Mom of Girls Lost in Christmas Fire to Spend Holiday at "Santa-free" Thailand Orphanage

By Josh Saul
New York Post
December 6, 2012

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/jury_accused_start_deciding_abusing_wxMX9zjniLBaebzPY2pO7M

Madonna Badger's father Lomer Johnson as "Happy Santa" with wife Pauline and the Badger children; Lily in the blue, Grace at the bottom and Sarah in the white.

She's been through hell and survived.

"I"m doing really well, I'm shocked that I'm doing ok, but I'm doing really well," Madonna Badger said today in an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC’s “Today” show.

This Christmas, Badger — the Connecticut mom whose three girls died in a horrific Christmas Day fire along with her parents — is going to Thailand, a “Santa Claus-free zone," praying and being with her girls.

Madonna Badger at her children's funeral early this year.

Badger, wearing a beige sweater and skirt and looking thinner but more upbeat than in previous interviews, said she will spend Christmas working in an orphanage for young girls, bringing them toys from her own garage that once belonged to Lily, Sarah and Grace.

Badger said she no longer feels guilty for smiling "because when I do feel happy — when I do feel joyful — it's when I can feel the presence of my children and my mom and dad the most."

Badger said she sees her children "in her dreams and when I pray."

"Lily came to me very early on and said to me 'Don't worry mommy, I'm right there in your heart and I love you.'"

Badger described a time when she was at her lowest — "a level-10, feels like blood is coming out of my eyes" — that her daughter Sarah visited her and told her that there was "nothing to be afraid of, everything is going to be ok."

In addition to the "messages" from her girls, Badger also credits her friends saving her after last year’s tragedy.

Badger said that by the time she got to her friends' home "half my hair had fallen out — I was a disaster."

"They made me promise I wouldn't kill myself. They brought me back to life."

Badger, also crediting therapy and spiritual healing with helping her grief, said she is no longer contemplating suicide because she doesn't "know what would happen if I did that and I don't want to risk not being with my children."

All three daughters and Badger’s parents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson, died in a fire that engulfed her Stamford house early Christmas morning.

Badger, who has been living with friends in Little Rock, Arkansas, supported her ex-husband Matthew who had said he wanted to kill her and her contractor boyfriend Michael Borcina in the days after the blaze, and said that their kids may have been taken away from them for a reason.

“I thought that was perfectly normal...I certainly felt the same way,” she said. "I don't judge Matthew's grief. In fact, I am incredibly proud of him for what he's done with the LilySarahGrace fund."

Badger said she plans to donate money she raised through her The Other 364 Foundation to his charity.

Matthew Badger recently revealed the depth of his pain in a stark interview with New York magazine.

The despondent, chain-smoking Badger — who has yet to return to his job as a commercial director since the fire — said he’s fighting an uphill battle to get donations for the LilySarahGrace Fund, named after his tragic 9-year-old daughter, Lily, and 7-year-old twins, Grace and Sarah.

At a fund-raiser at a mansion in Norwalk last week attended by 200 people, Badger said, he received a paltry total of $1,200.

“I put my three daughters out there. And this is what they’re worth?’’ the dad said bitterly.

Badger, 47, said he’s spent the days since the tragedy trying to find meaning in his beautiful, spirited daughters’ deaths.

Two months ago, he and his current girlfriend went to India, where he met and cried with the Dalai Lama — and spread some of the girls’ ashes on a hill.