By Hope Katz Gibbs
Editor and Publisher
Be Inkandescent magazine
On April 6, author and activist Lee Woodruff spoke at the CEO Chick Chat, a popular event hosted by the Northern VA networking group Success in the City and the DC-based book event company Hooks Book Events.
Woodruff discussed her new book, “Perfectly Imperfect: A life in progress,” and shared thoughts on what life has been like since her husband, ABC News reporter Bob Woodruff, sustained a brain injury in 2006 while covering the War in Iraq.
A contributor to ABC’s Good Morning America and a freelance writer, this is Lee’s second book. Her first, “In an Instant,” eloquently and honestly described the struggles they faced together as Bob recovered from his traumatic brain injury.
The book gave Woodruff the opportunity to share deeply personal and, at times, uproariously funny stories highlighting such universal topics as family, marriage, friends, and how life never seems to go as planned.
Lee writes about the things most women think about:
- Raising teens: “Now with a boy and girl on the precipice of serious adolescence, the bathroom door is sealed tighter than a government nuclear testing ground.”
- On her changing body: “Over the last ten years my own knees had begun to form those dreaded smiley faces, sagging underneath.”
- On how she copes with tragedy: “Swimming surrounds me in the velvet wet of a bluish green world where I can dive deep down and sob with no trace.”
- On life: “You can tell a woman’s whole life story from the possessions in her jewelry box. Like reading a palm, you can trace the points where her life has intersected with memorable events, people, places, and loves. You can speculate on the essence of her personality, all from what she has accumulated in that box.”
Giving Back
Lee is the co-founder and on the board of trustees for the Bob Woodruff Family Foundation Remind.org, a nonprofit organization that provides critical resources and support to our nation’s injured service members, veterans, and their families, especially those affected by the signature hidden injuries of war: traumatic brain injury and combat stress.
