It Matters
October 5, 2012 by ·
I am at home with a three-day old baby. He is small and beautiful and so very wanted.
I am in awe, but I look at him and wonder what this next year will bring to our family, because now I know.
I know it won’t always be easy.
I know sometimes it will be really, really hard.
Just below the surface there is a small amount of anxiety. A nagging what if?
I will admit to being scared. To, perhaps, a small amount of paranoia. To the worry that as much as I know now, as much as I’m so much better prepared and informed, I may not be able to avoid it.
But I will admit to hope.
Postpartum depression hit me by surprise last time. I didn’t expect it. Didn’t recognize it. Didn’t get help soon enough. And I never, ever want to experience something like that again.
Nor do I wish that upon any other mother – whether she’s a first-time, second-time, or sixth-time mom. Whether she gave birth or adopted. Whether she’s okay but her partner isn’t.
So today, on my son’s third day of life, I’m supporting Strong Start Day.
I found Postpartum Progress when I really needed it, and the information on that site (and Katherine’s response to my grateful email) was one of the things that led me down the right path towards recovery. That community has been important to me in the time since, as I worked through a really rough time last year and throughout this last pregnancy. I know I will be back there reading (and writing) in the days and weeks and months to come as I navigate my way through new motherhood a second time.
But not every woman can do that. Some don’t have Internet access. Some won’t know it’s there. Some just won’t think it’s relevant to them, as I wouldn’t have in the early days of my struggle. So the goal this year is for Postpartum Progress Inc. — the non-profit that supports the site and postpartum depression awareness (and all other mental illnesses related to pregnancy and childbirth) — to take all that great online information and turn it into material women can get from their clinicians and health care providers when they need it.
And they will need it. Someone you know will need it. Does need it.
Please help if you can. Donate if you can. If you can’t then please share the message. We do this one day a year – today only – and it matters.
It really, really matters.
A Mom for Mental Illness
September 23, 2012 by ·
In June I wrote a post about the type of mom I think deserves a Mom of the Year award. There were lots of other people who thought a mom they knew was worthy of the award – 16,909 moms, in fact. That’s how many nominations were received for Walmart’s Mom of the Year award.
16,909 nominations – that’s a lot of love for a lot of moms, some of whom likely don’t often get much recognition. How do you narrow it down from that number? I don’t know, but Walmart did and now eight finalists have been selected. Each of those women receives $10,000 for the charity of her choice AND $10,000 for herself, which I think is pretty bloody amazing.
I was browsing through the list of the finalists and reading their stories. And I stopped at one in particular. [Read more…]
Change 10 Lives with Water
September 6, 2012 by ·
When we moved into this house one of the first things we did was fill up a jug of filtered water because the water here is very chlorinated and I couldn’t drink it. This is where you picture me making an icky pouty face and roll your eyes.
Yes, we have clean water – as much as we can drink. And shower with. And clean and cook with. The only time we really complain about our water is if we run out of hot stuff before the shower is done (very rare) or if someone forgets to fill up the pitcher and we have to drink it warm. Or, God forbid, put ice in it.
This, I believe, is where we note these things as #firstworldproblems.
But they aren’t developing world problems. Those look more like this:
- Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related illness.
- Women spend 200 million hours a day collecting water.
- More people have a mobile device than a toilet.
Photo via Water.org
A five-minute shower uses more water than the average person in a developing country slum uses for an entire day. There’s a reason there’s no sarcastic hash tag for this.
So, what now?
I’ve signed up to help raise money for Water.org. $25 is enough to provide clean drinking water for someone in the developing world for life. FOR LIFE.
Here’s the challenge:
When you turn on the tap or flush the toilet do you think about what your life would be like without water? We all need it to survive and yet nearly 1 billion people in the world don’t have access to safe water and 2.5 billion people don’t have access to a toilet. It’s 2012, and yet more people have a cell phone than a toilet. These facts take a moment to settle in and can make people feel powerless against a problem so big. Yet, there is something we can all do to help. Alongside the non-profit Water.org I am joining others who are working to end this crisis in our lifetime. Only $25 brings one person water for life and for the next 10 days I will be trying to raise enough money to help change the lives of 10 people. I’d love for you to join me. Donate to my fundraiser at http://give.water.org/f/10daychallenge/, start your own fundraiser or just learn more about the water crisis. Together we can make a difference.
Write On
August 21, 2012 by ·
I got another email the other day, this one from a friend-of-a-friend sort of person. She had found my blog thanks to Reader’s Digest naming me one of Canada’s top mom bloggers (and yes, that was unexpected, but what I was especially happy about was that it was my writing about postpartum depression that they highlighted). The email was of the thank-God-I’m-not-alone types from someone who previously dealt with postpartum anxiety and is now struggling with antenatal depression and just really isn’t sure where to turn.
When I got the email I was just closing my computer to take Connor out for some fun with my sister and my dad and he was getting impatient. But I saw the name and the subject line and I paused, hoping I could put the excited child off a moment longer.
I keep every email like this that I receive – the ones that say thank you for sharing and for being so honest. The ones that say can you help me? And the ones that say I just didn’t know and I thought it was just me.
Because I know. I know what that feels like and I know how sometimes it’s impossible not to reach out and say thank you (like I did with Katherine after I found Postpartum Progress). And when I get those emails it affirms that it’s okay to write about these things, which is a reminder I sometimes need, especially lately when I’ve been feeling like I lost my words.
I’ve been feeling a little bit vulnerable. Before the Reader’s Digest thing, but especially so since. I’m so, so honored, especially given some of the other bloggers on the list. But that’s the sort of thing that tends to get spread around. I posted it on my own Facebook page (and I rarely share blog content or related things there) and it got shared by my family and some friends. Which is how the friend-of-a-friend thing tends to happen.
In this case it actually went beyond that. I work with my brother who, evidently, is friends on Facebook with a bunch of other people we work with. Who now know about my blog. Some of them said, “That’s cool! I’ll have to check out your blog,” (and I thought oh god…). Some of them did read it and said only nice things like, “It’s great that you’re so open” and “You’re a great writer.” Which are lovely comments, but there’s always a part of me that wonders if they’re really thinking, wow, you are messed UP.
But you know what? That’s okay. Some days I’m totally messed up, but so are most people in one way or another. And I’d rather be messed up and working on it and, better yet, helping others in the same boat than holding it in for fear of what others think. I did that for too long and it backfired, making me more messed up in the short term and causing this to be more of a long-term problem than it would otherwise have been.
So I’ll write and whoever wants to can read. And if one of those readers finds something helpful here and sends me an email, so much the better.
Write on.
Linked up with Just.Be.Enough
I’ve also got a post on Just.Be.Enough today about some awesome lyrics by a great Canadian band. Come visit!
