At the height of moral prowess, American author and philanthropist Lisa Wilkes personifies fairytale heroism on her adventurous quest for justice.
Not constricted to a binary career, Lisa takes on the role of ‘catastrophic giver’ in many selfless forms. Overtaken by the compulsion to necessitate dignity for those stripped of independent voices, Lisa is towering over acts of injustice. Righting many wrongs. Relieving the plight of; women faced with dangerous abortion options, animals left on death row, and the turbulence of humanitarian slaps sweeping across areas of the country.
Fresh out of adolescence, Lisa stared at life’s many injustices, tussling with the burdening question, “What can I do in the face of all of this?”.
Today, Lisa is both ‘action and voice.’ For the past 13 years, she’s used her role as a flight attendant to save the lives of countless species of animals by using her ‘free flight’ work perks for an adorably honorable benefit for the world. Animals destined to be euthanized in an overcrowded shelter are swaddled up by the many for another chance at life. Cats, dogs, bunnies, birds, the LOT! Lisa nestles them all in the reassurance of love at her Florida home and delivers them by airplane into the open arms of lifelong adoration after searching for and vetting the just-right humans.
“I feel like we get these benefits where we get to fly for free, and I genuinely can’t think of a better way to use them than to bring a creature to its new family and to see the joy, as you had said previously; There’s never been a transport I’ve done that only affected the animal because the humans involved in that transport are so touched by it. They’re so thankful…”
..I believe that knowing the problem, knowing the need, and using our space…Now we’re in an apartment, it’s small, but we still have space. We have the resources to take care of them. And watching these animals thrive and just knowing what their fate would have been. I mean, every animal, it makes a difference.”
furever_luvd_fosters_n_flights. – is her rescue Instagram where you can get live updates on all personal rescue flights.
In 2019 she was introduced to and joined a whole team of people who were committed and established to do exactly the above. This discovery of a collective that fostered animals and flew them to homely destinations put the cherry on top of the cake of a wonderful string of ironic events that matured from the embers of pure strong-willed empathy.
As a child, she stared as Catherine in a stage play of Pippin (If you don’t know Pippin, click here and fastroward to 05:28) AND was already using her spare time to fly her rescued foster animals to homes.
Earlier this year, 2023, she became a part of the leaderboard and now networks with thousands of animal shelters, rescues, and sanctuaries across all 9.834 million km² of America, unquestionably uniting the states.
Masterfully adapting to the humanitarian issues facing the United States and many parts of the world today, Lisa draws on the power of her literature to fuel ethical pathways in the real world. Flitting from the romance genre to progressively more political baselines, the spirit of the main character, Lexi, in her most recent book, Mid-Flight, rippled into fruition at timely relevance during the Wave vs. Row vote that sent thousands of women residing in America into a ‘medieval’ style state of panic for their rights.
In the book (No spoiler alert), Lexi must launch a life-changing revolution after discovering a severe entanglement of lies crippling human rights. In real life, Lisa set up an online incognito forum that guided women to safely vetted venues where they could receive knowledge of safe health care providers, their proximity, and anonymity the entire time, considering the legal risk of being even involved.
“I created a website in Texas which I listed under my grandmother’s name, who passed, but she was such a fierce advocate for human rights. And I thought that it was something she would have been proud of. So I made it under her name. I had to vet all the different medical care providers myself because there are a lot of organisations, unfortunately, that pretend to be advocating when they’re just trying to track women down to manipulate them.”
With a beautiful and bold testament, Lisa continues,
“I wanted to do something that emphasises like in her day, you know, abortion was illegal. She knew women that had died because of it. And so she thought, and it became legal in the 1970s because of all of the tragedy that had occurred prior to that and all of the women who suffered, and so I know that if she were here today, she would be one of the folks speaking out the loudest and so I felt like, you know, this was my way of spreading information and helping people and I wanted to do it under her name.”
Despite a powerful lifelong game of tug and war with anxiety, Lisa has surpassed fear after fear and continues to develop ever more into a true social combatant.
Not only is Lisa Wilkes a jet-setting life-saving author and human rights activist, but 2022 also saw Lisa Wilkes become a proudly licensed social worker. Recognising the ‘village’ of people it took to raise her to strength from her weakest moments and how not everybody is fortunate to have the cards dealt that carry the natural circles of support.
“I just keep thinking every time I read them (self-help books) like it takes a village like I did. I was struggling. I wasn’t sleeping very much. My weight dropped dangerously low, and my parents were pretty fearful because my anxiety had just taken over.
I am lucky and fortunate to have a supportive family, but in addition to that, the friends I have made from college it was all these like-minded folks that also wanted to make a difference in their community. And my childhood friends were drawn together because we all had the same interest in rescuing bunnies when we were in elementary school. So it was really having a community of supporters and saying like, Hey, I’m struggling, and I really didn’t think that anyone would step up to the plate, and I remember my first friend, and I confided how bad my anxiety had gotten. She basically said to me, I’ve been here for you, and I’m gonna be here for you, and like we’ll get you into therapy if you need it and having that network of resources which, unfortunately, I don’t think everyone does have which is part of my work as a social worker.”
Lisa actively partakes in community charity events, and to continue in short, most proceeds of her activities are donated toward animal rescue. You can contribute to that by purchasing her latest book here.
So many tears of joy have been spent over the ambitions of one fiercely loving heart that continues to accomplish, on a daily basis, her lifelong felt purpose of saving the world. “For whoever saves one life, saves the world entire,” including oneself—paraphrasing from the Talmud.
Lisa unpretentiously agrees,
“It’s a sense of purpose because you know that you’re impacting others, and that becomes your fuel. You feel that you’re making a difference. You know, even if it’s just one cat, one human at a time to make that difference. It reminds you that you belong here and that you’re doing something that’s impactful.”
A raw model of a citizen’s hero, Lisa Wilkes is bouldering the way to her expanding her personality into a non for profit for all of the care that she commits to her community to be officially compiled into an all-rounder self-made dream come true.
Her next anticipated book, which is not yet named, will take a step into further relevance for society as it’s set to expose society’s aggression toward the trans community to capture a new perspective for her audience. Her spirit and advocacy for a dignified life for all living things have created a monstrous rally of support and recurrence of action in others, which is what being an excellent, kind, and caring human is all about.
Where do you have room in your life to create safety for anothers to be saved?