods or even positive attitudes with ‘happiness."  These are of course interrelated, but so is meaning, a sense of accomplishment, engagement, etc.

The attached article shares some of the new thinking on measuring happiness. Some of these insights reminded me of the theme of the commencement speech I gave at Trinity University a couple weeks ago.

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by Adeena Schlussel

Confirming KIND’s motto that “it’s usually the nuts that change the world”, Daniel was selected as Entrepreneur of the Year by Entrepreneur Magazine!  We are so proud.  Here is a link to the story.  And here is a video.

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This awesome article in INC. Magazine, titled, “The Way I Work,” features Daniel and captures exactly how our CEO works! We are super proud that Daniel was featured in INC. and are even prouder that he is the fast paced, driven, successful worker that the article describes!

by Adeena Schlussel

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Is it just silly parents who find this amusing, or is this one of the funniest video songs anyone has ever listened to? Make sure you listen to all the words – and the deep tone of seriousness with the hip music.  Forget about Coldplay. This is a Lubetzky home favorite now!