So, I suppose this is more of a PSA than one of my typical posts. However, I just found out this craziness about one of my favorite spring flowers that are in full bloom right now and had to let you know!
Daffodils. Yellow or white loveliness along the garden bed that lets us all know that spring has truly arrived. They’re one of the very first flowers to bloom each year and are a favorite for plunking down in the middle of a pretty vase until they inevitably wilt and die. Right?
Well, maybe we need to rethink that.
Those of us with small children and mouthy pets, especially. Why? Did you know that daffodils are toxic? That’s right.
Let’s do this.
Daffodils, also known as Paper Whites, Jonquil, and Narcissus, are from the taxonomic family Amaryllidaceae. They are a danger, not only to very young children exploring the world orally but to dogs, cats, and even horses. The bulbs that we are planting in our gardens right now, perhaps even letting our littles help, are the most toxic part of all. They contain a chemical compound called Lycorine (and other alkaloids) that can cause vomiting, salivation, diarrhea in small amounts. In larger amounts, the plant can cause convulsions, low blood pressure, shaking and abnormal heart rates.
Beautiful? Yes. Edible? Big nope.
Whether you enjoy these flowers in your own garden or from afar, just be armed with the knowledge that pets and children should keep any part of this plant away from their mouths and wash their hands after handling.
Stay safe out there because even the home garden can be a jungle holding toxic secrets.
I’m so ready to make these! What a fun way to replace those disposable face wipes! And these can just be thrown in the washing machine instead of having to be repeatedly bought time after time. 🙂 Thank you for sharing these! I’m pulling out my blue yarn right now! 😉
I love love love this pattern and project! Oo it is just super cute and fun and so very very easy. I followed this pattern on Pinterest. It took me a minute to get the hang of it since I am crochet pattern challenged when it tells me to crochet inside a loop and not in an actual stitch. But after a couple re-starts I finally got the hang of it and it went super fast!
The post is part of a stocking stuffer series they did and now I want to go try all of their patterns! I also love the idea in general and I think for Christmas this year I will make the ladies in my family a variety of bathroom/ spa type items in a gift basket, maybe a crocheted basket who knows.
Anyway the pattern is very simple and even lays out how to do…
Snuggs with my kittay on a bad health day. Push through and keep moving. Rest when you need it. There is nothing shameful in knowing when you can’t go any further.
Hello, hello, everyone! Wow, this has been one calamity after crisis after insanity lately, hasn’t it? I won’t lie, it has been a struggle. For a lot of people all over the world. I’m hearing now of the spread of COVID to places like Sweden and Russia, of the hunger and despair that are running rampant. There have been some really beautiful shows of humanity lately too though and it’s those that I try to really hold to as much as possible.
I haven’t been writing as much lately. Some of you may know that I recently took my small potted planting style and expanded it into a full scale ‘tiny farm’ in my backyard. We’re lucky enough to have a spacious, fenced yard that has plenty of room for growing (though terribly clay soil). It’s taken up a great bulk of my time getting the beds established and seeds started while also giving Little Maxwell the attention and educations she deserves.
But it’s been so rewarding.
Playing with the VR animals on Google. Little Maxwell had a blast!
I feel good, even when I’m tired out from digging up beds and I even managed to DIY an old, unused dog run into a swing for Little Maxwell that she has been entirely in love with. I’ve been delivering books to houses with kids along my street, leaving them in their mailboxes to give them something to do (all sanitized, of course!). They can leave the old book when they’re done to trade it in for a new one or leave a different book of their own if they like it! Again, all sanitized before they come in the house!
Little Maxwell and I have spent our days in the yard, reading more both together and separately. I’ve picked up a really interesting book recently called Shamanism As A Spiritual Practice For Daily Life by Tom Cowan (a pretty ironic name if you ask me). I keep busy. I do what I can for my family when I can. I help my neighbors as much as I can where possible. That’s how we’re getting by in this time.
This flatbread turned out so moist and soft! Yuuuummmm!
A few of my nighbors and I have begun to trade one another for things we may need. Eggs for a blackberry bushling. Spare wire fencing for a dozen farm-laid eggs. Homemade bread for a pumpkin plant. All while keeping our distance, naturally, but it’s really amazed me how things like this just naturally developed.
I don’t really know what I have coming down the pipeline right now. My head is in a bit of a weird place and my heart is somewhere unknown. I’ve been having trouble finding that same passion for things that I usually have and it’s been kind of devastating, if I’m honest. So I’ve been reading a lot. I’ve taken up Minecraft a bit more lately too and that’s something i want to write a little more on soon. Talk about extra cool stuff.
But my heart has just been in a strange place and I don’t know how to find my passion again. Perhaps some meditation. Perhaps some prayer or even more exercise. Either way, I’ll bring you along for the ride!
Where are you emotionally right now? How are you feeling? How is this nightmare affecting you and how do you get through your toughest days? Give me some tips!
Are you a vegan? Or have a dairy allergy? Are you one of the unlucky victims of a tick-induced mammal-product allergy? I am right there with you. I too miss delicious and terrible-for-you foods.
Now don’t get me wrong.
I love fruits and vegetables with all of my heart and soul but sometimes you just want to throw all hell to the wind and dive face first into a tub of Denali Moosetrack ice cream. So here I am today, making a list of some of my favorite terrible foods for you to go out and enjoy for yourself. No matter whether you’re just sick of being healthy but don’t relish the anaphylaxis or you’re a vegan looking to cheat just a little, here’s a list of accidentally alpha-gal free/dairy-free/vegan (some are vegan but not all) goodies! Bon appetit!
**Always check ingredients lists! Ingredients can vary by brand and region!**
1. Chicken egg rolls 2. Angel food cake 3. Sour Patch Kids 4. Dark chocolate (the darker the better) 5. Nerds candy 6. Taco Bell bean burrito 7. Reese’s Puffs cereal. Well, most cereal really, but watch out for ones that contain yogurt bites or marshmallows. 8. Fruit by the Foot Fruit Rollups! 9. Sweetarts candies 10. Original and Barbecue flavored chips 11. McDonald’s chicken nuggets and apple pies! 12. Wendy’s spicy chicken nuggets and fries! 13. Fritos. Just…Yum. I could seriously eat a whole bag of these. They are one of my favorite foods, period. 14. Duncan Hines. Fancy some cake? I know I do! White or chocolate (because FAQ yellow cake. FAQ it to hekk), Duncan Hines has your back with cakes and frostings that are vegetarian, vegan, and dairy-free! As always check the ingredients as some exclusions do apply, an example being the Cream Cheese frosting. 15. Oreos! Who could forget that master of all masterful delights?! That overseer of awesome! The king of cookiedom! A vivacious vegan victory for your tastebuds! Pair it with some almond milk and you have a sealed deal for snacktime!
So there you have my fifteen favorite snacks! Whether you have an allergy r are just trying to live more sustainably, these are some tasty treats you can still enjoy on the regular.
Do you have any favorite treats that aren’t mentioned? Let us know in the comments!
This image is the original image that accompanied Scott Berinato’s article so, just like the article I share here for you, it is not mine.
So if I haven’t made it clear enough yet, this article isn’t written by me. It was written by the emotional intelligence genius that is Scott Berinato of the Harvard Business Review. I was having a lot of trouble sharing it in the usual way so that’s why I’m sharing it this way.
I’ve been sitting on this article for some time, almost a month since it’s posting on March 23rd, though I don’t know why. I found it so to the point, so moving and right to the heart of things (and to the heart of me). I don’t know why I felt the need to hoard it for so long when it really serves us all to learn how to handle this strange state of perpetual grief that has become our every day.
This grief that we all experience right now, this discomfort that has so far gone unnamed until Mr. Berinato put a name and face to it, seeps into our pores and bones. It leaves nothing untouched and unsullied. It is difficult to imagine mourning for something as intangible as what ‘was’. Yet that’s exactly what this is.
A nameless sadness that sits heavy in the chest. You can’t talk about it because you can’t define it, understand it, or even put a name to it.
So what do you do? How do you move past it?
Scott Berinato has a few things to say about it that I believe we all can benefit from. Words that may help to bring a better understanding to your own experience during these times of quarantine.
<————————————–Article Begins Here And Can Be Found Here————————->
Some of the HBR edit staff met virtually the other day — a screen full of faces in a scene becoming more common everywhere. We talked about the content we’re commissioning in this harrowing time of a pandemic and how we can help people. But we also talked about how we were feeling. One colleague mentioned that what she felt was grief. Heads nodded in all the panes.
If we can name it, perhaps we can manage it. We turned to David Kessler for ideas on how to do that. Kessler is the world’s foremost expert on grief. He co-wrote with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief through the Five Stages of Loss. His new book adds another stage to the process, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. Kessler also has worked for a decade in a three-hospital system in Los Angeles. He served on their biohazards team. His volunteer work includes being an LAPD Specialist Reserve for traumatic events as well as having served on the Red Cross’s disaster services team. He is the founder of www.grief.com, which has over 5 million visits yearly from 167 countries.
Kessler shared his thoughts on why it’s important to acknowledge the grief you may be feeling, how to manage it, and how he believes we will find meaning in it. The conversation is lightly edited for clarity.
HBR: People are feeling any number of things right now. Is it right to call some of what they’re feeling grief?
Kessler: Yes, and we’re feeling a number of different griefs. We feel the world has changed, and it has. We know this is temporary, but it doesn’t feel that way, and we realize things will be different. Just as going to the airport is forever different from how it was before 9/11, things will change and this is the point at which they changed. The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.
You said we’re feeling more than one kind of grief?
Yes, we’re also feeling anticipatory grief. Anticipatory grief is that feeling we get about what the future holds when we’re uncertain. Usually it centers on death. We feel it when someone gets a dire diagnosis or when we have the normal thought that we’ll lose a parent someday. Anticipatory grief is also more broadly imagined futures. There is a storm coming. There’s something bad out there. With a virus, this kind of grief is so confusing for people. Our primitive mind knows something bad is happening, but you can’t see it. This breaks our sense of safety. We’re feeling that loss of safety. I don’t think we’ve collectively lost our sense of general safety like this. Individually or as smaller groups, people have felt this. But all together, this is new. We are grieving on a micro and a macro level.
What can individuals do to manage all this grief?
Understanding the stages of grief is a start. But whenever I talk about the stages of grief, I have to remind people that the stages aren’t linear and may not happen in this order. It’s not a map but it provides some scaffolding for this unknown world. There’s denial, which we say a lot of early on: This virus won’t affect us. There’s anger: You’re making me stay home and taking away my activities. There’s bargaining: Okay, if I social distance for two weeks everything will be better, right? There’s sadness: I don’t know when this will end. And finally there’s acceptance. This is happening; I have to figure out how to proceed.
Acceptance, as you might imagine, is where the power lies. We find control in acceptance. I can wash my hands. I can keep a safe distance. I can learn how to work virtually.
When we’re feeling grief there’s that physical pain. And the racing mind. Are there techniques to deal with that to make it less intense?
Let’s go back to anticipatory grief. Unhealthy anticipatory grief is really anxiety, and that’s the feeling you’re talking about. Our mind begins to show us images. My parents getting sick. We see the worst scenarios. That’s our minds being protective. Our goal is not to ignore those images or to try to make them go away — your mind won’t let you do that and it can be painful to try and force it. The goal is to find balance in the things you’re thinking. If you feel the worst image taking shape, make yourself think of the best image. We all get a little sick and the world continues. Not everyone I love dies. Maybe no one does because we’re all taking the right steps. Neither scenario should be ignored but neither should dominate either.
Anticipatory grief is the mind going to the future and imagining the worst. To calm yourself, you want to come into the present. This will be familiar advice to anyone who has meditated or practiced mindfulness but people are always surprised at how prosaic this can be. You can name five things in the room. There’s a computer, a chair, a picture of the dog, an old rug, and a coffee mug. It’s that simple. Breathe. Realize that in the present moment, nothing you’ve anticipated has happened. In this moment, you’re okay. You have food. You are not sick. Use your senses and think about what they feel. The desk is hard. The blanket is soft. I can feel the breath coming into my nose. This really will work to dampen some of that pain.
You can also think about how to let go of what you can’t control. What your neighbor is doing is out of your control. What is in your control is staying six feet away from them and washing your hands. Focus on that.
Finally, it’s a good time to stock up on compassion. Everyone will have different levels of fear and grief and it manifests in different ways. A coworker got very snippy with me the other day and I thought, That’s not like this person; that’s how they’re dealing with this.I’m seeing their fear and anxiety. So be patient. Think about who someone usually is and not who they seem to be in this moment.
One particularly troubling aspect of this pandemic is the open-endedness of it.
This is a temporary state. It helps to say it. I worked for 10 years in the hospital system. I’ve been trained for situations like this. I’ve also studied the 1918 flu pandemic. The precautions we’re taking are the right ones. History tells us that. This is survivable. We will survive. This is a time to overprotect but not overreact.
And, I believe we will find meaning in it. I’ve been honored that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s family has given me permission to add a sixth stage to grief: Meaning. I had talked to Elisabeth quite a bit about what came after acceptance. I did not want to stop at acceptance when I experienced some personal grief. I wanted meaning in those darkest hours. And I do believe we find light in those times. Even now people are realizing they can connect through technology. They are not as remote as they thought. They are realizing they can use their phones for long conversations. They’re appreciating walks. I believe we will continue to find meaning now and when this is over.
What do you say to someone who’s read all this and is still feeling overwhelmed with grief?
Keep trying. There is something powerful about naming this as grief. It helps us feel what’s inside of us. So many have told me in the past week, “I’m telling my coworkers I’m having a hard time,” or “I cried last night.” When you name it, you feel it and it moves through you. Emotions need motion. It’s important we acknowledge what we go through. One unfortunate byproduct of the self-help movement is we’re the first generation to have feelings about our feelings. We tell ourselves things like, I feel sad, but I shouldn’t feel that; other people have it worse. We can — we should — stop at the first feeling. I feel sad. Let me go for five minutes to feel sad. Your work is to feel your sadness and fear and anger whether or not someone else is feeling something. Fighting it doesn’t help because your body is producing the feeling. If we allow the feelings to happen, they’ll happen in an orderly way, and it empowers us. Then we’re not victims.
In an orderly way?
Yes. Sometimes we try not to feel what we’re feeling because we have this image of a “gang of feelings.” If I feel sad and let that in, it’ll never go away. The gang of bad feelings will overrun me. The truth is a feeling that moves through us. We feel it and it goes and then we go to the next feeling. There’s no gang out to get us. It’s absurd to think we shouldn’t feel grief right now. Let yourself feel the grief and keep going.
If our free content helps you to contend with these challenges, please consider subscribing to HBR. A subscription purchase is the best way to support the creation of these resources.
Please go and spam this man with clicks. He deserves all of that sweet, sweet ad revenue that he can get. I sincerely encourage you to go and check out the original article here. HBR has several other COVID-related articles that were truly gems and that I really believe you may enjoy. For now, though, I will return to my own quarantine commiseration. As always,
Well fellow crafters, I do apologize I slacked off with my in progress pictures on this one. I haven’t been feeling too well, but wanted to get this one done for my little angel to enjoy. Anywho, I followed a wonderful, easy to read, written pattern by Spin a Yarn Crochet that can be found here.
This little guy worked up very quickly and turned out so good for my first attempt. I also attempted embroidering the face on and am pretty satisfied with my work. On the eyes I figured out to weave in and out one way, make the eye lashes, then weave back to fill in the gaps. The nose was a simple V then filling it in much like the describe in the instructions.
Now I used I Love This Yarn in Pink and Orchid. The yarn calls for a 5.5 mm hook, so that…
In our quiet forest Amongst fallen giants That serve as both table and balance beam Bridge and school house We walk with eyes open wide To the ever changing Yet always the same. To the valley down which we clamber To the stepping stone Our treasured game we shared To the fungi that bracketed Larger than we could even carry To the fallen feather In it’s beautiful blue To your smile Triumphant Bright Radiant as the wings of Horus Upon some challenged feat Accepted and overcome. There, Upon that hill, Within that valley, In the gust of wind Through empty stream bed In the emerald mosses Growing in the shade of ancients, There you will find my love grown evergreen There you will find me Seated on that fallen oak, Waiting for you, Most beloved flower. Most brave little bird.
This is so important for all of us to remember. People working at or grocery stores are doing the best they can with the shitty situation we’re all in. They’re scared of getting sick too. They have children and elderly parents that they could potentially be exposing themselves to just by coming to work but they keep coming, so we can get the groceries that we need.
So be kind, please. And for heaven’s sake, throw your damn cart wipes in the bin. Thank the people that risk their lives so that you can eat everyday. Maybe take a cake or some lunches up to your local store as a way to thank them for their service. Perhaps even a bag of TP, individually wrapped with little ribbons and sweet words. You never know how much abuse your local grocery employees have had to deal with amongst all of the growing fears. So do something kind. They are truly some of our biggest community heroes right now.
It almost doesn’t seem real does it? We’ve been in quarantine for three and a half weeks now but it still just feels like none of it is actual happening. The sun has been bright and beautiful. It’s been warm, the height of spring. Yet, we can’t see our families. We can’t leave the house. Security as we knew it is a thing of the past.
People keep saying, ‘well, when quarantine is over...’ It’s so surreal how time has now been separated into Before COVID, Now (during our present pandemic period of flux) , and After Quarantine. I’m starting to believe that even when quarantines are over, when we can finally stop and take a final count of the COVID dead, life is never going to be the same. It will never ‘go back to normal’. I think there will be things that will be forever altered because of this. Things like hand shaking, sitting closely. Seemingly innocent things that now have the stain of insidiousness to them.
Even more damaging, however, is the isolation.
We as humans are pack creatures, social beings hardwired for community and interaction to such a degree that it is a psychological, nay, a physiological, need. The effects of COVID will not just be found in our numbered losses, or measured in our griefs, it will be a far reaching scar upon the minds and hearts of the world as a whole.
We will be seeing vast upticks in numbers of depression, anxieties, phobias, many more and worse, for a long time to come. Just tonight, after a fight to sleep that lasted until an ungodly one a.m., my three year old daughter told me that she hated quarantine and then the net thing she said, the last thing before she finally drifted off, was if her Nana missed her.
Even the youngest of us aren’t exempt from feeling these stings to the spirit.
Keep that in mind as the distanced days grow longer, as they stretch into what is looking to become a quieter, more somber summer. Be patient when your kids act out right now. They don’t have the emotional ability in many cases to process, recognize, or cope with these feelings of sadness, confusion, fear, and isolation. Acting out, as we know it, is always the flower of something more deeply rooted. It is always communication in oftentimes the only way our littles are capable of right now.
The world has become a frightening and confusing place for us. Can you imagine what it must be like for them too?
Before we start, I want to say this: Massive, Massive Trigger Warnings Ahead. If you are sensitive to the subject of eating disorders, do NOT read this.
It’s taken me a great many years to be able to write about this. It still isn’t something I can give breath to, that I can talk to even my closest friends or therapist about. What I mean of course is what I still to this day only refer to vaguely as “my eating thing”.
Calling it a mental illness is just too hard.
Thinking back on those years…Well. I try not to. It’s just too…too painful. The hidden and frantic exercises on tiny bathroom floors, trying desperately to work off whatever it was that I had just eaten. The dozens and dozens of bathrooms that I got sick in. All of those times I said that I wasn’t hungry even though my body was eating itself from the inside just to stay alive.
I had a very different idea of health back then.
What does stand out as a prevailing theme, though, was this community that I found myself a part of. The Pro-Anas or pro-Anorexia. There was also Pro-Mia for the bulimia sufferers, though most of the girls seemed to use tactics from both diseases to achieve their “goal weight”. It’s a sort of joke, though, isn’t it? We all had a “goal weight”, but once we got there, we would all simply strive for the next lower number.
The real goal weight was zero.
It wasn’t that anyone within the Anas was suicidal or anything. No one wanted to die, but there was this sense that dying was a potential occupational hazard or something. Now, looking back, I wonder how many of them are dead now.
Let me explain a bit further, though.
The Pro-Ana/Mia movement, for lack of a better term, is a group who follows the tenets that their eating disorders aren’t “illnesses or diseases”. They hold the belief that anorexia is a lifestyle. They support one another, even forming so-called support groups, in their weight loss journey. Participants create and consume media they call “thinspo” or thinspiration and share diet plans, tips and tricks, and even pair up into weight loss buddies to encourage or shame one another, whichever they preferred.
Their beliefs strongly mirror those of the Fat-Acceptance movement, a movement that claims that the more you weigh, the better, typically catering to the obese and morbidly obese.
The pro-Ana movement believes in the achievement of “perfection” or their ultimate ideal of beauty. They encourage one another to lie, stay quiet about their struggles, and even alter one another’s thinking to view their eating disorder as a way of life. Each pound lost is a small victory. Every pound gained is a tragedy to be mourned. Sneaking laxatives, only listening to songs that fit their narrative, giving encouragement on the harmful symptoms your body is experiencing because more symptoms means you’ve lost more weight, right?
It sounds like a cult, doesn’t it?
I watched a video on the Fat Acceptance movement recently and it reminded me so strongly of the pro-Anas that it was alarming. Then I had the sort of sick realization that I had never heard anyone talk about it before. Unlike other movements, the Anas don’t proselytize. Their cause survives only by it’s obsessive reliance on secrecy. Their movement reigns supreme from the closeted darkness, going so far as to coach one another on how to hide symptoms and traits of your illness. How to exercise, make excuses, how to throw up in secret. After all, you can’t be forced into an inpatient recovery program if no one ever knows about it. At least, not until the secret shows in every rib, bone, and dizzy spell for the world to see.
“Don’t give yourself a reason to say, ‘I’ll do better tomorrow’.”
I held that belief once too. Now, looking back on it, it’s painful. But that’s how it was. Painful. Waking up hungry, eating just enough to keep living, going to bed hungry. Starving for perfection, as the Anas say. Eventually you get so thin that even your exercising has to be altered because your body is just so damn tired…The crunches and sit-ups bruise your back because there’s nothing to pad your spine on the floor anymore. Your heart feels like it’s going to hammer out of your chest just walking up the stairs because the muscles themselves are wasting away.
‘Thou shalt not eat without feeling guilty.’
I don’t know what it was that brought me to the Anas but I had already begun to descend into the disorder that would come to characterize so many years of my life.
Me, circa 2009 I believe.
I turn thirty this year. I have a daughter of my own and I’m long since “recovered”. This past year was the first time since it all that I have had a scale in my home.
‘Though I walk through the aisle of the pastry department, I shall buy no pastries for they are fattening.’
Eating disorders are like alcoholism. Even though you may be in recovery, you will always be an addict. I still get triggered sometimes. I still have to be careful not to fall into old habits and ways of thinking and probably will for the rest of my life. Even now, I’m paranoid about this article triggering me, but I had to tell this story. This needs to be brought into the spotlight more so more people are aware of it. So more people know the cues and clues and so these young men and women can get the help they need.
So maybe one day, no other little girl has to wonder what it takes to like what she sees in the mirror.
‘Being thin is more important than being healthy’
What’s the best way to help? Don’t be accusatory. Forget about what or whose fault it is. Punishments or shaming will only hurt, not help. Sit down and listen. Don’t talk. Don’t scold. Just…ask them how they feel. Ask them how they feel when they see themselves in the mirror. Be completely judgement-free. Ask them if they would be open to eating healthier but maybe go on walks together with you.
Be supportive. Be patient. Be kind. Be loving.
But most of all, let them see that you are those things.
Recovery can be slow going. It can take years and it certainly won’t happen overnight. Think of it as the deprogramming that comes when a person leaves a cult. They have to change their whole way of thinking, their viewpoint of themselves and the world, and that is a scary, exhausting, and herculean effort. Don’t try to scramble or rush to stuff them will anything and everything in an attempt to get weight back on. Doing that will only convince them to be sneakier or to turn to bulimia to get rid of it all.
Don’t use phrases like ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ and don’t use language that places blame. Mental illness is no one’s fault and you don’t get to blame someone for being mentally ill any more than you blame someone for catching a cold. Don’t cut them off from their friends or support networks but be firm in that you don’t want them visiting pro-Ana sites anymore.
However, you have to understand that unless the sufferer can see that they are hurting their bodies, unless they can see that they need to change or die, they aren’t going to. Just like with addiction, you can’t force someone to get better if they don’t want to. They have to want it for themselves. It takes an extreme act of will to get passed something like that and no amount of bribery, threats, punishments, or cajoling can force a person to want recovery for themselves. They must be willing to put in the work and effort and tears for themselves. Anything less is just a path towards relapse. However, getting professional help with their struggles, someone unbiased and who can help them pinpoint the root of the illness, is absolutely imperative for not just immediate help, but for long-term wellness.
I suppose the whole point of this post is to just…make this group known. To pull them out of the dark and into the light so that maybe if people could see what this is and the harm it does, they would realize that what sufferers are looking for isn’t the disease itself. It’s community. Togetherness. A kind ear to listen and not judge their tears or their fears. To not tell them that they’re crazy or that they’re sick and need help. To listen. And maybe, if they don’t feel so alone, they might be willing to seek help and there won’t be any more mothers burying their babies because of this disease.
Little Journeys Everywhere 