Table of Contents
PRAISE FOR SAVING EACH OTHER
Sometimes were given a physical or spiritual challenge that we have no idea how were going to rise to. In this riveting account of a mother-daughter love story and their urgent search for a cure, were made aware of the power that dwells inside utter necessity. By the end of this book, youll laugh, cry, rage, and rejoice... and youll feel that lovely connection to life that you only get when you pass through your dark night of the soul.
Kathy Freston,New York Timesbest-selling author
ofQuantum Wellness and The Lean
Any parent or child will be moved and inspired by this story of how love and dedication can conquer pain and fear; a vivid reminder that there is nothing more powerful or enduring than the bond of mother and daughter.
Rob Lowe,New York Timesbest-selling author
Saving Each Other is a love story, a medical mystery, and also the proof we badly need that cooperation beats competition every time. This is an irresistible book that inspires readersand could reform experts.
Gloria Steinem
I once said that life is found in the dance between your deepest desire and your greatest fear. Saving Each Other is about a pathway where two women face their greatest fears and experience their deepest desires together as they take on an incurable disease. Its quickly obvious this disease is no match for the powerful combination of a mothers love and devotion with a childs hope, determination, and will. You will be moved and inspired as you go on a journey with these two extraordinary women and find newfound courage within yourself.
Anthony Robbins,New York Timesbest-selling author,
internationally acclaimed speaker, and peak performance expert
This is a spectacular and gripping story of personal courage and entrepreneurial creativity involving a mother and daughter. It is a story of medical researchers and disease detectives working hard to cure a young womans frightening disease. The saga is ongoing, exciting, and full of drama and hope.
Larry Steinman MD, Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics
Stanford University and Chairman of Immunology 20022011
As a woman, mother, and close friend of the authors, I find this story deeply moving on so many levels. The work that Ive seen Victoria, Ali, and the foundation undertake has been extraordinary, especially in bringing doctors together to share ideas and create a dialogue that wasnt there before. As their experts grow closer to finding better, more effective treatments for this disease, they can open the door for solutions to many other diseasesand thats just incredible!
Reese Witherspoon
The unstoppable power of these two extraordinary women is an unforgettable and inspirational experience you will carry in your heart forever.
Dustin Hoffman
Ive made a career telling inspirational womens stories. This real-life story is a triumph. Saving Each Other is about a mother and daughter bonding over love, maturity, and survival. Victoria and Ali, two people Ive admired for years, have written an incredibly moving and important story that must be shared.
Garry Marshall
Saving Each Other is a testament to a mothers incredible strength and a daughters unshakable courage. However, it is so much more than that. The Guthy/Jackson familys journey in fighting Alis diseaseand their refusal to give upis beyond inspirational; it is truly one of the greatest love stories Ive ever read. This wonderful book will make you laugh and cry. But most of all, you will cheer for this amazing familys unfailing tenacity and hope in the face of enormous obstacles and fear. Their fight will ultimately help save countless other lives.
Sherry Lansing, CEO, The Sherry Lansing Foundation
To my three blessings, Evan, Ali, and Jackson
with love forever and always, Mom
and
For Survivors and Thrivers everywhere
Ali Guthy
(from Victoria Jackson)
Perseverance is where the gods dwell.
DIRECTOR WERNER HERZOG,
REPEATING AN OLD PERUVIAN SAYING
(from Ali Guthy)
Dreams, the way we planned them
If we work in tandem
Theres no fight we cannot win.
Just you and I, defying gravity.
TAKEN FROM DEFYING GRAVITY,
FROM WICKED
A Note from the Authors
From Victoria Jackson
Youre standing in a bookstore, holding this in your hands.
Or, on second thought, you could be browsing titles online or on a digital device.
Wherever you are, you open to this page and learn that Im the mom in this love story. Even though I may be best known as a makeup artist turned entrepreneur and philanthropist, truly, my most important role in life is that of mother to my three beloved children.
Oh, for the record, if you Googled me, you might come across another Victoria Jackson, the SNL comedienne turned right-wing darling.
That would NOT be me. Im the Victoria Jackson of infomercial fame who challenged the status quo of the makeup world by honoring the natural beauty of all women. My foundation for the no-makeup makeup look became the crown jewel of my cosmetics company that today has sales of more than a half-billion dollars. But the focus of my work now has to do with a different foundation, one devoted to funding research to unravel a medical mystery that, up until four years ago, was seen as incurable and often fatal. My husband, Bill, and I created the Guthy-Jackson Charitable Foundation in 2008 when our otherwise perfectly healthy, gorgeous, extraordinary teenage daughter Ali was stricken with this rare autoimmune disorder that threatened to take her from us.
Living our worst nightmare, I began to write this book out of a desperate refusal to accept the unacceptable. Part of the process was to have an outlet, a confidante. Part of it was to keep track of the history wed made by launching the foundation in record time. During most of that first year, Ali knew her affliction was scary but asked not to know the specifics of the diagnosis or prognosis. The pages I was writing in those early days then took on an even more meaningful purpose when I gave them the working title of Saving My Daughter, Finding Myself: The Journey of a Fearful Warrior.
Back then, the scope of the book was more of a memoir. More of a momoir.
That first year my dark humor helped me cope as the pages started to become more of a Mom-Noir. That was the fearful voice talking.
Fear has been a recurring theme in my life. Fear is what has often motivated me and what Ive battled at most turning points, past and present. Thats probably not what you expected to hear from a woman whose rags-to-riches story has been as triumphant as mine has beenfrom starting a multimillion-dollar business in my garage with no start-up capital to becoming a pioneer of the infomercial industry and in countless other ways.
Still, the more I focused on confronting fear, the more I realized that the most dominant theme for me has been something else: survival. The survivors instinct is whats allowed me to go further than I could have ever once imagined and to dig myself out of whatever hole that I found myself in, no matter how deep or how dark.