Lindy Boone, daughter of legendary entertainer Pat Boone, grew up singing with her parents and three sisters as The Boone Family--performing all over the country. Years later, after a successful career as a fitness trainer and raising three kids of her own, she's still singing, writing songs and books, and spreading a message of faith, hope, and love. Her latest single, 'Wordlayer,' is a tribute to her son Ryan, who suffered a traumatic brain injury after stepping through a skylight and falling three stories onto a cement floor. He wasn't expected to survive. However, through the miracle of faith and prayers, he did. Lindy uses her platform to help others with the same injury. Lindy's book, Heaven Hears , tells the story of tragedy, triumph, and the strong faith of a mother. In 2003, the Boone family established a non-profit organization called Ryan's Reach. The charity provides two licensed homes to provide therapy and financial assistance for TBI survivors and their families who can't afford it. She also recently started a podcast called TBI Talk , where she gives insights into brain injury recovery. It offers another resource for those who have loved ones in the same situation and want to hear stories of other families going through a similar journey.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hey, I'm Lindy Boone and you're watching Life Minute TV.
00:05Daughter of the legendary entertainer, Pat Boone, Lindy Boone grew up performing all
00:10over the country as the Boone family with her parents and three sisters.
00:15Years later, after a successful career as a fitness trainer and raising three kids of
00:19her own, she's still singing, writing songs, books, and spreading a positive message of
00:24faith, hope, and love after tragedy.
00:27This is a Life Minute with Lindy Boone.
00:31When your happy turns to tears and you're broken by your fears...
00:37We learned to sing in the car with my mother teaching us.
00:41I have three sisters and she sang with her sisters and my dad is a singer.
00:47And my mother really started off as a singer as well, but she ended up having four daughters
00:52really fast and was a stay-at-home mom.
00:55But she taught us to sing and then we ended up traveling as a family in my dad's show.
01:02We ended up performing and that led to recording.
01:06So we did a lot of singles hoping to have that breakthrough single, but we did some
01:13Christian albums that were well known and even got nominated for a Grammy on one of
01:18those.
01:20So we sang a lot together until we ended up splitting up to have our own families and
01:25move away.
01:26And it got to be too hard and Debbie's career took off.
01:29And you light up my life.
01:37Spend some time with your Creator.
01:40Are you grateful that He made you?
01:43What came to my mind was the word, word layer.
01:47I had actually concocted that word many years before when I had a book coming out.
01:53And it was the spiritual journey of after my son Ryan had had a brain injury.
01:59And so word layer had a lot to do with my awareness of the power of my own words that
02:05I would speak as I was going through such a difficult time.
02:09The reason it got made was I eventually played the song for him when I got to sing it at
02:16my church.
02:17I spoke and I sang it and I just showed him on my cell phone.
02:22Oh, Daddy, I sang the song I wrote.
02:24And even though I had played it for him before, this was different when he saw me standing
02:28there and singing it.
02:30And his record company guy was there as well.
02:34And this was just in his family home in Nashville, just a few of us in the kitchen.
02:39And they both went, wow.
02:41They wanted to know what I was doing with the song.
02:44And I said, oh, well, it's in my computer and I play it for people from time to time.
02:49And they definitely wanted to see it made into a full production.
02:55And they made it possible later on in that year to come to Nashville, fly my sisters
03:01in.
03:02We hadn't sung together in a really long time.
03:04And we created the song and the video.
03:07And so it's a YouTube video as well.
03:10If people haven't seen it, it's kind of the making of the song.
03:13My dad was in it.
03:15He was there hearing it for the first time and needed a tissue right off the bat because
03:21this is so meaningful for him to see his four daughters singing this song with this meaning
03:27after a long time since we've sung together.
03:37Ryan was my first son.
03:39I have three kids, all very wonderful.
03:42One day he went up to the roof of his apartment building with his roommate and he stepped
03:46on a skylight.
03:47And the skylight, he really didn't mean to step on it.
03:50He was trying to step across it and his foot came down on it and it broke.
03:54And it was three stories above the ground.
03:56He fell and he incurred a severe brain injury.
04:00So that changed all of our lives.
04:03And that was about 23 years ago.
04:06So we've walked this brain injury world for a long time.
04:10He has come back to us in many ways, but he still lives with us.
04:15He has caregivers 24-7.
04:17He's in therapy every day.
04:19But he has regained an awful lot that wasn't expected.
04:25And I just am so grateful for what has returned.
04:29And I focus on that and every day celebrate the fact that I can hear his voice because
04:35it took 15 months before I heard his voice again.
04:38He can smile and say, I love you.
04:40And he's got great command of his vocabulary, but he also has behavior that, you know, we'd
04:47love to do without, but that's part of TBI, traumatic brain injury.
04:52So we started a nonprofit, Ryan's Reach, and that's been about 20 years ago.
04:58And we've been able to help an awful lot of people get therapy after their injury and
05:03insurance cuts them off.
05:05And we also started two group homes for people with traumatic brain injury because there
05:10are just hardly any homes out there for people with brain injury.
05:13And it's kind of specific.
05:15And before we started them, we could only find homes that were homes for the elderly.
05:20And they would place one maybe younger person with a brain injury in an environment like
05:25that.
05:26But we've started two that are strictly for people with TBI, the younger population that
05:33we hope to see continue to recover and be stimulated and have as normal of a life as
05:38they can have in a residential community.
05:41It's shocking when you've never had suffering in your life.
05:45And I never had.
05:46I was 45 years old and everything had gone fairly well.
05:50So it was shocking to see something that you always kind of would hear about and think
05:55it was always happening to somebody else, but not to my son, not to my family.
06:01And so it's an opportunity to grow.
06:04And I definitely being from a family of faith, I dealt more into impressed into my faith.
06:11You ask a lot of questions and you kind of all the other peripheral stuff falls aside
06:17and you ask the important questions and you decide how you're going to face it.
06:22And for me, it was leaning on family, leaning on God, believing that prayer matters,
06:29believing that my own words matter, and then having acceptance and looking for what I had
06:36to be grateful for every day.
06:38And that's a lesson that, you know, it takes time to practice it.
06:42There's an awful lot you can dwell on of sorrow.
06:45But I recommend to people to start listing the things that you can be grateful for.
06:52And sometimes it was as simple as I'm grateful he can swallow.
06:56I'm grateful that he wasn't alone when he fell because somebody could call 911.
07:02I just started with very basic things.
07:05But now I'm so grateful I can hear him say I love you.
07:08I'm so grateful that I can feel his arms around me and he can hug me and he knows who we are.
07:14Even though his life, he doesn't remember what he had for breakfast.
07:19He lives in this present moment.
07:22And as he's living in the present moment, he's teaching me to live in the present moment
07:27and say right now I'm grateful.
07:30Right now I am content.
07:32And so that's how I get through.
07:37Dad's 90th fabulous weekend with our immediate family, my sisters, their husbands, their kids, their grandkids.
07:45Dad has, he says 17, I think he's off count.
07:49I think there's 15 great grandkids.
07:56People say what's next musically?
07:58I never wrote a song before Word Layer.
08:01I have written a couple songs since then.
08:04But I don't really know if they have commercial value or if they're just for me.
08:09I've written a song for my grandson because I'm a new grandmother.
08:14And my husband said, you should write a song for Bryce.
08:18And I laughed and I said, you think I write songs now?
08:21But then a title came, the words came.
08:24And I wrote this really sweet lullaby for anybody that has a grandchild called My Baby's Baby.
08:31So there's something in my heart that wants to see that come to life.
08:36And then I also have written a worship song.
08:39So I have songs that have been coming to me.
08:43And maybe they'll get made, but I'm very open to it.
08:46And when people say, what's next?
08:49I go, I don't know.
08:51We'll see.
08:52To hear more of this interview, visit our podcast, Life Minute TV on iTunes and all streaming podcast platforms.