Lift It Like Lasso: Still time to make Santa’s “nice!” list!
Still Lifting it like Lasso: Thundergong! 2024 & donating to Steps of Faith Foundation
Not altogether coincidentally, Hélène and I are very pleased to announce, we published Lift It Like Lasso Vol 3: In which we all Remember that you have to try last month, 
just a few weeks ahead of this year’s Thundergong! ~ the fantastic annual variety show to benefit Steps of Faith Foundation, which helps to provide prosthetic limbs and care for those who are uninsured or underinsured. 
Thundergong! 2024 is happening this coming Saturday, November 9, 2024. Tickets have been sold out for weeks, but I know of at least two ways you can contribute to this fabulous cause. You can donate to Steps of Faith directly, via their website (stepsoffaithfoundation.org), or . . . .
As we did last year, we are hoping to create yet another win-win-win by contributing $1 from every book in our Lift It Like Lasso series sold between November today and midnight the first day of the New Year (1/1/2025)! Admittedly, we don’t have the drawing power of people like Jason Sudeikis and Brendan Hunt (Coach Lasso and Coach Beard from Ted Lasso) and Cristo Fernández (who played Dani Rojas and is joining the line-up for Thundergong! 2024). What we do have is a wealth of Ted Lasso word puzzles so immersive and engaging they will bring you right back to the time you’ve spent with those wonderful characters and so many others that we all came to love during three outstanding seasons of that iconic Apple TV+ series.
What we also have is 1) a heart for this cause that brings such a gift and blessing to so many in need of just a small boost (one might even say a lift) and 2) vast admiration for those, like Billy Brimblecom Jr., musician and CEO of Steps of Faith Foundation, who work tirelessly all year round to help provide that boost ~ raising awareness as well as money through events like Thundergong! (although, really, I’m given to understand that there’s nothing quite like Thundergong!).
Last year we raised $340 through sales of the first two volumes of Lift It Like Lasso (see the original blog post for the Steps of Faith donation promotion here: https://belief3ninesfine.com/lifting-it-like-lasso-in-which-we-pay-it-forward-to-steps-of-faith-foundation/) ~ creating a win for us in letting us share our depth of love for the series that inspired us to create these puzzle books . . . a win for those who purchased books for themselves and other lovers of word games and/or Ted Lasso in the form of the fun and laughter playing these puzzles always brings . . . and an additional win for Steps of Faith Foundation by producing an additional $340 toward providing a prosthetic limb for someone who needed one, through those book sales.
This year, with the complete Lift It Like Lasso series now available, we hope to gather an even larger donation to send to aid in the compassionate work Steps of Faith does toward filling this need.
And, seriously, I am SO excited for you to discover this third and final entry into our series of Lift It Like Lasso puzzle books ~ you will not believe the depth and complexity and synchronicities that went into ~ and came out of! ~ the creation of Volume 3 of Lift It Like Lasso, if I do say it myself! (Or maybe you will, having seen the depth and complexity and synchronicities of season 3 of Ted Lasso!)
Come and join us for another wild and wonderful journey back to Nelson Road and revisit the wonderful people who inhabit the world of Richmond AFC! And WIN with us, as your purchase of Lift It Like Lasso adds another precious dollar ~ per book purchased ~ to the donation for Steps of Faith! So, if you purchase the entire set of three . . .
In fact, want a great 3-fer gift idea? Here you go: Between now and midnight 1/1/2025, Purchase 1.) the entire set, all three books of the series as a gift to the Ted Lasso lovers in your life (I know you know who we’re talking about!). That lets you 2.) check off at least one special person on your gift-giving to-do list, while simultaneously 3.) helping to give the gift of a prosthetic limb to someone who really needs it!
Now that’s what I call a WIN-WIN-WIN!
Barbecue Sauce!
Purchase your copies of Lift It Like Lasso by clicking the covers below:
PS: Even if you don’t buy the any of the books, even you haven’t seen Ted Lasso (“scandal!” ;-)), please consider making a donation to Steps of Faith Foundation anyway ~ you’ll get at least a 2-fer, by helping give someone that boost (lift!) while simultaneously giving yourself the gift of the glow that doing something to help someone else brings. (Then give yourself a bonus reward by watching Ted Lasso! :-D)
In the end, this is the answer
Someone in my extended family died last week, by his own hand. I can’t imagine the pain he must have been in to do such a thing, and I don’t want to.
There’s been a lot of conjecture online about things he may have done, incidents that may have have happened to precipitate his disappearance and the taking of his own life. This is the bane of social media ~ the dark side of what can be a bright coin ~ that anyone can say anything he or she likes, be it truth, half-truth, or conjecture ~ and others can take up those threads and conflate other instances with what might have happened or make up falsehoods of whole cloth to support their position or opinion (because opinion it all truly is). Truths, half-truths, conjecture, conflation, and outright lies ~ there’s a reason such things are called “witch hunts.”
None of that helps anybody. None of it solves anything. What means something doesn’t take place online with “friends” you’ve never even met in person, with whom you’ve never built a real relationship, with whom it would barely make a ripple if you disappeared tomorrow. And none of what happened “then” or what someone should have done and didn’t, or did do and shouldn’t have ~ none of that solves the puzzle either. The reality is that no one can go back and do things differently because he or she is hurt or grieving or angry about what is now. Even if they could, it wouldn’t guarantee a better outcome.
“Man hands misery on to man.” Generational trauma really is a thing, and that’s something we can and should do something about. Even though it hurts, and it will; even though it’s hard, and it is; even though it scares us, some of us to the point that we refuse to look, refuse to see, and, in the rare moments it shoulders its way into memory, hope against hope that, since we don’t see it, it’s no longer there. But there has to be a way to heal these wounds, and we have to know what that is before we open our own or ask others to open theirs. There has to be a way to see that the trauma ends with this generation.
But, today, here I am, still feeling the ebb and flow in the wake. And all I can think of is this video clip from Ted Lasso of Roy Kent talking about how footballers aren’t just footballers, they’re people. And how none of us know what’s going on in each others lives. Saying, with that Roy Kent intensity, “So for Isaac to do what he did today ~ even though it was wrong ~ I give him love. … As for why he did what he did, … that’s none of my fucking business.”
This scene, from what is arguably my favorite episode of the 3rd season (yeah, I know most people pick “Sunflowers” but, for me, this is it), resonates and stays with me, because, like so much of what lies at the heart of Ted Lasso, it is true, not just in this TV show but in reality ~ and for everyone. This press conference scene and the scene between Nate and Jade that it segues into, to the strains of Bear’s Den’s “All That You Are,” and from thence to best friends Colin and Isaac.
This is the essence of Ted Lasso, even more than “Believe” ~ it is Love. Love that ties best friends, even when you discover that in some ways you’re so different; Love that is a balm when you’ve been hurt, that takes you in, comforts, and protects; Love that is compassionate, patient, kind ~ even when you don’t understand.
More importantly, this is the essence of life: Love is the answer. Even if you don’t know the question ~ and even if you think you do.
In the end, this is the answer.
Love.