FB22 [8:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A Fighter Mom is someone who has been touched by tragedy, and gains the will to fight to help ensure no one else has to deal with the same pain.  In this episode of Fighting Back Podcast, we meet someone who fits that description to a “T”.

Kyra Oliver’s four-month-old son, Hayes, died in 2002.  The cause of death was given as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS.  Within days of his death, as Kyra was still fighting through the anguish, she founded the Hayes Foundation to raise awareness of SIDS.  In 2006, she launched a campaign to educate mothers and caregivers that the safest way for infants to sleep is on their backs.  The campaign began in Kyra’s home state of Virginia and is now spreading to other states.

Kyra continues her fight, and is now planning a fundraiser in her home city that combines her desire to educate about how to avoid SIDS and her love of competitive running.  The Capital 10-Miler is being held on Saturday, October 3.  For more information, visit http://www.rrrc.org.

To listen to our interview with Kyra, can use the Flash mp3 player above.  You can also load the Fighting Back Podcast Feed into your favorite feed reader, subscribe via iTunes or other podcast directories, or simply use the download link above to load the file onto your computer.

 FB #21 [24:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

People frequently ask, “What is a Fighter Mom?”  Fight SMA president and Fighter Mom founder Martha Slay recently spoke with an entire room full of them, at the Rhett Syndrome Foundation’s 25th Annual Conference in Northern Virginia.  She discussed the values of Fighter Moms and how to be a more effective one.  In this episode of Fighting Back Podcast, we bring you the audio from her keynote address.

To listen to this episode, you can use the Flash mp3 player above, load the Fighting Back Podcast Feed into your favorite feed reader, subscribe via iTunes or other podcast directories, or simply use the download link above to load the file onto your computer.  If you have feedback, a comment or question, or are interested in having Fighting Back tell your story, please contact page! You can also leave a message in the form of a comment on this blog as well.

You’re going to be hearing a lot about FighterMom Friday in the coming month or so. The event, which will be held on the Friday before Mother’s Day (May 9) at the New York Palace Hotel in Manhattan, will be a gathering of moms who are fighting against diseases or conditions affecting their children. The day will be full of speakers, conferences, and seminars, all focused on helping FighterMoms with their fight. The keynote speaker, we’re excited to announce, will be Katherine Crier. You know her from watching her on Court TV, CNN, Fox NewsChannel, and ABC. More will be announced in the coming weeks!

You can view the FighterMom Friday invitation here.

A “fighter mom” is a mother with a purpose. She is organized to fight a disease or disorder that’s affecting her child, by raising money for research, raising awareness, and making sure everyone knows there’s a horrible disease that needs our attention. She is a disease advocate. The FighterMom™ program salutes these special moms this Mother’s Day Weekend, and is now providing them a place where they can easily find one another. The program, developed by international nonprofit organization Fight SMA, is relaunching this Mother’s Day weekend as part of an expansion from an informational resource to a community.

FighterMom is the brainchild of Joe and Martha Slay, who founded Fight SMA in 1991 after their son, Andrew, was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). While theirs is a specific fight against the leading genetic killer of children under two, they believe that the lessons they’ve learned are lessons that can be taught to people fighting other diseases.

As part of the relaunch, the FighterMom website has been redesigned, not only to better present information but also to include the FighterMom Community. The new community includes message boards, the FighterMom Blog, the ability for visitors to easily create their own blogs, and the Fighting Back Podcast (subscribe to the Fighting Back Podcast Feed), which features inspirational stories about people and families fighting serious or incurable diseases.

“Isolation is one of the biggest problems facing FighterMoms, partly because in many cases you really are one of very few people dealing with your disease,” said Mrs. Slay, who is president of Fight SMA. “With this relaunch, we want to create a place with so many like-minded people that visitors can’t help but realize there are others out there just like them.”

The new site is also more organized, and provides a place for visitors to learn about companies like Children’s Wear Digest that support the FighterMom program.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the FighterMom Manual. Written by Joe and Martha Slay, it costs individuals only the price of shipping. The manual includes everything they can teach about how they built Fight SMA. New or veteran FighterMoms can use it to educate themselves on topics such as how to organize and strategies to get attention for your disease.

“People who are organizing to fight a disease run into many of the same problems, even though their situations may be vastly different,” said Mr. Slay. “We believe we can provide a great deal of help to them, and by creating the FighterMom Community we can also provide a place where parents of sick children can learn from and support each other.”

To learn more about the FighterMom program, please go to www.fightsma.org/fightermom!

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 Fighting Back Ep. 4 - FighterMom Relaunch (Martha Slay) [8:50m]: Download

In Episode 4 of the Fighting Back Podcast, produced by Fight SMA and FighterMom, we continue our discussion with Fight SMA President Martha Slay. In Episode 3 we discussed the Fight SMA National Spinal Muscular Atrophy Conference in Washington D.C., as well as what it takes to be a FighterMom. In the latest episode, she talks about the exciting relaunch of the FighterMom program. The program, developed by Fight SMA, is designed to support, educate, and inform anyone who has become a disease advocate fighting against a disorder affecting a child.

If you have a comment or question or are interested in having us tell your story, or the story of someone you know, in the Fighting Back Podcast, please contact us via the Fight SMA contact page, or leave us a message at 206-984-3669. Of course, you can always leave a message in the form of a comment on this blog as well.

To hear Episode 4 of the Fighting Back Podcast, you have several options. You can listen using the Flash mp3 player above. Or, if you’re a fan of podcast RSS feeds, you can use the Fighting Back Podcast Feed in your favorite feed reader. If you’re an iTunes user you can subscribe and download via our iTunes store. Finally, you can, of course, download this episode using the link above.