Insights From a Home-Front Warrior

November 2011

Lee Woodruff describes her childhood as fairly upset-free. But the past several years have made up for that—given a series of unexpected traumatic events, like a miscarriage, a cancer-scare and a hysterectomy—and have only made her stronger. In fact, when we called Lee for this interview, she had just experienced the sudden death of her dog Tucker two hours earlier. “I watched the whole thing happen before my eyes,” she says. “Of course I had my freak-out moment, you feel your adrenaline, and then I just observed my process of thinking and said to myself ‘You know exactly what to do, kind of like when Bob was injured.’” 

Lee is referring to her husband, Bob, who suffered a brain injury in 2006 after a roadside bomb in Iraq took him down while he was working as a correspondent. “I had to do the same thing then that I had to do today.  My first thought was protecting the kids,” she shares. “You don’t really have time to fall apart.” Lee was in Disneyworld with their four children when she heard the news about her husband’s injury. “I was not at home. So I had to kick into gear and get us back…and you do find out what you are made of.”

After awakening from a 36-day coma, Bob started the long path to recovery. Lee was so focused on helping everyone else that she didn’t have time to break down until a year later. She writes about the experience in her second book Perfectly Imperfect. “I became overwhelmed with sadness and the enormity of what happened finally caught up with me.”

Even though Bob is back to working full-time, life in the Woodruff household, post-injury, has changed. “Someone with a brain injury never comes back to the way they were before,” she explains. “There are always differences a loved one sees…but he really is a miracle.” And the challenges she faced have given her a new mission: the inception of the Bob Woodruff Foundation. “I don’t even think I knew anyone with a brain injury prior to this happening,” she reflects. “That’s the beauty of life—being open to what life is going to throw at you.”

To women going through their own crises (no matter how small they think they are in comparison to what she has gone through), Lee advises not to put the grieving process off.  If you do, it will catch up with you later. “You have to give yourself permission to go through it and be sad because there is no shortcut…I wasn’t trying to run from it, I was too busy trying to make sure everyone else was okay.”

Lee believes that men and women grieve in very different ways, and yet, through it all, she and Bob have grown closer. “Bob and I—we’ve gone through it and come out the other side. One thing I’ve learned, nobody’s ever alone. You don’t have to do it by yourself.” 

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