For Gina Kell Spehn, gratitude isn’t about pretending that life is easy or looking for a silver lining in every difficult moment. It is about recognizing that even during profound loss, there can still be something good to hold onto.
“When you have gratitude, there is something that anchors you to hope,” Spehn says. “I think gratitude and hope go together.”
It’s a philosophy shaped by personal experience. Nearly two decades ago, Spehn was a young wife and mother watching her husband, Matt Kell, battle cancer. Today, since losing him, she helps other families navigate many of the same fears and uncertainties through New Day Foundation for Families, the Rochester Hills-based nonprofit she founded with her husband, Michael Spehn.
The story of how they arrived there is one of heartbreaking coincidence, unexpected connection and, ultimately, hope.
Gina and Matt were raising three children and his career taking off when, at age 32, he became general sales manager at WDIV-TV in Detroit. In the midst of these triumphs, Matt was diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma, an incurable cancer. Over the next three years, Gina became his caregiver while the couple tried to maintain as much normalcy as possible for their family. Matt eventually died from the disease.
Among those who attended his funeral was Cathy Spehn, an old friend of Matt’s who had reached out after learning he was ill — Cathy and Matt grew up as friends in Rochester, attending the same schools from grade school to college.
Just weeks after Matt’s funeral, Cathy was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. She died only 17 days later, leaving behind her husband, Michael, and their two young sons.
Gina attended Cathy’s funeral, where she and Michael met for the first time.
They were two widowed parents grieving very different losses. Gina had spent three years living with Matt’s illness and preparing her children for what might come. Michael had virtually no time to comprehend Cathy’s diagnosis before losing her.
“I was just a few weeks ahead of him and offered him some assurances,” Gina says.
Their shared understanding eventually grew into something neither expected. Gina and Michael fell in love, blended their five children into a family and married in 2007.
Even before they married, however, they were finding a way to turn their experiences with cancer into help for other families.
After Matt’s death, his friends organized a golf outing in his memory. The money raised was donated to a church fund assisting people in need, planting the seed for something more. In 2007, Gina and Michael founded New Day Foundation for Families (foundationforfamilies.org) specifically to support families facing cancer.
They understood firsthand that cancer affects far more than the person receiving treatment. A diagnosis can touch nearly every aspect of family life, from paying the mortgage and buying groceries to getting to medical appointments, caring for children and emotional support.
Today, New Day expects to assist nearly 1,100 families this year, the most in its history. It has raised more than $16 million, with 80 percent going directly to support families. To support these efforts, New Day hosts various fundraising events throughout the year: In addition to continuing the annual golf outing, the organization hosts 5Ks and its highly successful Celebrity Lip Sync Battle, where local sports, television and radio personalities battle on stage in front of celebrity judges and guests. This year’s event, held in October, featured Darren McCarty, Sandra Ali, the Ladies of Mojo in the Morning and more.
Gina now focuses much of her time on leadership, fundraising and growing the organization, but some of her most meaningful moments remain deeply personal.
Occasionally, she gets to call a family herself and explain how New Day can help. The assistance might keep a family in its home, put food on the table or make sure someone can get to treatment.
“Just to hear the relief in their voice is maybe the greatest gift,” she says. “It’s kind of the fuel for this job.”
Gina and Michael’s story eventually reached an audience far beyond Michigan. She wrote about their journey in The Color of Rain, which became a New York Times-bestseller and was later adapted into a Hallmark movie starring Lacey Chabert as Gina.
Seeing such a personal chapter of her life portrayed on screen was “surreal,” she says, but the experience also provided another way to share a story about love, loss and rebuilding.
Those experiences have shaped the way Gina thinks about giving back. Making a difference, she says, doesn’t require writing a large check. It can mean volunteering, contributing a few dollars each month or simply being present for someone who is struggling.
The same is true of gratitude.
“There’s so much to focus on that is negative,” she says. “When we stop and really direct our attention to anything that is good in our life, it changes your day. It changes your life, it changes your relationships, it changes everything for the better.”
For Gina, gratitude isn’t something reserved for Thanksgiving or practiced only when life is going well. It is something she learned in the hardest moments of her life — and something she now extends to others.
Sometimes gratitude is appreciating what remains. Sometimes it is helping another family through a place you have already been.
And sometimes, quite literally, it becomes the beginning of a new day.
“There’s so much to focus on that is negative. When we stop and really direct our attention to anything that is good in our life, it changes everything for the better.” — Gina Kell Spehn
PRACTICING GRATITUDE
Gina Spehn suggests a few simple ways to make gratitude part of everyday life:
• Show up and smile. Small gestures can have a bigger impact than we realize.
• Speak life. Let people hear what you are thankful for, even during difficult times.
• Write it down. Send a note or message telling someone why you appreciate them.
• Pray for others in the middle of your own pain. “It changes everything.”