“I knew if I didn’t make a list, none of it would ever happen.” Like many people, 42-year-old Rebecca Block has been busy with life. Her family, her young daughter, her job as a researcher. “And it just kind of struck me like, ‘Okay, there’s kind of a clock ticking here.'”
In her 20’s she was diagnosed with the same type of muscular dystrophy that has her mom in a wheel chair — where essentially your muscles just break down. She said, “I have no idea how much longer I will be on two full legs.”
So, she made a list. “I call it my leg list because it’s a list of things that I want to be able to do on my own two legs, with my own legs under my own power.”
At the top of her list: “Trekking to sit with the gorillas. It’s been a dream since I was a little tiny person, I wanted to teach apes sign language that was my big, that was after I wanted to be a fighter pilot of course.”
Also on her list: Dancing at a Cindi Lauper concert. Something she’s wanted to do since a 5th grade lip-sync show. “And of course I chose time after time and my sister dressed me up in actually her Bah-Mitzvah dress, it was the only drop lace dress in the house.”
Rebecca plans to work step by step down her list. “It’s really challenging to be like, ‘Okay, this one is about me.’ So part of me hopes it’s not really about me and that maybe somewhere someone will hear about this and say I’m going to write down my list, I’m going to do this.”
Rebecca leaves for Uganda in June — where she’s going on a tour with a wildlife photographer to sit with gorillas.
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