Friends Make Us Braver.

Dear Brave Family,

For an entire school year, there was an empty seat at an eighth-grade lunch table.

It wasn't empty because no one wanted to sit there. It was empty because Brayden's friends wanted everyone to know whose seat it was.

Brayden never got to sit in that seat during eighth grade. His friends saved it for him anyway.

I've thought about that gesture a lot over the past four years. I've thought about his baseball teammates honoring him by retiring his number and putting up a sign at the fields where he'd played. I've thought about one of his friends getting their driver's license and making Brayden's resting place one of the places they chose to visit that special day.

None of those things could change what happened.  That was in the past, but friendship has never been about fixing everything.

Sometimes friendship is simply refusing to let someone carry everything alone.

I've been reminded of that over and over again through the work we do here.  

When the Wyoming Community organized the Walk for Brayden, our friends showed up. When we said we were starting a foundation to help other kids and families, they showed up again. When we decided to build a dog park in Brayden's memory, there they were. When we opened the doors to the very first Bravesgiving, so many of the people filling that room were the same friends who had been standing beside us all along.

And our friends are still there.

They're the friends I can grab a drink with when I need one. The ones sitting around a backyard fire talking about life. Michelle has those friends too. They're there for the late-night conversations, the words of encouragement, the book recommendations, the check-ins and all those seemingly small things that somehow become incredibly important when you need them most.

The older I get, the more I realize that great friendship usually isn't defined by grand gestures.

It's defined by consistency.

Someone keeps showing up.

Maybe that's why friendship became such an important part of Brave Like Me from the very beginning. We had seen firsthand what Brayden's friends gave him.

His friends made him braver.

That's why Brave Friends isn't just a cool name we gave one of our programs. Friendship is built into the program itself.

When a Brave Kid joins us for an adventure, we encourage them to bring their best Brave Friend with them. Yes, that means our experiences cost more. We could stretch those dollars further on paper if we only provided an experience for the Brave Kid.

But that's not how life works.

Children aren't meant to experience life as a diagnosis or a medical condition. They're kids. They have friendships, inside jokes, favorite teams, arguments, sleepovers, shared memories and people they want beside them when something incredible happens.

We aren't meant to be isolated by our diagnoses or conditions. We're meant to live in relationship with one another.

And something else happens when we invite that friend along.

Two children can experience the exact same afternoon completely differently. One gets a few hours where the focus isn't on appointments, treatments or what their body can and cannot do. They simply get to laugh with their friend and be a kid.

Their friend gets something too.

They get to experience the world alongside someone they care about whose life may look very different from their own. They might notice an obstacle they'd never noticed before. They might see courage they previously took for granted. They might begin to understand something that no classroom or conversation could ever completely teach them.

That's where empathy grows.

We can't walk in someone else's shoes if we've never gotten ours a little dusty and dirty too.

A few weeks ago, This idea come to life again as Brave Kids, their Brave Friends and their families joined our team at Great American Ball Park for a Cincinnati Reds game. There was baseball, food, laughter and all the things you'd expect from an afternoon at the ballpark.

But what mattered most wasn't on the scoreboard.

It was who was sitting beside them.

And in a few weeks, friendship will fill an even bigger room.

On October 24, nearly 400 of us will come together for Bravesgiving. We'll laugh. We'll celebrate. We'll hear incredible stories. We'll probably shed a few tears. And yes, we'll raise most of the money Brave Like Me needs to operate throughout the coming year. If you've ever wondered whether your generosity that night really matters, I promise you, it does.

But Bravesgiving was never meant to feel like a typical fundraising gala.

There are enough hard stories surrounding children with complex medical conditions. We don't ignore those realities. Honestly, we can't.

But for one night, we choose to fill the room with something else that is at our core of who Brave Like Me is.

Joy.

The same uninhibited joy we work so hard to create for Brave Kids throughout the year.

There is something remarkable about standing in a room with hundreds of people who have chosen to care about one another. Some will have been our friends for decades. Others may be attending Bravesgiving for the very first time. There will be Brave Families, volunteers, donors, corporate partners and people who simply heard about this little foundation and decided they wanted to be part of it.

For a few hours, we'll all be friends.

And when I think about everything friendship has given my family, everything it gave Brayden, and everything I see it giving our Brave Kids today, I can't imagine a better way to spend an evening.

So if you're already joining us on October 24, I have one request.

Bring a friend.

Bring someone who hasn't experienced Bravesgiving before. Bring someone whose cup could use filling. Bring someone who should meet this community. Or in other words, simply bring someone you love having beside you when life is good.

Life was never meant to be lived alone.

Friends make the celebrations better. They make the difficult days lighter. They help us see the world differently. And when life asks more of us than we think we can give, friends make us braver.

Thank you for making me braver.

Onward with Bravery!

John Otten
CEO & Co-Founder
Brave Like Me Foundation