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allie1804-fan · 4 years ago

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Please Assist Me (Chapter 8)

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7

She Said

When I woke up the next morning my head was aching slightly from the wine. As memories of the night before flooded back, I felt butterflies in my stomach. The secret was out now, what next?

I rolled over and grabbed my phone to check the time and noticed the little red number 1 by my messenger app. It was from Keanu.

“Morning sweetheart – hope you’re OK and not regretting what we shared last night. I’m glad it’s out in the open but what now? I read about social bubbles - can we form one? I promise I’m safe – not seen a soul in person since I got back and I think I qualify as lonely!”

I didn’t reply right away. I needed to think about the bubble I’d already formed to help keep the kids sane. There were 2 other families with similar age kids and we rotated round our homes on week days. Each day there were online lessons in the morning and in the afternoon, whoever had the kids would entertain them with cooking, crafts, quiet play and some TV time. The system gave each set of parents some alone time to help with work as well as their sanity with coping with home schooling. The bubble relied on honesty about who you were seeing if anyone outside the bubble. It needed not to be too leaky and you needed to agree on other things about covid like masks, hand washing, how much shopping you did out of the home etc. They all already knew who my boss was but I didn’t think I could claim that physical contact with Keanu was essential to me doing my job! And if we started dating (which I guess was the natural next step from what we’d shared the night before), if the kids knew, they could not be relied upon to keep that a secret and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

“No regrets - social bubble a good idea - would just need to run it past members of my kids’ bubble am in already for school. Chat later? I’ll be free after 10”

I took the kids to Julie’s as it was her school day that day and got back home by 10 ready to talk to Keanu. I propped the ipad on the kitchen counter and dialled.

A shaggy, shower fresh, wet haired Keanu appeared on the screen wearing tight jeans and a blue t-shirt – this didn’t help my composure much - nor did him kissing his fingers and blowing me a kiss but it convinced me we needed to find a way to see each other in person. I said as much:

“You know, I watched “The Lake House” while you were away and I was thinking that maybe we should be like Alex and Kate and write each other chaste letters until there’s a vaccine but seeing you like that has changed my mind!”

He laughed and blushed – that’s all we seemed to make each other do since we started talking about our feelings.

“no, no, no and no” was his firm reply “I know I played that guy but in real life I am not that patient …….. or chaste!”

I laughed at that and went onto explain how the school bubble worked, reassuring him that I trusted the other moms and dads broadly – and since they already knew I worked for him, the excitement of a celebrity connection had lost some of its drama.

“But we’ll need a credible reason to ask them to let you into the bubble - I don’t think I can claim it’s necessary for work! But like you say, I can possibly plead for helping out my lonely boss / friend. No-one is seeing elderly parents other than over a garden fence or on zoom so they’ll know you can’t see your Mom, you have one sister in Italy and maybe we could say you can’t see Karina either as she has a vulnerable partner.”

“you should go into writing! You’ve built me a credible backstory for why I have no other social contacts and can plead loneliness!”

“But I don’t want people to know there’s anything more to it than helping a friend OK?”

“You embarrassed by me?”

“Ay Dios mio, no! don’t be ridiculous!”

“I’m kidding” he laughed, I love when you resort to Spanish by the way.

I touched his lips on screen with my fingers. He smiled back.

“No, I agree let’s keep it low key, we should take it slow”

“And for the kids - I don’t want to confuse them”

“Right of course …… “This is crazy” he exclaimed out of nowhere.

“What?”

“I know It’s right to take it slow but God this pandemic is making everything feel so heightened, so urgent”

I giggled and instinctively put my hands up to my face, peaking out at him from between my fingers, embarrassed.

“Am I freaking you out?”

“No but it’s just like you can read my mind!”

“Oh?”, he cocked an eyebrow at me

“I want to kiss you “

“And I want to hold you “

“And do everything else ‘normal people’ do in normal times”

“Jesus that show has l lot to answer for” He ran his hand through his hair making it stick up in crazy directions.

“Mmmmm nice do!”

And so it went on like that for a few days - we either phoned, face timed or messaged and what we said was often turning suggestive.

He Said

After admitting we had feelings for each other, we talked and decided to try and get me into her school moms bubble. When we communicated, whether via phone, facetime or messages, it was always turning flirty. She was so damn sexy and I was getting desperate.

Fortunately her group chat with the other moms went well and they were agreeable to helping out a lonely man and allowed me into the bubble – apparently their only request was that I would have to meet them at some point in the future when we were allowed.

I told Karina that I wouldn’t be able to see her other than in a socially distanced way and why. She was so delighted to hear that Sophia and I had admitted we liked each other that she didn’t mind the sacrifice!

Our first date was by necessity a dinner at Sophia’s house - that was about all we could do given the stay at home ruling and the kids. A night alone could be some way off though I can’t deny I was thinking about the times when the kids would be at one of the other parents’ homes on a school day leaving the day-time clear as an opportunity to get connected!

Sophia made sure that the kids had the same story as the moms about the reason I was joining the bubble and coming to dinner. When I arrived at their house, they hugged me so tight to say sorry that I was so lonely and Eva had made me a cheer up card.

After dinner (lasagne followed by brownies -of course), we set the kids up to watch some TV while we got on with the clearing up. In the kitchen, I stood behind Sophia at the kitchen sink, sliding my arms around her middle and leaning in to kiss her neck. She groaned but quickly pushed me away urging me to wait till later.

“Those kids have a 6th sense for walking in when you don’t want them to” she said so I backed off and picked up a tea towel. Straight after that, Eva walked in right on cue and Sophia raised her eyebrows as if to say “told you!”

Later, when we were finally alone with the kids in bed, we sank onto the sofa with wine in hand. It was reminiscent of that first time I had stayed at her house, only this time, my feelings were far clearer in my mind!

Now can I kiss you?

She Said

The anticipation of our first kiss was delicious ………..and the actual kiss perfect.

Ever since he’d arrived that evening, I hadn’t stopped thinking about it. We’d hugged hello – a big squeeze - and he’d kissed me on the cheek, lingering just a little longer than he’d done in the past and as he talked over dinner, I swear I looked more at his lips than his eyes!

When we were finally alone after dinner, sitting on the sofa, he asked if he could kiss me.

“God, yes please!” was all I could manage to say. He took my wine glass from my hand and set it on the table. Then he placed his hands on the top of my arms just below my shoulders and leaned in, touching his soft lips to mine, just closed lipped at first. Our eyes were open at first but then his hands slipped round to my back, gently pulling me closer. I opened my mouth slightly and felt his tongue slip between my lips and probe my mouth. I gave into the intensity and closed my eyes and as the kiss deepened, my hands rose up to his face. My fingers traced the silky skin behind his ears and moved to his neck. The soft contrast of his skin compared to his rougher beard against my face was driving me wild.

My heart was racing and I needed to catch my breath – I pulled back and opened my eyes. I’m sure I was panting a little and we were both flushed.

“That was worth the wait” I murmured.

“Intense huh?” He offered

“Mmmm”

I needed to get myself together so I patted his chest and asked

“Can I put my head here? There’s things I need to say to you but it’s easier if I don’t look at you.

“Ok” he said with a nervous rising inflection.

“You know I said I watched “The Lake House” when you were way, well I’ve been day-dreaming about kissing you ever since”

I could feel him chuckle underneath my cheek.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about it since our kiss goodbye at xmas, when we bumped noses!

I smiled and gave him a little squeeze.

“That intensity, it doesn’t bother me exactly, that’s the wrong word but I AM kind of wondering, you know, why it’s so intense, I mean is it the pandemic making our human connections seem all the more precious or is it because I’ve been single for almost 2 years or is it because, if I’m honest, these feelings I have for you have been building since the autumn? Especially after Miguel’s accident and I know I was jealous about Anja.

He chucked again “you were?”

I nodded my head slightly against his chest

“I didn’t want to admit it to myself and I didn’t like myself for it either”

His reply surprised me

“Well I basically went out with Anja as an avoidance tactic so don’t beat yourself up too much!”

“You did?”

“Uh huh - Alex told me months ago he thought I was sweet on you AND your kids and I was all ‘no no it’s just because she’s so good at her job that I mention her every second breath’ and then there was the whole boss / employee thing so I told myself “this can’t happen” and then Anja asked me out and, well you know the rest!”

By now I’d started to shake with laughter against him

“OMG we are so Marianne and Connell!”

“Yup!” He agreed

He Said

Oh Wow, that first kiss took my breath away.

Afterwards, she was so sweet. She said she’d been day-dreaming about it after seeing “The Lake House” whilst I was away. That was weird given I know there was a part of me channelling some of my past on screen roles and kisses when kissing her. Pulling her to me was both a natural instinct but also something I’d rehearsed specifically for “Something’s Gotta Give”

The feel of her tiny, soft hands on my neck was driving me wild and she was flushed and panting slightly when she pulled away.

When she lay her head against my chest and talked it was the weirdest feeling. It was kind of like hearing the machinations of my own mind over recent days spilling out.

She was trying to analyse her feelings and what was making us have such a powerful connection, expressed in that first kiss. Was it the pandemic, was it her single status or that our feelings had been brewing away for months now with no release valve. Laughter ended up being a kind of release – laughing about her confession of jealousy and me basically dating Anja as an avoidance tactic!

When I said that maybe the feelings were just normal for a new relationship, I think I was partly trying to convince myself that we shouldn’t worry that circumstances were unnaturally heightening our feelings. She said she hadn’t felt this way about her ex husband and of course then bounced the question straight back at me.

I had to admit that this was knew to me, especially for a first kiss. Maybe I should have started singing “It never happened before” but I just sank into another kiss enjoying the dance of our tongues and the sharp contraction in my groin.

When she pulled back a second time, she softly brushed my cheek with the back of her hand and I held it to my face and sighed. I could feel tears pricking at my eyes and buried my face in her hair to give me a moment to control them. She was right, this was intense.

@fortheloveoffanfic @kindainlovewithkeanu @omg-imagine @iworshipkeanureeves @fics-not-tragedies @ficsnroses @keanureevesisbae @penwieldingdreamer @witty-wallflower @paperplanesandwallflowers @bitchyslut99 @ladyreapermc @toomanystoriessolittletime @fanficsrusz @keanuficfiles

#keanu reeves fanfic #keanu reeves fanfiction #keanu #keanu reeves #romance with boss

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dailyaudiobible · 4 years ago

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10/07/2020 DAB Transcript

Jeremiah 8:8-9:26, Colossians 3:1-17, Psalms 78:32-55, Proverbs 24:27

Today is the 7th day of October welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I'm Brian it is wonderful to be here with you today, hump day, another center of the week that we move through…well…once a week, but here we are in the middle of the first full week of this month. And yeah, the Bible is speaking to us. And, so, let's move into that. We’re reading from the New Living Translation this week. Jeremiah chapter 8 verse 8 through 9:26.

Commentary:

Okay. Let's think about cooking. Let’s think about recipe books. Like some of you are like extravagant cooks. My wife would be one in that category. I would be much less in that category, but above just making Ramen noodles. But we’re all over the map. But the thing that we usually need until we become extremely advanced cooking is a recipe. How much of this, how much of that makes this particular dish that I'm going to eat. And, so, just think about some dishes that we might cook up. Let’s say we grab a leaf of sexual immorality and throw it in the pot and then stir in a couple of impurity and then a handful of lust and then a generous dash of greed and idolatry, and then a cup of anger and a half a cup of rage and three quarters of a cup of malicious behavior and then a dash of slander and some dirty language for taste and then a cup of lying and bake that 350 after we whip it up and pour it into some sort of container. How yummy does that sound? And why do we keep eating that dish when there's another recipe found in Colossians today? And the recipe…well…I…I…I mean I made up the amounts, but Paul told us the ingredients. But what if…what if we made need a different dish? What is we took a cup of tenderhearted mercy and poured that over a nice base of kindness with several leafs of humility, a cup of gentleness, a cup of patience, two cups of forgiveness, right, some sprigs of peace and a garnish of love. That sounds delicious. Which dish would you rather have for dinner tonight? Like, they are completely different dishes that will have a completely different taste and outcome, which is basically what Paul’s talking about in Colossians. Paul was saying essentially that Jesus transforms us into a completely different person with completely different tastes and the old stuff that we used to munch on that were…were leading us down the pathway of destruction should be basically abhorrent to us now because it's the food of the dead. Let that roll around in your mind for a minute. But it does bring us to a point where we can think about what it is we’re munching on. I mean, I know that's a metaphor but it's a metaphor the stands. We all understand what we’re talking about here. What are we consuming? What are we putting in ourselves? Because that's what's coming out of us. That's the aroma of our lives. Like, that’s what we look like. That's how it is with us. We could say in this spiritual analogy “we are what we eat”. Ironically what we’re mostly trying to do is have like maybe a cup of impurity, with a pinch of humility, several tablespoons of greed with several tablespoons of patience. Anger mixed with forgiveness. Like these things do not go together. When I was a kid…I can’t remember if it was like Sesame Street or one of the children's programs back then, like, I can still remember all these years later this little, you know, little children's songs - one of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong. Can you guess which things not like the other be…I don’t know…before we get to the end of this song. Something like that. Things that don't go together don't go together and the things of this world do not go with the kingdom of God. And if we just do some self-examination, especially about the…the points inside of us that have so much unrest, if we look at how that got made it might make sense at why it's turned out the way that it is. Maybe we’re trying to make something that can't work. It’s never gonna taste good ever no matter how we try to keep modifying it. Paul’s saying like, “you got a whole new pallet brothers and sisters, a much more refined one, a much better one. You don't have to eat garbage anymore. You are a son and a daughter of the most-high. Come and feast on the goodness of the Lord. And as we concluded our reading today, Paul's like, “whatever you do or say”...in other words…“whatever you're mixing up, whatever the recipe’s gonna be, whatever you do or say, do it representing Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father. That is a great little garnish on the top of the dish but it's actually saying a lot because it gives us a barometer and gives us the opportunity to say can I…can I do this? Could I put this in my recipe for the day in the name of Jesus? Right? I mean we've discussed this before at a different point in the Scriptures, but we look at these things and say okay, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, idolatry…idolatry, anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, dirty language and lying, which of those can we do in the name of Jesus as a representative of the most-high? So, we just have to ask ourselves, can I do this in the name of Jesus? Maybe I'm free to do whatever I want as Paul has told us so many times, but not everything is good. Can I do this in the name of Jesus or is this going to ruin my whole dish?

Prayer:

Father we invite You into that. We have ruined plenty of dishes, plenty of days, plenty of encounters, plenty of meetings, plenty of circumstances. We’ve ruined plenty of stuff by trying to mix ingredients that do not and will not ever go together. And yet You are calling us higher, You are inviting us forward, You are ever patient and You don't hate us because we've made bad dishes, because we’ve made masses of things. You’re just calling us forward. You’re just saying You can do better than that because You are better than that in me. May we recognize that. May we recognize what we are making of our lives we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is home, its home base and if you’ve never been home then you should come home and check it out, at least home for the Global Campfire here and check it out if you haven't been in a while. Yeah, check it out. Come check out the Prayer Wall maybe pray for some brothers and sisters. Maybe you’re carrying stuff that you need some brothers and sisters to carry with you in prayer. And the Prayer Wall, that's what it's there for. So, check that out. It's in the Community section.

Check out the resources in the Shop. Check out the Initiatives. Just come check it out and stay connected in any way that you can or in any way that you want to.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, thank you. If what's happening here around the Global Campfire is bringing life to you and encouragement and challenge and forward movement and all the things that can happen as we move through the Scriptures in community than thank you for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if that's your preference, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement 877-942-4253 is the number to dial or you can hit the Hotline button in app, the little red button at the top and share from there.

And that is it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello Daily Audio Bible family this Shelby from Pittsburgh and Brian just want to congratulate you and your family on China’s announcement for this spring occasion of the brand-new life. Your excitement and…and happiness really came through and it just brightened up my day and I think all of us at this time could use some more really happy joyful news. And it really touched my heart. I feel like, you know, I’m going to be another auntie. It’s awesome. Really happy for you guys. God bless you God bless the process and everything. God bless the baby and, yeah, it’s a wonderful thing. Thank you for sharing that with us Brian and I’m very happy to be a part of this Daily Audio Bible family. It is a welcome reprieve from the days, whatever, and I like it because it also helps keep me on track and…and staying in the word of God. So, thank you very much and God bless you and again, congratulations. Goodbye.

Hello, everyone this is Rebecca’s heart from Michigan I’m a first-time caller and been listening to the DAB with my husband Skye since January and we love you guys and appreciate you all. Just wanted to ask for prayers today. I fell a few weeks ago and hit my jaw on a piece of hard metal and whiplashed my neck and spine and that’s…that was right before we went on a 9 ½ hour mission trip road trip to deliver a hand cycle that we fundraised for a new paraplegic friend up in Copper Harbor Michigan. We were able to witness God’s love and care towards Eric and need prayers for his spirit to be opened to be receiving the gift of Jesus love and salvation. We also shared our testimony of our trip with a young couple at a remote campsite named Scarlet and Dave and another young man on a hike named John and we’d like to ask prayers for them that they will come to know Jesus and maybe even read the Bible’s we gave them or listen in to the DAB with us. So, hopefully we’ll hear from them. Besides my own need for prayer and physical healing, Skye and I need prayer for our marriage to be covered by the blood of Jesus and to pray against any attacks the enemy would come at us with. We’ve had three years similar to Job’s story in the Bible with incredible losses but we’re trusting Jesus and need prayers to find us new means of income since Covid and to lead us to where He wants us to be this winter as our landlord is selling our house. We’re asking that when we travel again also in our funky van that God provided He would open the door for us to share Jesus to those we meet along the way.

Hello this is Wonderfully Made Amber from Albuquerque this is my first time calling in a been a listener for a few months now and Daily Audio Bible has been such a blessing in my life and today is the 2nd of October and I’m specifically calling to pray for Lacey from Massachusetts who asked for prayer for her sick dog. That prayer request really resonated with me because I…I have a dog and he is my buddy and companion and I…I couldn’t imagine being isolated and alone without such a companion. And, so, first I want to pray. Heavenly Father thank You for the blessing of this dog in Lacey’s life and Lord You created this little…this little dog and…and…and You…everything is possible with You. So, I asked that You’ll show mercy Lord and favor on this woman and that You’ll extend this dog’s life. He’ll her precious dog in Jesus’ name. And I also pray Father that You will bring more friends, companionship into her life beyond what she has with her dog Lord. This is a hard time of people being isolated and lonely yet there’s still a way for people to reach out to others. And, so, I pray that in Jesus’ name You’ll stir somebody’s heart to reach out to this…to Lacey and to be a friend to her. And lastly Lord I want to pray for healing over her health as well, that You will heal whatever successes, diseases she has and that You’ll comfort her, comfort her and thank You Lord. Thank You for Your mercy and Your grace and Your love and that You never leave us and that You give us good things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hello this is the Anthony I’m calling from __ I just did hear my fellow New Englander and she called in from Cape Cod, Lacey I believe she said her name was, who’s calling about her sick dog whose her only companion. Just wanted to pray Lord for…for healing for Lacey’s companion…for Lacey’s dog and more importantly Lord that You use this as an opportunity to just help people, help friends, help the community reach out to her so that she’s assured that she’s not alone Lord because no one…no one needs to be alone especially in these…in these times. We just pray Lord for that community and that she through this, finds companionship in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.

Good day Duncan the Piano Man it’s October 22nd and I’m remembering you because this is the anniversary of your wife’s death. And I know what it is to go through loss. You know, as I’m in right now mourning the loss of my mom, so I understand and I want you to know that I’m thinking about you, I’m praying for you and I pray that you would have a good day with the friends that you are taking out to that special place to eat and those memories that you will encounter in your mind, instead of bringing you sadness will bring you joy. And here is something I want to read to you it says, “do not weep long. You will weep today for sure I know but don’t weep long. Lift your eyes to heaven and see her in the Father’s arms. She will always be a part of you and remember that where there is love death is never the conqueror because God’s love makes it triumphant.” So, be triumphant today in the midst of your memories. And this is Soaring On Eagles Wings from Canada. I love you and I’m praying for you today. Bye now.

Hello this is Howard from Northern California sitting in the parking lot at Kaiser here just dropped by wife off going in for a biopsy. Need some prayers for the women in my life. Obviously, my wife got lucky getting this biopsy because of the great help from the lady that worked the desk yesterday when she went in for a simple mammogram. And then I also need prayers for my mom, she’s 83. She’s had some stroke issues and she’s struggling and Covid thing isn’t helping, no interactions with friends, she feels alone, scared. I try to get up to see her as much as I can. Her sisters are helping her. It’s a burden on them. So, probably prayers for them for patience prayers, for my three daughters. They all struggle from…a few of them struggle from some serious health issues and my oldest struggles with just trying to make it now that Covid took her job and she’s got two kids and her boyfriend, who he’s not the greatest guy that you want for your daughter but hopefully he’ll step up. So, probably prayers for him too. Thank you. God bless

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your-dietician · 3 years ago

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Giving Birth During the Pandemic, Calif. Wildfire Evacuation

New Post has been published on https://depression-md.com/giving-birth-during-the-pandemic-calif-wildfire-evacuation/

Giving Birth During the Pandemic, Calif. Wildfire Evacuation

Illustration: by Lucy Jones

Smoke plumes over the parched hillside as we load up our two cars for our first wildfire evacuation: passports and a few bags, one neurotic pit bull and six very disgruntled barn cats. At the last minute, we toss in some baby essentials (car seat, co-sleeper) — but surely, surely we’ll be back home before we need them. Nearby, two wild turkeys peck at the new fire break, unperturbed by the human frenzy, the gathering of domestic animals, the churning of fields.

It’s August 2020. And I am 36 weeks pregnant.

A week earlier, we’d been counting our blessings — the sort of feel-good California nonsense that ran contrary to every fiber of my jaded New Yorker soul. But on that deceptively bright afternoon, I’d indulged. First on the list was our home: my husband’s family ranch in the Santa Cruz mountains where we’d moved from Brooklyn three years before.

Like so many “classic” journeys West, ours had begun in a quixotic vein. On paper, it was a job offer for my then-boyfriend, now-husband, but the impulse ran deeper than that. We were both fed up with New York for the reasons 30-something artists often are: a growing disillusionment with our respective industries; the churn of yuppification driving our friends from the neighborhoods they themselves had gentrified not long ago; the pervasive sense that there’s always someone younger than you dying to do the same thing for less. And so, we wanted to embark on a new adventure together, something utterly different — and what could be more different than trading cramped city living for bucolic rolling hills? The ranch itself held an almost mythic status for my husband. It was the childhood kingdom where he once visited his uncle and grandmother and played out his Tolkien fantasies; the steady rock of home after his parents got divorced.

But, it turns out, we’d come to California in the end times. The apocalypse grew starker the farther west we drove. When we passed through Montana, the big sky clogged with smoke as fields burned alongside the highway. As we wound down the Oregon coast, the heat sizzled. We reached the ranch on the hottest day in San Francisco history. We drove down to the beach to escape the heat—only to find a small brush fire blocking our path. The Bay Area of my husband’s childhood was in its death throes. Destroyed by tech bros and venture capitalists and, most irrevocably, by climate change. Since our arrival, the Golden State has seen its population decline for the first time on record.

Living out in all that damn nature — a 25-minute drive from just about anything — felt claustrophobic. I missed home. I yearned to hop on the subway. Trade gossip with the self-proclaimed mayor of my block. Stumble home and stop, shame-faced, at the corner bodega for a bag of expired Goldfish crackers. Engage with that pulsing, beating, bleating hum of humanity that is New York City.

But there’s nothing like a global pandemic to make you see the value of wide-open spaces. To find the beauty in sunburnt grasses. To see the hills dotted with live oaks not as yellow but as gold. To watch the fog unfurl like dragon smoke and think — this, perhaps this can be enough.

The second blessing we’d been fool enough to name was my “easy” pregnancy. I’d been 15 weeks pregnant when COVID-19 shut down the state. My in-person appointments migrated to video. I purchased a scale and a blood-pressure cuff; I dutifully reported the results every month. By and large, I felt pretty good. Healthy. But this fiction, too, was about to go up in flames. The temperatures soared, the barn cats’ fur crackled, my feet ballooned.

The morning of our evacuation, I have my first in-person OB/GYN appointment in months. By this point, I’m accustomed to the realities of a pandemic pregnancy. The strange disconnect when I talk to anyone who gave birth before COVID-19, who never worried if their partner would be allowed into the delivery room, or Googled “will the hospital separate me from my newborn if I test positive for COVID?” In the empty waiting room, the “don’t sit here” printouts have vanished along with the chairs that accompanied them. The pandemic has dragged on for five months, and the furniture has adjusted itself accordingly.

The doctor gives me bad news — the baby is in breech. The hard, round protrusion jutting beneath my rib cage is, indeed, the baby’s head, not his rump as I’ve been trying to convince myself for weeks. We schedule a version— a procedure where a doctor tries to turn the baby right-side down — for the following Friday.

Who was I to think that my body wouldn’t betray me?

There’s something else, too. My blood pressure clocks in at 151 over 97. The chatty nurse grows quiet. She looks at me, then back at the reading. She asks if I was rushing to get here. If I suffer from white-coat syndrome. With the cocky self-assurance of a person young enough and lucky enough to believe that their body won’t betray them, I tell the nurse I’m stressed. We’re under evacuation warning. By the time she straps the cuff back on after the appointment, my blood pressure has returned to normal.

Preeclampsia, the dangerous and maddeningly enigmatic condition that my high blood pressure augurs, has plagued (wo)mankind since the dawn of history. Back in the fifth century B.C.E., Hippocrates blamed it, along with so many other lady ailments, on the wandering womb. In the intervening two and a half millennia, doctors haven’t figured out the cause. The prevailing theory is that the problem starts in the placenta, the organ that nurtures the fetus in the womb: In women with preeclampsia, the blood vessels that form to deliver oxygen to the placenta are too narrow. In its efforts to feed the growing baby, the body kicks into overdrive. Your blood pressure skyrockets; your kidneys falter; your liver might fail. In the worst cases, the “pre” vanishes and you “progress�� to eclampsia — seizures which can be deadly to both mom and baby.

Preeclampsia is characterized by a list of associations that often border on patient-shaming: risk factors include poor diet, obesity, diabetes, and chronic hypertension. For complex reasons that likely involve structural racism, unconscious bias, and biological weathering, Black women in America develop and die from preeclampsia at significantly higher rates than white women do.

Returning, then, to my certainty that I am perfectly well, high blood pressure or no, thankyouverymuch. We could call it denial. We could also call it a particular cocktail of white, able-bodied, and socioeconomic privilege. After all, none of those risk factors applied to me.

Days later, as another nurse lines my hospital bed with bumper pads to protect me in case of seizure, I’ll wonder at my arrogance. Just two years earlier, my older sister dropped dead at 35. Who was I to think that my body wouldn’t betray me?

Almost exactly nine months after we first arrived in California, my sister Julia died, both suddenly and predictably. She was 35 and, by most outward metrics, in good health. But, as hard as she fought, she’d been gripped by both depression and alcoholism for over a decade.

In the months after Julia dies, wildfires flame up and down the state. Eight-five people perish as Paradise is razed to the ground. I try to work on my new novel, a cli-fi dystopia that offers little escape. I spend a lot of time sitting in a large wooden crate, socializing a litter of barn kittens. Sometimes, I meet Julia’s college roommate, Casey, in San Francisco. We go to coffee shops that are both like and unlike the ones I missed in Brooklyn. Places where using the bathroom requires an app and a QR code. The world is literally on fire, and this is what Silicon Valley innovation has to offer: the monetization of what should be public goods. Over burritos and tears, Casey tells me stories about her toddler son. Funny words that he’d string together, and how when she says they can’t go outside, he knows to respond: “Too smoky?”

The decision to have children has always struck me as an essentially selfish one: You choose, out of a desire for fulfillment or self-betterment or curiosity or boredom or baby-mania or peer pressure, to bring a new human into this world. And it has never seemed more selfish than today. From a global perspective, having a child in a developed nation is among the most environmentally unsound decisions you can make — a baby born in the United States adds another 58.6 tons of carbon to the atmosphere per year. (That wipes out the net positives of my 25 years of vegetarianism in roughly three months). On the individual level, as fires rage and hurricanes form, as water grows scarce and fields lie fallow, it’s hard not to wonder: What kind of future can we offer a child?

And yet. On some level we still believe that a baby, our baby, will bring the world, our world, so much more than his carbon footprint. On another, we believe, like so many before us, that a baby can be the only balm after a loss. That it will transform me from a bereaved sister to something new and alien: a mother.

The day we evacuate, in that now-annual tradition among Western states, Gavin Newsom declares a state of emergency. The fire that we’re fleeing is the smaller of two mammoth blazes threatening the state. A CalFire spokeswoman on TV advises that all citizens should be “ready to go” in case of wildfires. “Residents have to have their bags packed up with your nose facing out your driveway so you can leave quickly.”

We joke about how absurd it is that every single Californian should be living in a perpetual state of emergency preparedness. It isn’t funny.

The truth is that we’re the lucky ones. We won’t be sleeping in our cars outside Half Moon Bay High School, hoping that the Red Cross can find us a hotel room. We have a safe place to go that will accept us and our veritable menagerie in the middle of a pandemic. My in-laws live an hour’s drive away. And for once we’re grateful they’re on the far side of Santa Cruz.

On the individual level, as fires rage and hurricanes form, as water grows scarce and fields lie fallow, it’s hard not to wonder: What kind of future can we offer a child?

So we settle into our cushy evacuation digs. I check Twitter for updates on the fire lines. I lie upside down on a propped-up ironing board to encourage the baby to flip. I dutifully record my blood pressure twice a day. When I go into a local lab on Monday, I pass a woman around my age. Her hair mussed; her clothes rumpled. I overhear her tell the security guard that she is evacuated from Boulder Creek. Her house has already burned down.

The call comes late that afternoon. We’ve gone for a walk on the beach to distract ourselves. A brisk ocean breeze keeps the smoke at bay.

The OB tells me that I need to go to the hospital in two days and that I should be prepared to deliver. Depending on whether they can flip the baby, they will either induce labor or perform a C-section.

I press my hand against my stomach, cupping what I now know is my son’s head. I dig my heels into the sand. I know with every fiber of my being that this child is not ready to be born. He has literally put his foot down. Wildfire evacuations? Smoke-clogged skies over the Bay? A global pandemic? Nah, thanks, Ma. I’ll stay inside.

Something primal stirs. A desperate need to protect this child — from the world, from the climate, from the overreach of litigation-fearing American doctors. This baby, I am convinced, does not want to come out. He needs a few more weeks inside. My lab work hasn’t even come back yet. Two high blood pressure readings? From a person evacuated from wildfires during a pandemic? And I feel fine.

So, for the first time in my life, I argue with a doctor, first patiently, then furiously. I tell her that I cannot possibly give birth in two days. That we’re evacuated. That we might not have a home to return to. That, as freelancers, we both lost a lot of work during the pandemic. That my husband, whose industry has been completely upended, has an enormous gig with a new client. That I can’t imagine waiting until Friday can make any difference. The doctor takes out the cudgel: “You need to stop worrying about money and start worrying about your baby.”

It is the first time anyone has pulled the “bad mother” card on me, though I’m sure it won’t be the last. I sputter. I am livid. I tell her we’ll be there.

Things at the hospital go well until they don’t. The baby flips; the cheerful dry-erase board is decorated with a beaming sun, the names of the on-duty nurse and physician, and the words “Preeclampsia: Mild.” The next morning, my blood pressure soars, and “mild” is replaced with “severe.” The blood-pressure cuff is now accompanied by a catheter and an IV that pumps me up with magnesium to reduce the risk of seizure. The bumper pads are up now, too.

The hospital, the beeping machines monitoring my vital signs, the proliferating IVs, it all reminds me too much of Julia. The three days I sat at her hospital bed — holding her hand, reading Redwall to her, so sure that she could hear me, that the stories we shared in childhood might somehow draw her back. So sure that she would pull out of her coma, that one day we would make macabre jokes about her hospital stay. That she wouldn’t die. That our story couldn’t end that way.

But here, in this hospital, the wool has lifted from my eyes. I now know how these stories end. And I am sure that one of us isn’t going to survive. It takes the last bit of my resolve not to tell my husband, in a fit of melodrama, to save the baby if the doctors have to choose. (In later, clearer moments, I realize that medicine doesn’t work that way. But in the throes of magnesium-laced labor, the brain latches to the cinematic.)

So much of what could go wrong does: The baby crowns but every time I push his heart rate drops. We try three more times with a suction cup fused to his head, the pediatrician’s eyes glued to the heart monitor, periodically shouting for me to stop pushing so a nurse can press the baby back inside and massage his heart rate up again. At some point, a switch is flipped, alarms blare: an emergency C-section. I’m rushed down the corridors amid flashing lights to the operating table. My husband abandoned in a delivery room awash in blood. Someone shouts back, “We’ll come back for you if we can.”

My son is wrenched from my seizing uterus — weak from the magnesium and letting out only the smallest cry. He is rushed to the NICU for oxygen and observation. But he lives. We live. And, in the end, we get to go home.

The night that Jude is born, our evacuation order is lifted. The fires that burn parts of Bonny Doon and Boulder Creek never reach the ranch. We are so very lucky. Even though I doubt that luck can last.

Although that future still terrifies me and part of me wants to disengage, to say “Let it burn” and “Fuck you” to all that, I can’t. I don’t have that luxury.

After the dust has settled, my father — my somehow still optimistic, boomer father — keeps talking about how crazy it will be for Jude to learn about the day he was born, in a pandemic while evacuated for wildfires. And all I can think is how much I wish Jude might grow up in a world where the summer of 2020 sounds aberrational. I suspect he won’t. As I write this, fires descend on Lake Tahoe, defying all efforts of containment, and Hurricane Ida has devastated the Gulf Coast. Headlines blare about “extreme” weather, and I wonder when the newspapers will lose the word “extreme.”

I know that the world in which Jude grows up will be plagued by more and more environmental disasters. That cataclysmic changes to the climate will exacerbate the other inequities we face as a nation and a planet. That we are living in a real way on borrowed time, under the shadow of carbon that’s already been released as more fossil fuel continues to burn and burn and burn.

Although that future still terrifies me and part of me wants to disengage, to say “Let it burn” and “Fuck you” to all that, I can’t. I don’t have that luxury. I have no choice but to believe that the future — troubled as it will be, stripped as it will be of my biting, brilliant sister — is still worth living in and fighting for. To believe not just in destruction, not just in accruing loss after loss after loss, but in counting blessings. Finding those small moments of joy. The smile on Jude’s face as he bashes his mouth into my cheek. “Boop,” I say as I tap his nose. The same sound Julia used to make when I tapped hers.

This isn’t the ending that I’m looking for. And it isn’t just an ending either. It’s a beginning, too. An often frightening one. And, for now, that has to be good enough.

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classyfoxdestiny · 3 years ago

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How residents are living in Vermont, America's most vaccinated state

They clasped hands and rock stepped and spun in and out of quick embraces to swinging jazz rhythms on one of the last hardwood ballrooms in Burlington.

“I thought partner dancing was always going to be the last thing to come back from the pandemic because there’s so much interaction,” said one dancer, Lorilee Schoenbeck, a naturopathic physician.

“It’s aerobic in each other’s faces and you’re constantly changing partners… In this dance venue, this would be an absolute super spreader.”

But these dancers are all vaccinated. They reside in America’s most vaccinated state — 83.7% of Vermonters 12 and over have received at least one shot, according to health officials.

Throughout Vermont, hospital Covid-19 units are mostly empty. Bars and restaurants are hopping again. In remote rural towns, diners, country stores and campgrounds are filling up.

As the national health crisis evolves into “a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” in the words of US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Vermont health officials tout the Green Mountain State as the safest place in America.

Many Vermonters are venturing out, unmasked and with no fear, just as the CDC recommended on Tuesday that fully vaccinated people wear masks indoors in US counties with soaring transmission rates.

“My question is, ‘Do you want to have a life again?'” Schoenbeck said. “We’re living. Get vaccinated. Get back in the game.”

Vaccination push continues

Around the corner from downtown Burlington’s bustling Church Street Marketplace, Dr. Mark Levine, state health commissioner, sat at a small conference table in his office and rattled off statistics that enabled Gov. Phil Scott to lift all Covid-19 restrictions in mid June.

Vermont was the first state to partially vaccinate at least 80 percent of residents 12 or older. The current rate of more than 83% compares with the nation’s 66.6% one-dose rate — according to the CDC — for the same age group.

More than 67% of the state’s roughly 624,000 residents have been fully vaccinated, compared with about 49% for the US overall.

The state has maintained one of the country’s lowest infection rates — currently at 1.6% for a seven-day average, according to the health department’s Covid-19 dashboard. Vermont has had 259 Covid-19 deaths.

“It’s the lowest number of deaths on the continental US,” said Levine, sitting in front of a bobblehead of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The state’s last Covid-19-related death was on July 10, Levine said. In June and July, the state has had four deaths. There are five Covid-19 patients hospitalized in the entire state.

Vermont’s first vaccine was administered in mid December. The state’s vaccination campaign isn’t done.

“The whole strategy is, we want a Vermonter to essentially stumble on the vaccine,” Levine said.

“If you’re at one of the beaches on Lake Champlain here in Burlington or you were … on Church Street, you’re not going to see a vaccine tent every day but you’re going to see it sometimes. That’s the sort of strategy. We’re going to make sure it’s all around you… If there’s a state fair, it’s got to have vaccine. If there’s a farmers’ market or a flea market, it’s going to have vaccine.”

Along Church Street Marketplace, visible from Levine’s downtown office, the wide four-block concourse is crowded with people — most not wearing masks. Its bars, shops and restaurants have been filling up. Outside Vermont’s own Ben & Jerry’s, dozens of young people — many not wearing face coverings or social distancing — line up in clusters for ice cream day and night.

The eastern shoreline of Lake Champlain, where signs with Covid-19 safety messages have been replaced with warnings of harmful cyanobacteria blooms in the water, teems with couples, children and pets. Burlington is in Chittenden County, which has a vaccination rate of 85.4%.

“We’re trying to tell people … fall and winter is what we’re worried about,” Levine said. “We want that vaccine rate up now in anticipation of the following winter so we don’t have to change our behavior at that time.”

Restrictions lifted ‘because it’s safe to do so’

On June 14, when Vermont became the first state to vaccinate more than 80% of its population over the age of 12, Gov. Scott, a moderate Republican, announced Vermont’s state of emergency would formally end at midnight.

“Why? Because it’s safe to do so,” the governor said.

At the same time, however, the Delta variant was starting to dominate the US.

A handful of states have been driving the bulk of the nationwide Covid-19 case surge and the threat of serious disease and death is to the unvaccinated, according to White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients.

Last week, just three states — Florida, Texas and Missouri — that share low vaccination rates accounted for 40 percent of all cases nationwide, Zients said.

And hospitals are filling up with Covid-19 patients again, this time with younger patients than before, according to doctors in Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Missouri.

The only way to halt the resurgence, health officials said, is to get more people vaccinated.

“Even if somebody comes into Vermont and has the Delta variant … and they get sick and they’re infectious while they’re here in Vermont,” Levine said.

“If 83-plus percent of the population is vaccinated. That variant runs into a wall. Now, people who’ve been vaccinated … can still get sick with the variant. We’ve seen that all around the country. But the reality is its likelihood of creating any major outbreak is really small because it’s going to keep running into people that it can’t actually get transmitted from because they are going to be immune.”

‘Community response and collective action’

At Northwestern Medical Center in St. Albans, a community hospital about 28 miles northeast of Burlington, a staff member took a lunch break last week at the nurse’s station in the shuttered and dimly lit Covid-19 ward.

The hospital treated its last Covid-19 patient in early May, said Dr. John Minadeo, chief medical officer.

“It’s a sign of, at this point in time, your vaccination status in the community,” Minadeo said of the empty ward. “But I believe that’s why we don’t have patients in these beds… So this is evidence of — you’re in a vaccinated community, you’re not going to have hospitalizations.”

St. Albans is in Franklin County, where 73.7% of residents 12 or older have received at least one vaccine dose, according to the state health department.

Minadeo said the hospital was prepared to activate the ward if needed.

“We have to think the fall is coming and assume that, you know, it may happen again,” he said. “We’re in a little bit better shape because we’ve done it once before.”

Vermont’s success in vaccinating its residents is attributed to various factors, including the accessibility of vaccine sites; overall trust in the political leadership and science; an aging, mostly white and liberal populace; and a generally health conscious population with a strong sense of civic responsibility.

“A lot of people see Vermont as being exceptional in some ways,” said Anne Sosin, a policy fellow at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

“And it’s a really blue state but if you look a little bit closer … we’re a much more purple state than many understand. There are many rural barriers to health care and Vermont demonstrated that if you bring vaccines to places where people live, work and play that you can overcome many of the obstacles to achieving high rates of vaccination. Vermont not only used its health care system and large sites, but it’s also brought vaccines out to firehouses, schools, community sites, pop up clinics, gas stations and beaches.”

Sosin said rural Orleans County, in one of the most remote and conservative parts of the state, has a vaccination rate of 70.8%. She said she was vaccinated in an Orleans County firehouse.

Orleans is one of three far off Vermont counties — near the Canadian border — that make up a region known as the Northeast Kingdom, where residents take pride in their individuality and separateness.

“The high rates of vaccination are a testament not only to a really well run state program but to the vast community infrastructure in that part of the state,” Sosin said.

Another Northeast Kingdom county, Essex, has the lowest vaccination rate in the state at 58.5%. The other county, Caledonia, has partially vaccinated 70.8% of its 12 and over population.

“One really important lesson right now, as I think about what’s happening across the country, is the importance of community and solidarity,” Sosin said. “And I know that sounds kind of soft but we hear the CDC saying, ‘It’s in your hands.’ This is a very individualistic approach to the pandemic. Yet Vermonters really highlighted the importance of community response and collective action.”

‘A lot of older Vermonters … don’t like change’

At the Mooselook Diner in the Essex County town of Concord, about 90 miles east of Burlington, waitress Justine Alegria Cummins, 25, said neither she nor her children have gotten the vaccine because she fears “adverse effects” from the shot. The place was hopping during lunch hour one day last week.

“It never affected me in my personal life enough to make me want to get the vaccine,” she said of Covid-19.

Another waitress, Angela Marshall, 46, said she is not an anti-vaxxer but has not received the vaccine because she doesn’t believe enough time was spent researching it. She said she tested positive with Covid-19 about six weeks ago and was bedridden for two weeks.

“I couldn’t move,” she said. “I couldn’t do anything.”

She recovered but said she still won’t get vaccinated.

Down the road at the Pettyco Junction Country Store in St. Johnsbury, on the lower edge of the Northeast Kingdom, a retired 67-year-old contractor named Bernie Timson said he will remain part of the unvaccinated state population.

“They put you on a spot where they’re saying, ‘If you’re not vaccinated, you can come in my store but you’ve got to wear a mask,'” he said. “I’m not going to put a mask on to come in your store. I’m still going to store but I ain’t putting a mask on. There’s no way I’m putting the mask on because that just puts you as a mark — you ain’t vaccinated.”

At Moose River Campground, owner Mary Lunderville said the campground is full and that she and her husband have had to turn down reservations because there’s no room.

Lunderville, who wouldn’t give her age but described herself as an “early senior,” said the couple was initially reluctant to get the vaccine because they were “unsure if it was going to be safe.” When vaccinated friends did not become ill, she said, they agreed to get the shot in mid April mostly in order make their customers feel comfortable.

“I like to make sure my campers are happy and safe,” she said.

Lunderville said she still requires masks and gloves when people help themselves to food at the big holiday dinners on the campgrounds.

“There are more real Vermonters on this side than out of staters who moved to Vermont,” she said. “A lot of older Vermonters like my husband they don’t like change. It could be just because they’re afraid of change. It could be stubbornness.”

‘I don’t feel any fear going out’

At the sweltering Champlain Club in Burlington, bandleader Louis Prima’s famous combination of “Just a Gigolo” and “I Ain’t Got Nobody” blared from speakers as the swing enthusiasts switched partners.

“A-one, a-two, a-you know what to do,” said instructor Jean Elizabeth Shockley, using the phrase made famous by Lindy Hop pioneer Frankie Manning.

Shockley said there were at least 20 new faces on the dance floor on this Tuesday evening in mid July.

All participants had to show their Covid-19 vaccination card for admission to the weekly Vermont Swings class and the two-hour dance.

“There’s a different kind of energy here,” instructor Maria Garrido said. “People are proud and aware of what Vermont has done…. I’m personally worried about the variants and surges but I really am proud of what we accomplished. I feel that for the most part we’re able to get closer to normal and it’s really exciting.”

Trim and energetic at 73, David Rose lamented that his dance partner of eight years was absent this evening because of her refusal to get the vaccine.

“In fact, all during the pandemic she was saying, ‘Oh, David, we got to dance. We got to dance.’ And I said, Vermont Swings is opening up. Let’s go and she says, ‘I can’t do that. I’m not vaccinated.’ “

Rose said the state’s biggest challenge will be convincing the remaining unvaccinated residents to get the shot.

“It’s sad for me that she feels that way and that she can’t come in because they won’t let her in,” Rose said of his longtime dance partner. “I don’t want to offend her and push her… I asked, ‘Why don’t you want to get the vaccine?’ She says, ‘I think it’s some kind of game to make money by the pharmaceutical companies or the government telling us what to do.’ “

Natalie Nachtigal, 32, said she moved to Burlington in September from Florida, which reported an average of 10,452 new cases each day over the past week — more than triple the daily average from two weeks ago, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

“I don’t feel any fear going out and a lot of it has to do with a sense of community that Vermont really lets shine,” she said. “It’s very apparent in community members that it’s kind of like one-for-all rather than an all-for-one community mentality.”

Mark Jerome Feinstein, 26, moved to Vermont one month ago from California, where San Diego and Los Angeles counties both reported their highest number of cases since February, and hospitalizations in LA County more than doubled in two weeks.

“It was definitely a weight off my shoulders to realize that I was going to a place where life could be a little bit more normal,” Feinstein, a PhD student in psychology at the University of Vermont, said between dances.

“You don’t know whether Delta or Covid 2021 or 2022 is coming down the pike. And so you might as well go out and have some fun as safely as possible, as respectfully as possible, while you can.”

After all, he said, the dances they’ve been practicing came about in the wake of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, World War I and the Great Depression.

“It’s this funny little microcosm where we get to dance the same dances that they did so that they could celebrate being alive,” Feinstein said. “We can do the same thing.”

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stephenmccull · 3 years ago

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Fútbol, Flags and Fun: Getting Creative to Reach Unvaccinated Latinos in Colorado

Horns blared and drums pounded a constant beat as fans of the Mexican national soccer team gathered recently at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver for a high-profile international tournament.

But the sounds were muted inside a mobile medical RV parked near the stadium, and the tone was professional. During halftime of Mexico’s game against the U.S., soccer fan Oscar Felipe Sanchez rolled up his sleeve to receive the one-dose covid-19 vaccine.

Sanchez is a house painter in Colorado Springs. After getting sick with covid a few months ago, he thought he should get the vaccine. But because of the illness, he was advised to wait a few weeks before getting the shot. Asked if he’s glad he got it, Sanchez answered through a translator: “Yes! He’s more trusting to go out.”

Bringing the mobile vaccine program to an international soccer match was the latest effort by the state of Colorado and its local partners to meet unvaccinated residents wherever they are, rather than ask them to find the vaccine themselves.

Long gone are the days in early spring when vaccine appointments were snatched up the instant they became available, and health care workers worried about making sure patients were eligible under state and federal criteria for age and health status.

Colorado, and most of the nation, has now moved into a new phase involving targeted efforts and individual interactions and using trusted community influencers to persuade the hesitant to get jabbed.

With about half of Colorado’s 5.78 million people now fully immunized, the challenge cuts across all demographic groups. According to the state’s vaccination dashboard, men are slightly more hesitant than women and rural residents are more hesitant than urban dwellers. Younger Coloradans have been less likely than their elders to prioritize the shots.

But perhaps no group has been harder to get vaccinated than Coloradans who identify as Hispanic. Despite Hispanics making up more than 20% of the state population, only about 10% of the state’s doses have gone to Hispanic residents, according to the state’s vaccination dashboard.

The gap is not as wide nationally: Hispanics, or Latinos, make up 17.2% of the U.S. population, and 15.8% of people who have gotten at least one dose — and whose race/ethnicity is known — are Hispanic.

At first, the gap in Colorado seemed to be an issue of inadequate access to health care. Nearly 16% of Hispanic Coloradans are uninsured, according to a KFF report. That’s more than double the rate for white Coloradans. That disparity may play a role, even though the vaccine itself is free, with no insurance requirement.

Denver has hit the 70% threshold for resident vaccination, but some Latino neighborhoods are getting vaccinated at much lower rates, according to Dr. Lilia Cervantes, an associate professor in the department of medicine at Denver Health.

“There are some very high-risk neighborhoods where most of the community are first-generation or foreign-born individuals,” said Cervantes. “And that is where we’re seeing the highest disparities.”

According to data from Denver’s health agencies, about 40% of Latinos older than 12 are vaccinated in Denver County — that’s far below the roughly 75% rate for whites.

Latinos make up 29% of the Denver population but represent nearly half of cases and hospitalizations.

If the state hopes to reach broad levels of protection from the virus, Cervantes said, “I think that it is critical that we improve vaccine uptake in our most marginalized groups, including those who are undocumented and those who are Spanish-language dominant.” Cervantes added she’s concerned the state will keep seeing a higher covid positivity rate in those marginalized groups, who make up much of the essential workforce. “This past year, I think we have seen stark health inequities in the Latino community.”

All this portends a more uneven pandemic, said Dr. Fernando Holguin, a pulmonologist and critical care doctor at the Latino Research & Policy Center at the Colorado School of Public Health.

He worries cases, hospitalizations and deaths will keep flaring up in less vaccinated communities, especially predominantly Hispanic populations in parts of Colorado or other states where overall vaccination rates are poor. “They’re at risk, especially moving into the fall of seeing increasing waves of infections. I think it is really critical that people really become vaccinated,” Holguin said. Even as parts of Colorado and parts of the U.S. — like the Northeast — are getting vaccinated at high rates, for the mostly unvaccinated “covid infections in certain communities still will be devastating for them,” he said.

He’s especially concerned about migrant farmworkers, who often have poor access to the internet and may struggle to find good information about the vaccine and avoiding the virus. “So overcoming those access, cultural, language barriers is important,” he said.

When asked what the state has done to reach out to Latino Coloradans, a health department spokesperson pointed to over 1,500 “vaccine equity clinics” in 56 counties; the Workplace Vaccination Program, which partners with businesses and organizations to provide vaccine clinics at worksites; and a Spanish-language Facebook page and covid website. She said the state’s “Power the Comeback” campaign is available in English and Spanish and aims to reach disproportionately affected populations with awareness ads, testimonial videos and animated videos.

About a third of all adults in the U.S. are unvaccinated, a “shrinking pool” that skews younger and includes people more likely to identify as Republican or Republican-leaning, according to a KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor report.

They also tend to be poorer, less educated and more likely to be uninsured. The KFF report found 19% of unvaccinated adults are Hispanic; of that group, 20% said they will “wait and see” about getting vaccinated, and 11% said they’d “definitely not” get it.

Both Cervantes and Holguin credit local, state and community groups with aggressively looking to boost vaccination rates among Latino Coloradans, while also encouraging them to keep recruiting trusted community voices from within, to help deliver the message.

“You know, it’s not going to be Dr. [Anthony] Fauci saying something, that someone translates in Spanish, that you need to get vaccinated,” Holguin said. “There’s going to be people in the community convincing others to get vaccinated.”

At Empower Field, soccer fan Diego Montemayor of Denver echoed that sentiment, saying some fans who got shots themselves urged friends who came to the stadium to visit the RV and get one, too. “When they hear people that they trust sharing their experiences, that goes a long way,” Montemayor said.

Community health advocate Karimme Quintana agreed. She had come to the game as well to spread the word about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. She works as a promotora de salud pública, a public health outreach worker, focusing her efforts on Denver’s majority-Latino Westwood neighborhood. Quintana said that population may trust someone close to them more than even a doctor.

“They need to be more educated about the covid because they have a lot of questions,” said Quintana, whose button read “¿Tiene preguntas sobre covid? Pregúnteme.” (“Do you have questions about covid? Ask me.”)

“Latino people, they listen [to] the neighbor, they listen [to] my friend,” Quintana said.

University of Colorado Health nurse Danica Farrington said the vaccine effort at the soccer tournament was heavily promoted beforehand on billboards and big screens inside the stadium during the game.

“They just plastered it everywhere and said, go get your shot,” she said. “That’s pretty influential.”

The carnival atmosphere at the stadium helped him make the pitch, said Jesus Romero Serrano, a community ambassador with Denver’s mayor’s office: “It’s a Mexico game versus Honduras! So lots of Latinos are here. This is the perfect place to be, to reach the Latin community. Absolutely!”

To capitalize on the playful spirit of the day, Romero Serrano wore a Mexico soccer jersey and a red-and-green luchador wrestling mask. In his work with the city government, he’s what you could call a community influencer. He filtered through the tailgate crowd in the parking lot, handing out cards about where to get a vaccine.

As he circulated, he admitted it’s sometimes hard for some Latino Coloradans to overcome what they see as years of historical mistreatment or neglect from medical providers. “They don’t trust the health care system,” he said.

Still, Romero Serrano kept wading into the crowd, shaking hands and shouting over the constant din of the drum bands, asking people whether they had gotten a vaccine.

The most common answer he heard was “everybody has it” — but he was skeptical about that, thinking people were just being nice.

A few miles from the stadium is the Tepeyac Community Health Center, in the predominantly Hispanic Globeville neighborhood. That’s home base for Dr. Pamela Valenza, a family physician and the chief health officer at the clinic. She tries to address her patients’ fears and concerns about the new vaccines, but many have told her they still want to wait and see that people don’t have serious side effects.

Valenza’s clinic recently held more vaccine events, at more convenient times that didn’t interfere with work, like Friday evenings, and offered free grocery cards for the vaccinated. She said she likes the idea of pairing vaccines with fun.

“The Latino culture — food, culture and community — is such a central part of the Latino community,” Valenza said. “Making the events maybe a little bit more than just a vaccine might encourage some community members to come out.”

This story comes from NPR’s health reporting partnership with Colorado Public Radio and Kaiser Health News (KHN).

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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This story can be republished for free (details).

Fútbol, Flags and Fun: Getting Creative to Reach Unvaccinated Latinos in Colorado published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

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gordonwilliamsweb · 3 years ago

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Fútbol, Flags and Fun: Getting Creative to Reach Unvaccinated Latinos in Colorado

Horns blared and drums pounded a constant beat as fans of the Mexican national soccer team gathered recently at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver for a high-profile international tournament.

Colorado, and most of the nation, has now moved into a new phase involving targeted efforts and individual interactions and using trusted community influencers to persuade the hesitant to get jabbed.

According to data from Denver’s health agencies, about 40% of Latinos older than 12 are vaccinated in Denver County — that’s far below the roughly 75% rate for whites.

Latinos make up 29% of the Denver population but represent nearly half of cases and hospitalizations.

All this portends a more uneven pandemic, said Dr. Fernando Holguin, a pulmonologist and critical care doctor at the Latino Research & Policy Center at the Colorado School of Public Health.

“Latino people, they listen [to] the neighbor, they listen [to] my friend,” Quintana said.

“They just plastered it everywhere and said, go get your shot,” she said. “That’s pretty influential.”

Still, Romero Serrano kept wading into the crowd, shaking hands and shouting over the constant din of the drum bands, asking people whether they had gotten a vaccine.

The most common answer he heard was “everybody has it” — but he was skeptical about that, thinking people were just being nice.

This story comes from NPR’s health reporting partnership with Colorado Public Radio and Kaiser Health News (KHN).

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This story can be republished for free (details).

Fútbol, Flags and Fun: Getting Creative to Reach Unvaccinated Latinos in Colorado published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

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kateemmerson · 4 years ago

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Musings of a Café Writer living #LocationFree

Living #LocationFree for the past 5 years is often met with wide eyes, scrunched up noses, and some weird questions. I know it might sound like nothing more than terrifyingly homeless mixed with exhilaratingly glamour-filled champagne parties on yachts, Instagram style.

It honestly falls somewhere smack between these two extremes.

While it may be very real that digital nomads (aka global nomads, remote workers, location free, etc.) might not have one permanent base to call “home,” we are certainly not “homeless.” We have a gazillion ways we each live into this lifestyle, and we can pretty much make it up as we go along – if we don’t like somewhere, we can move on to more suitable spaces, cities, countries (Covid and visa/passport reliant of course). Plus, folk living this lifestyle are not doing so because they have zero responsibilities, no partners, kids, animals, etc. – we are all working and contributing to society in some format. We have just figured out the best way to earn the required dollars en route – whether working remotely for a company, working in the digital online space, working in the country they are in, running global companies, have property investments, Bitcoin, or business investors – any type of work is possible, to be honest! The worklist is as varied as your creative brain allows … with the added benefit of freedom from a location. Of course, we sleep in beds too! Whether in fancy hotels, rented homes, snazzy apartments, Airbnb options, co-living, house-sitting, or any combo of the above. What binds us together as a tribe is that we are not bound to one location for work or life. There is a sense of freedom, mobility, choice, and possibility!

Possibility of options, countries, cultures, environments, lifestyle, etc

Right now, I’m chilling in a quaint café on the prom of Portobello (see pic taken at Miros <<<) with the quieter than usual buzz and banter as “we-are-in-weird-lockdown-life-but-still-allowed-out” vibe. I’ll soon be self-isolating again before I make my way to my mum in the UK for Christmas, so I am making the most of a little thrill of being outdoors at Edinburgh’s Seaside. There is a delicious light shimmering off the sea and bouncing off the clouds, reflecting the changes in the sun as we edge towards winter solstice. After 7 years of spending most of my time in summer or what travel agents refer to as shoulder seasons, I am fondly referring to my current city of choice as Edinburrrrrrr.

Remember my cold water swimming escapades on Iona that I shared earlier this year? I will manage one more cold dip this month, which means I will have been cold water immersing for 6 whole months! I didn’t even know that I wanted to try it before starting my significant retreat and detox process on Iona. I’m still in a bikini with no warm booties, gloves, or wetsuits like many swimmers – just keeping it real and semi mad. Even if my swims are super short -they still count as a cold water blitz of energy and immune-boosting habit!

This week, I launched my fifth book, and I feel like a kid in a Christmas Santa store, to be honest. It’s some insights, sharing, and tips from living the last 5 years #LocationFree. I also interviewed 16 other souls (between 40 and 60 years of age) living in similar ways to me. It’s a super exciting collection of tips snd stories for anyone who is intrigued about the possibility of downsizing, packing up, and living and working globally.

One of my all-time favourite things to do when I travel is sitting in a café or restaurant on a beach somewhere – from Malaga to San Fran, Cape Town to Skala Eressos. I simply need my laptop and a strong coffee or a fab glass of vino, depending on the time of day. And always water – and usually a kitty somewhere close by. I seem to attract them and consider myself a bit of a cat-whisperer. Did you spot the content kitty on my book cover?

There is an element of pure delight that is elicited when I can look up from my computer and see water – waves, sand, pebbles, sheep munching seaweed (yes 100% on Iona!), people laughing, kids playing, folk squealing in the waves and that heady aroma of sun, sand, sea, and sun-lotion. Or the smell of rain mixed into it more often than not, here in Edinburrrrr.

I find myself in this glorious city for most of winter 2020, exploring somewhere North. I am still officially #LocationFree and will be for the foreseeable future. I was only planning to be location free for one year, to figure out what country I wanted to live in, but it turns out it’s been too much fun, and here I am five years later.

Ooooh, the cafes you will find when not in your hometown. From dingy and downright skanky, to glamorous, elegant, and exotic; to simple family-run salt of the earth to trendy hipster vibes with a gazillion delicious choices; or the simple paired back local café that only serves one type of coffee and eggs – just the way you like them: the smells, the chalkboards, the conversations, and the locals. The cakes and the decadent treats made with love – from the latest LA trend to grandma’s secret pistachio and rose water recipe. A café is always filled with possibility – and is still the first place I seek out to feel like a “local” in a new spot. It’s one of my “settling-in” hacks I share in my book “10 Lessons for Living #locationFree

So I find myself with a big grin on my chops as I own the fact that I am a café writer. It can be a table on a busy cobbled street, a hotel lobby with glorious views of the pool, a tiny spot perched precariously on a hill, or my all-time favourite, seaside café!. Anywhere in the world, this will put always put a smile on my face.

If there is some Latin Salsa or Bachata music drifting out of the speakers even better, offering the quiet promise of a party as day turns to night….that will always make me type faster and get through my workload ready to pop on my salsa shoes and have a whirl on the floor.

I don’t even need earphones, really –in fact, my ears always get sore trying to wear earphones, no matter the brand or style! I usually welcome the buzz around me and find ways to switch off when I need to focus.

I have amassed a few “offices’ around the world that I have stamped my name on. To this day, there is one table at Gialos on Skala Eressos where we run writing retreats, which is known as Kate’s office. Although I didn’t get to work there in 2020, I know it is waiting patiently for me 2021. I am usually sitting at my “desk” by 6 am before the rest of the sleeping Greek village stirs. While the restaurant is still being cleaned and set up for the day – George will even stop his daily prep to bring me a double greek Coffee. Or as we order there – ena diplo hellenico para kalor!

PIC: This one below taken at my “office” Gialos in Skala Eressos when the world cup was on (and my Argentinean partner at the time was in Russia supporting his team)

It’s always about the views, to be honest. I find vistas open up my creativity and thinking. Sea trumps everything for me – being able to sit outside and feel the sunshine and breeze is high on my list of needs. When not working, I also love to be a fly on the wall, simply watching people. I can make up stories in my head ad Infinitum. Travelling a lot on my own, I also love to smile and then connect, laugh, and chat with total strangers. It’s bizarrely natural for me to make random comments and speak to people I walk past or sit next to. I will always talk to cats and dogs and stop owners for a cuddle of their four-paws if allowed. I guess that’s why I have found it relatively easy to be location free. What’s the point in staying separate and cut off from others– even when communicating from behind a mask nowadays, we can still connect energetically and with a twinkle in our eyes.

PIC – The awesome Malaga crew where I pulled together a writing group and started my book 10 Lessons for Living #locationFree exactly one year ago!! Note the lovely views right on the sea!

Wi-Fi is surprisingly not always high on my agenda, as I prefer working offline with fewer distractions when in writing/blogging mode. In fact, I will often choose cafes that do NOT have Wi-Fi – especially if I am running a writing group – as that just distracts everyone.

My challenge to you today is to visit a local café and watch the world unfold around you! Make it an adventure if you haven’t done it for a while. Take your laptop, a great book, or your journal to pen some thoughts. Let me know what you find on your café outing – I’d love to hear what great conversations you engage in or inspired ideas you come up with when sitting with a different view.

A dear friend just sent me this on Whatsapp this morning – so I will do my level best to simply keep on writing from my heart wherever I am. I just have to. What about you?

“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate, and the governor is out of the country, and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.” Alan W Watts

WANT SOME INSPIRATION ABOUT POSSIBILITY? GRAB MY BRAND NEW BOOK 10 Lessons for Living #LocationFree

Do you wish you had the courage to follow your dream, to quench your wanderlust? To downsize, pack light and explore the world while still working? Do you honestly think others are able do it because they’re younger, richer, are single and have fewer responsibilities, with no kids to tag along?

Wrong. That’s simply not true. This book will show you that it’s possible no matter what your age! Do you really want to play it safe just because you’re no longer in your twenties, waiting on tables as you backpack around the world?

Musings of a Café Writer living #LocationFree was originally published on Kate Emmerson - The Quick Shift Deva

#author #blogger #caref writer #location free writer #travel writing #travelling light #writers holiday

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animeraider · 4 years ago

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An acceptance speech

It figures that with my luck the first time I get to give one of these speeches that I can't have a live audience to give it to. That said, this does give me the opportunity to go over the time limit you usually get at ceremonies and I'm going to take the opportunity given me to pontificate on a couple of things.

First of all, I'd like to thank the Radio Music Awards. It's been a crazy year and my crazy little song about a stalker in the age of COVID-19 who gets caught has it's fans. I've been an independent artist for most of my career, going back 3 decades and getting an acknowledgement of my efforts after all this time is lovely. I've been informed that the trophy is in the mail, so thank you. I'm looking forward to bragging about it for decades.

I'd like to thank Tony Guerro for dreaming up the album that this song was a part of, as well as all of the other great artists who contributed. I'd also like to give a special thanks to a long-time friend of mine, a music teacher named Jill DeWeese for spreading the word about the project in the first place, which is how I got involved.

I'd like to thank NursesHouse.org for all of their work during these horrific times, helping the Nurses who have given their all and sometimes paid with their lives in the cause of saving us all.

I'd like to thank the Guyzos in the band for letting me use the band name even though I played all the instruments and sang the vocals. I'd like to thank MARS for letting me use her studio for the vocals when the amplifier for my microphone gear glitched out.

I'd like to thank the old gang, the ASK INQ people for all their years of support, especially Kevin and Ed and my former partner in crime, Dave. He's got a family now and the statute of limitations has long expired.

I have to thank Billy Joel, of all people. If he hadn't written "Sleeping with the Television On" way back in the way back when I probably wouldn't have come up with this song. Until I came up with lyrics, I used to use the first line of it as a place holder in my song to get the timing right.

I'd like to thank my mom, who took me to my first rock concert, my first jazz concert. and my first classical concert. She helped expand my horizons and was always the voice of encouragement in my corner, from the very first day in 6th grade when I picked up a sax she couldn't afford to get me. Love ya mom!

I'd like to thank my brother Alex, for making me understand the strict work involved in the loosest of music, and for kicking my ass at the exact moment I needed it to start my solo career. Love ya bro!

I'd like to thank the rest of my extended family, Reeds, Storys, Rubins, Veales and more. Especially my Grandmother - a woman who taught me that fear is nothing to be stopped by, and my Grandfather - the first musician in the family who only gave me one piece of advice and it was the most important one I ever got: "Why are you in such a hurry to reach the end of the song?"

I'd even like to thank my long departed dad, who wasn't much in my life but made it one of his life's goals to be the barrier between me and the members of my family (and others) who wanted me to be a Doctor/Politician. He's also the person who made me appreciate that some music needs to be LOUD.

And of course I MUST thank my wife of all these years Catherine, and my daughters Diana and Isobel. I imagine it can't be easy living with a lunatic such as myself and yet they've always been my biggest supporters, fans and critics. I love you, my family. You make me better than I ever thought I could be.

And finally, to my fans who have stuck with me through the years and have been patiently (and impatiently) waiting for my next album, thank you for rallying to the new song. I promise to give you more - much more - very soon.I will put out a lot more music in 2021 than I did in 2020. I wish you nothing but love and happiness.

Whether or not we wish it were so, art doesn't exist in a vacuum. We've been through a horrible year with horrible leadership and that takes a toll on people. I think we as a nation are going to suffer a bit of PTSD while we try to make sense of it all. As for me I was already feeling negative about the country of my birth - you can even see it reflected in a song called "Priorities" from my 2008 album "11/11".

I admit I've had a difficult time putting a new album together. I gained and then lost a new publisher: Gained when my last big single was nominated for this same award, and lost when the power couple running the company fell into a nasty divorce. Have you ever been the PROPERTY in someone's divorce? Ugh.

I wrote and planned out a new album. I debuted a couple of new songs that I've never formally released at POPKOMM. Then an unexpectedly happy thing happened: Obama changed the rules, and gays were allowed to serve openly in the military. I fully support the decision, but it made what was to be the centerpiece of my album irrelevant - a song about a man discharged from the military under Don't Ask Don't Tell and one of the best and most cinematic pieces of music I've ever written.

For the country this was great - for me as an artist it was a setback. Understand that I don't write just songs; I write albums. I now had to re-think and re-do what the album was to be about. That took longer than I would like.

I've done it twice now. What should have been three albums will turn out to only be one.I re-wrote a song because my hand slipped and played a chord one fret off, and it sounded BETTER. I've cut songs, added songs, recorded and abandoned songs. I turned one song about an abusive partner into a song about suicide after a friend of a friend took his own life. I rediscovered my love for an old song by Sniff N' The Tears and wrote a song in tribute. A riff I've had in my head for 30 years finally became a song. I finally read "To Kill a Mockingbird" and a song came out of that. I wrote a song in 35.

I was in an accident in which I broke both arms and damaged a nerve in my leg, the effects I feel to this day. On different occasions I have broken both knees. I fell asleep while driving and lost my driver's license as a result (not because of alcohol, but a sleep disorder previously undiagnosed). I've barely left my home in months, and have had 4 people I know catch COVID-19. One of them died. Larry, thank you for being my friend. I wish I could have been there for you.

I marched in a Black Lives Matter protest, even with my bad knees. I didn't make it to the end I'm afraid. I have protested against this joke of an administration, loudly, and I got my driver's license back.

And I've lived with pain, both physical and mental. It has shaped me for the past several years, and I am still adjusting to that.

We are living through the worst health crisis in our lifetimes, with over 75 million neighbors who want those of us who don't want to get sick and/or die to suck it up and get sick with them. If hate were people I'd be China.

In the meantime I've been writing music, recording music, and discovering music. I've been publishing playlists every week on Spotify of new music under the banner of "Radio Free California". If you follow Chris Reed and the Anime Raiders you'll get new Playlists every week.

In the context of all of this, I've been working on that album.

"Omar", that song Obama made irrelevant, has survived the cut. The song about huckster preachers and played at POPKOMM did not.The Beach Boys inspired song did not. The instrumental I recorded with my daughter on bass did not. A couple of piano pieces I wrote long ago did not make the cut. The deranged surfer instrumental didn't either. I've played the first track for a few people and they all agree it's the most rock and roll thing I've ever written.

I never started recording the Colin Kaepernick song that my friend Kevin wrote lyrics for, the song about the Orlando massacre, or the Irish drinking song I was going to premiere before COVID-19 struck. Life is what happens while you're trying to make plans.

I have lived through the good and the terrible. We all have. It's the moments like this one that make the rest tolerable, so I am of course grateful, thankful, and humbled for being acknowledged with the Radio Music Awards 2020 Award for Best Alternative Song.

And of course I must leave you with my usual thoughts, emblazoned on each of my albums:

Fight the good fight

Practice safe sex

Never be afraid to sweat

And because I love you, here's the song that didn't win the same category 11 years ago:

youtube

#Radio Music Awards #Radio Free California #Streaming #awards speech #Best Alternative Song #The Quarantine Project

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dailyaudiobible · 4 years ago

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08/30/2020 DAB Transcript

Job 34:1-36:33, 2 Corinthians 4:1-12, Psalms 44:1-8, Proverbs 22:10-12

Today is the 30th day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I'm Brian it is a joy to greet the new week together with you and step into it together. It’s this shiny threshold that we throw the gates open and walk into every week and just remind ourselves nothing’s gone right or wrong, not…the bottom hasn’t fallen out of anything and we haven't soared into anything. It's a week that is in front of us and we will live into it, moment by moment and the story of this week will be told with the words that we say the conversations that we have the actions that we take the decisions that we make. That's what's gonna…that's how this week is gonna form itself. And, so, we choose now to center ourselves in God's Word and orient ourselves to Him and to submit ourselves to Him on the front end of the week, not at the backend when everything has gone wrong, now. We get to choose how to live into this week and what posture of heart we will live into it. Like are…are we gonna rage all week long or are we going to be patient? We get to choose that. And, so, let's choose wisely. And one of the wisest choices that we make is to continue the rhythm around the Global Campfire, allowing the Word of God to speak into our lives and inform our week. And, so, let's dive in. We’ll read from the New International Version this week and continue the book of Job. Today chapter 34, 35, and 36.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for bringing us into this shiny sparkly new week and we look to the future with anticipation as we prepare to end a month and begin anew. We mark the passage of time, as we as we always do. The passage of time is an opportunity for us to see Your faithfulness, that You have brought us here, that we are still standing. No matter how worn-out we might be, You have been faithful. We are still here, and we are grateful. And, so, we look forward with longing to all that You will speak to us in Your word and the coming week, all that You will do in our lives in this transformation process, this removal of the veil so that we might see and reflect Your glory upon this earth. What a gift. What an invitation. What an overwhelming sense of possibility, that we get to collaborate with You in the world this week. Come Holy Spirit. May we represent You well. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, home base, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here. So, check it out. You can check it all out using the Daily Audio Bible app as well by hitting the Drawer icon in the upper left-hand corner.

Check out the Community section. This is where the Prayer Wall lives. This is part of what the Global Campfire is, that we are people who pray for each other, that we stay connected, that we actually get invested in each other's stories. We feel that spiritual connection with our brothers and our sisters, people that we may have never seen, people we may actually never be able to lay human eyes on. But as we…as we learn, that doesn’t mean we don't love them, that doesn’t mean we don't care. We are the body, right? If one hurts, we all hurt, and we sense that. And when one rejoices, we all rejoice, and we sense that. So, the Prayer Wall is definitely a resource for always being able to reach out for prayer and in prayer with prayer for one another. So…so check that out.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. The link is on the homepage. If you are using the app, the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner, or the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button. We have a Hotline button in our community. We can always reach out. And that is found in the app, little red button at the top, you can't miss it or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Good afternoon family this is Soaring on Eagles Wings from Canada. If you guys…as you guys will remember, my mom passed away in March. She had breast cancer and other things and I was trying to get to Maryland before she passed but I missed it by hours. But my youngest sister, my baby sister, who has given up her whole life to care for our mom has had a mammogram and they called her for a diagnostic one and now they have seen some…something that they want to go and to a biopsy on. And, so, I’m asking you guys to pray, please in deep prayer for my baby sister Sandra as she’s faced with this now and she is in…is in emotional turmoil already because of the death of our mom. She hasn’t resolved that yet and now the possibility that there may be something there. And I am also a breast cancer survivor. So, please pray with me. My heart is just troubled because I’m concerned for my baby sister. So, I ask you all to join me in prayer and ask for God’s divine intervention so that He would miraculously remove whatever they…that there is…they are seeing their, that the biopsy will show a non-malignant situation. Grant her piece now because I’m sure she’s scared. She’s not saying much but I can imagine her thoughts. So please ask the Lord along with me to wrap His loving arms around her, protect her and keep her mind fixed on Him. She’s a Christian. She loves Jesus and I thank you all. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hey fellow DABbers this is Lincoln from Canada and I was wondering if you would be so kind to pray for my wife and myself. In June it would’ve been six…seven years since we got married and the first six years were pretty rocky but this last year has been a pretty good year until January when my wife informed me that she was leaving and I was completely blindsided by that. I did not see that coming. And, so, after she had moved out, we started some reconciliation efforts and we started to spend a little bit of more time together and things seemed pretty promising until May when it was my birthday. When I came home on my birthday she was at the house and she and surprised me with my favorite meal and she had gotten me some gifts and we spent an amazing weekend together, which was really nice. And then, right the very next weekend she…things weren’t going so well. So, she decided she was going to block me, and I have not had any communication with her in 2 ½ months now. So, today I reached out to her to see if there’s a way that we could come to the table and discuss a plan forward and she doesn’t seem to be willing. So, it is very painful, and it seems this marriage me may end in a divorce and I am praying that may not be the case. So, I’m inviting you to join me in prayer as we seek God’s leading and hopefully, we can get this marriage restored.

Hi Brian and Daily Audio Bible family this is Victory Michelle calling from New York. I’m so glad I was able to get in touch with you guys. I called once before but I don’t think my call got through. I’ve been with the Daily Audio Bible about 12 years now. Here’s my prayer request. I don’t have a job right now and I have some mental health issues that kind of prevent me from working sometimes. So, I really need a job that doesn’t stress out my mental health issues. Also, I’m thousands of dollars behind in my rent. I’ve applied to the city for grant. So, I need prayer that they will grant my request. And basically, that’s it. I’m also behind on my taxes as well. So, I have a lot of financial problems that have been giving me a lot of anxiety and depression. I’d also like prayer for a husband because I’ve been single all my life. I’m in my 50s right now and I believe God wants me to have one. Just want to thank you and I really appreciate being on this call and I hope someone’s able to pray for my prayer request. Thank you.

Hi this is Dorothy out in California. This message is for Jana who has a daughter, Amber in third grade, and you’re worried about school. This is for Shannon. Your birthday is this coming Saturday and you just lost your mom and I am so sorry about your loss. And Prodigal, who you’ve lost everything and you’re struggling with your son who’s addicted to heroin and stole from you a lot of money. Abba please, please, rescue them. Please help them. Please step in. Guys, I can’t…I can’t give…say anything in that I’ve ever experienced…I’ve never been where you’re at. One day you’ll be able to help someone who has been where you’re at. God came to me in a dream a couple days ago. I think it was God. There was this man and his name was Abba but he said make sure to mention only my kids call me that and I was distraught over something and I was ready to give up on life and he had said, there’s more than what you see, don’t give up. Keep going. I love you guys. You are not alone. You have a DAB family. Keep calling and keep posting on the Prayer Wall even if it’s every day. God loves you. He is the God of miracles. He has you in His hands. I love you guys.

Hi, DABbers this is Lucy in Huntsville Alabama. My family lost two members on Tuesday, August 25th. My dad died. I had not called in about him, but I put a prayer request in DAB friends on Facebook. I did not know at this time that a cousin of his who was, I guess she’s a third cousin of mine, she died as well the same morning. She had been diagnosed with melanoma just a few weeks ago and was doing great and suddenly had to be rushed to the hospital a week and half ago and had a pulmonary hemorrhage. They had to do work on her in the hospital, but they couldn’t get her in an ICU bed because there were no ICU beds available because of all the COVID patients. My dad got the COVID-19 also. He was in a nursing home. He was safe but someone brought it in, and he ended up with pneumonia last week and I kept checking on him nobody could visit but he seemed to be doing great until Monday. The nurse told my brother that she thought he was about to die, and he hung on for one more day. I really appreciate your prayers. My brother and I both of us had cancer. My cousin had cancer. I got…her daughter also has another form of cancer. We would really, really appreciate your prayers at this time. Thank you.

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yogaposesfortwo · 5 years ago

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Yoga Studios and Festivals Change Schedules, Protocol Because of Coronavirus

Deep cleaning of props and cancellations are taking hold to help ease anxiety and keep students stay safe, while teachers worry about the consequences. In New York, where there were 11 confirmed cases of COVID-19 a week ago and now 325 cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, Abhaya Yoga in Brooklyn is ensuring its students that they're increasing the number of "deep cleanings" at the studio and are wiping down all surfaces with antibacterial wash twice a day. Teachers are washing their hands before and after class and using hand sanitizer (more than usual). And yoga mats—perhaps the dirtiest culprits of all—are now treated with stronger-than-usual antimicrobial agents. Studio owners across the country are quickly putting policies in place requesting that students stay home if they're sick and give extra care to wiping down their props before they put them away. See also Stressed About Coronavirus? Here's How Yoga Can Help At my own home studio, Blue Lotus in Raleigh, North Carolina, I have decided to stop touching my students entirely, and have intentionally placed the hand sanitizer in a conspicuous place. The studio as a whole has begun taking extra precautions to ensure students' safety, such as providing flip chips for those in other classes who may not want hands-on assists. Other uniquely yogic solutions are popping up, too. Marla Broadfoot, a yoga practitioner and teacher in Wendell, NC, consulted with her students last week about whether to suspend her Savasana forehead massages, to which they said, “no way.” Instead, they suggested adding lavender or tea tree oil to prevent the spread of the virus. “Though I don't believe there is any evidence essential oils would be effective against coronavirus," notes Broadfoot. See also The Ultimate Guide to Cleaning Your Yoga Mat

National Yoga Chains Take Precautions

Meanwhile, larger yoga studio chains are requiring safety protocols to protect students and teachers. The Denver-based yoga chain CorePower Yoga announced last week that it would reduce the use of props and hands-on assists in its classes around the country, and that "hospital-grade disinfectant sprays” would be used to clean equipment, according to an email obtained by FOX Business. In an email from YogaWorks CEO Brian Cooper, students were recently reassured that the company was stepping up its measures to maintain the cleanliness and safety of its 66 facilities across the country—17 of which are in the Los Angeles area where a state of emergency was declared last week after a man died from the virus. "We have increased our professional cleaning schedules, have updated and increased our in-house cleaning by current staff to clean and sanitize frequently touched surfaces, props, and equipment multiple times a day, and are asking all staff and students to refrain from coming into the studios when ill," he wrote. See also This Yoga Sequence Will Reduce Stress and Boost Immunity

Bad For Yoga Business?

When I followed up with Cooper to find out whether YogaWorks had observed a decline in student attendance in wake of the virus, he told me that the company had not seen any major financial or operational impact. “We’ll continue to monitor and always provide a safe and healthy environment for our teachers and students,” he said. Anne Elyse Hartigan, owner of We Yoga Co in Seattle, Washington, where 27 people have died from the virus, says she’s seen a direct impact from all the hysteria in the area on both attendance and business. But it's not just yoga studios that are responding to the outbreak, which has infected over 125,288 people around the world and killed over 4,614. Wanderlust Festival, which produces events in more than 20 countries across Asia, Europe, Australia and Latin America, announced last week that it would not continue with its 2020 events in the United States. CEO Sean Hoess explained that the move was an attempt to minimize disruption and harm before tickets went on sale and festival goers and talent were locked in to travel plans. Hoess says the festival’s venue partners took the worst hit from the decision. “Our events take months and months to plan and if we don’t go on sale now and wait two months, then it’s also too late,” he said by phone. “We got into a situation where the only responsible thing we thought to do would be to cancel.”

Two weeks ago, Wanderlust also canceled multiple planned events in several Asian countries due to the spread of coronavirus, which had a significant financial impact on the parent company here in the U.S., though Hoess said at the time that Wanderlust’s events in Europe would still go on as planned. When I followed up with him a week later he said "The E.U. partners have taken a 'wait and see' approach. Several partners also are trying to move their events to dates later in the year, as Coachella did here.” He explained that in Germany, any event over 1,000 people is currently banned in the country, so any Wanderlust event scheduled there will be canceled if the ban is not lifted by then. “Their attitude is that there's no reason to cancel now, as things could always improve,” Hoess said. “Let's all hope so.” In an email sent to Wanderlust subscribers last week, Hoess wrote that the festival’s global operations make the company especially "vulnerable to unusual and unexpected disruptions." The potential for cancellations escalated March 11, when Trump announced travel bans from the U.S. to Europe. The decision to cancel the U.S. events, according to Hoess, did not have anything to do with any current location of the outbreaks of the virus so much as it did the unpredictability and uncertainty of where the virus will continue spread and how those ramifications could potentially affect large public gatherings like yoga festivals. Many other yoga festivals and conferences have followed suit as emergencies are declared in states from Virginia to Arizona. As many attendees arrived in Phoenix en route to the Sedona Yoga Festival that night, news that the festival had been canceled began to spread.

The Impact of Losing In-Person Yoga Experiences

In the meantime, Wanderlust plans to shift its focus to serving its community in the digital sphere—though Hoess admits there’s no real substitute for the human connection that exists within a festival experience. “We all have to face the reality that life may become a little different and people may be thinking differently about how they gather—there’s always opportunities to bring people together,” he said. Though he doesn’t expect to replace the physical experience with a digital one, Hoess says there has to be a way to create meaningful human interactions for wellness practitioners online. Some studios are following suit; Abhaya Yoga, for instance, will soon begin offering some of its classes on Zoom and Facebook Live. In-person experiences in general appear to be on a steady decline, at least for now. Traveling teachers who rely on income from workshops and retreats have made tough decisions of their own this month. Kevin Lamb, an Anusara-trained teacher based in Brooklyn, recently postponed a retreat at Locando Del Gallo in Umbria, Italy, after the travel advisory reached a Level 3 status and the death toll from coronavirus had surpassed 100. “Signups were considerably less than previous years,” he told me in an email. “While I’m certain the coronavirus contributed to that I cannot say it was the only factor—I will say I have been leading international retreats for over seven years now and this is the first one I’ve had to postpone.” Yoga Medicine founder Tiffany Cruikshank recently postponed a retreat in Bali. "It was the toughest decision I’ve had to make," she told me in an email. "In all my years doing this I’ve never rescheduled a training." Cruikshank says that despite the implications the postponement will have on her business, it was the only way she could put the health and safety of her students and teachers first. "I know that most of our community are either healthcare providers or work in the healthcare industry or work with sick students, and so that added another layer of complication," she said. "It’s my goal first and foremost to support the hard work they do with their clients along their journey to health, rather than compromise it." Santa Barbara-based Jivana Heyman, director of Accessible Yoga, recently postponed an upcoming training in Tokyo, where the spread of coronavirus is mounting. Heyman says his hosts had advised him not to come because students were unlikely to sign up. He said the yoga scene there had been impacted in response to the closure of a hot studio that was suspected to have transmitted the virus. "It's impacting my schedule because I plan at least a year in advance and teach all over the place," he said, adding that he's already seen lower enrollment in his trainings than usual in Kansas City, New York City, and New Haven, just within in the past month; offerings that typically have wait lists. "People are hesitant to book travel and then to spend time in a studio for a weekend," he said. "It’s a scary time and we don’t know what's going to happen next." See also Change Your Stress Response Heyman says that until recently, he’s been fortunate and his trainings have been lucrative. He said that reverting back to the uncertainty and unpredictability of “the unknown” is, in fact, quite normal for any yoga teacher. "This is my comfort zone," he said with a laugh. Heyman specializes in training yoga teachers to work with people with disabilities and other sensitive populations that could be more susceptible to contracting the virus, such as senior citizens, hospital patients, and children. When asked how he might supplement his income should he continue to see a decline in attendance at his trainings, Heyman said that given the communities he's training teachers to serve, he's afraid there just isn't an effective way to replace in-person trainings with online ones. "Community building in-person is just such a big part of yoga for me and I just can't let that go," he said. Heyman fears that increasing isolation could create a new problem, and compromise the mental and physical health and well-being of already vulnerable populations. See also An Accessible Yoga Practice You Can Do In a Chair And many yoga professionals would likely agree. The community aspect of a yoga experience is a top draw for any practitioner—and with so many smaller, independent studios struggling to stay afloat the last thing that any studio needs is a decline in student attendance. "There isn't anything that has made me feel uneasy about walking into a studio as a student," says teacher Broadfoot in North Carolina. “If anything, I feel like it helps me build up my armor for dealing with the uneasiness or anxieties of the outside world.” Is your studio taking precautions to keep the space sanitized for students? Are you concerned about group fitness in general? We encourage you to keep practicing to keep your immune system healthy, and to consult this COVID-19 resource guide from Yoga Alliance for more safety tips. Author: Andrea Rice Source: https://www.yogajournal.com/lifestyle/coronavirus-yoga-mat-cleaning-and-festival-cancellations Discover more info about Yoga Poses for Two People here: www.yogaposesfortwo.com Read the full article

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ah17hh · 4 years ago

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Shades of Grey of Cheating via /r/polyamory

Shades of Grey of Cheating

About 5 years ago, my wife, myself, and another guy were in a Triad. It was heavenly while it lasted, but the guy ended up breaking up with my wife (she can be a handful at times) but staying in a relationship with me for another month before ending it due to my wife’s incessant interference.

Originally when we started poly, I wanted it to always be a thing we explore together, more swinger than poly but always by each other’s side when we had experiences together. That lasted maybe a week when she met a guy on Tinder and started a relationship but the guy was too straight to have a threesome even if there was no touching. She had that relationship for 3 years before the other one I started off mentioning. He moved in, and I didn’t charge him rent nor make him pay for food or utilities. She would try to keep me satisfied sexually to keep things even, she’d usually put me to bed most nights, but then after we made love and I fell asleep, she’d go upstairs and spend the night with him. She would stay awake all night with him, then fall asleep around 3-4am and end up being woken up by toddlers left unsupervised until they were hungry enough to wake mommy up. I’d wake up alone, then head off to work feeling lonely. When I got home each day, I’d usually walk in in the middle of them fighting about something mostly so they could have make up sex later. I hit a snag in my business dealings and was facing eviction because I was short on rent, he used money he had saved up to get his own place rather then help with rent. That didn’t end their relationship though, at least I’d have her in bed with me most nights but then most weekends, when I actually had time to relax and connect, she’d be gone and I’d be alone. Many times she’d compare me, a tech geek entrepreneur who sits in front of a computer all day to make money, to him unfavorably, where he is ex-army judo master fuck machine. Oh I really came to hate him and resent her for that, she and I had good lovemaking before but he was amaze balls, and our lovemaking after him always left her wanting some other kind of touch or caress from me that he gave her and I couldn’t seem to match it. She got so many threesomes for him, but any time I got even just a date she would start a fight just before so I was in a bad mood and late. He finally cheated on her with one of the girls my wife was going to surprise him with a threesome with for his birthday, which he confessed to her on a Valentine’s Day that I thought would be just the two of us and I had tried to plan for, but that she insisted he be invited to. Ruined all my plans, and I had to be the one she cried to every night and spent a year consoling her through that relationship until they reconciled a bit and became friends with benefits who see each other just a few times a year.

So back to this other dude. I finally get to explore my bi side, and I got to do it with her as I wanted in the first place. I finally felt happy, while it lasted, and when he broke up with her I felt it was within our agreements and even precedented by her past relationship that I be able to explore this one on my own. So I kept seeing him despite her requests that I break up with him, and even scheduled a sleepover medicine journey (lsd trip) with him. My wife begged me not to go as she didn’t “trust him after how he broke up with me”, I told her I was going, that we probably wouldn’t be sexual as we were respecting the lsd journey with each other more than we wanted to explore our lust, but if we were I’d be safe and let her know after. She begged me again, but I just repeated what I said. It did end up with a little bit of sexual connection, but nothing major and I did tell her about it after and reaffirmed my love for her to try to help her not feel any jealousy.

Fast forward to the last 2 years, she brings this up constantly as me cheating on her, as well as a time with a woman I openly had a crush on came up to me and started making out with me, the day after my wife made out with her in a hot tub, which I told her about immediately after and thought we were ok as I didn’t do anything she hadn’t done herself the night before. She told me part of her died that day (we hadn’t decided to be poly yet before the kiss incident, just playing around with a close friend), and that at that point she didn’t feel any marital obligation to me. She never told me that until now, like 7 years later in a 12 year marriage. Now to be fair, she hit her head 2 years ago and got a brain injury, her personality has changed to angry/irritated all the time, and for the last 2 years every resentment she has ever had has come up, and she’s been getting nightmares so all of this comes up just before bed so she doesn’t have to sleep. I’ve been exhausted, frustrated, and completely disillusioned about the magic of our marriage.

Since she’s been angry/irritable all the time (and won’t get help for fear they’ll find some incurable disease or cancer in the process), love making has been exceedingly hard and as such very rare. I think her hormones sensors in her brain got knocked around and so her body is dumping tons of unhelpful hormones in her system preparing for early menopause. She’s threatened a few times that if I don’t just throw her down and ravish her (she’s told her friends I was physically violent with her when I tried that one time, ruining a friendship), that she was going to go out and find someone who would. She did exactly that about 2 months ago, then tried to not tell me for a month, where for a month she accused me of every wrongdoing imaginable, even accusing me of molesting our kids, then bringing up every unspoken resentment over the last 12 years of marriage, most of which I either just wrote out the explanation to, or could easily have been resolved in the moment if she’d just spoken up then. She is not shy, I’m the shy one in the marriage, so I have no idea why she kept those things in, but to be saturated by them all at once, especially after being accused of child molestation, then being told I’d been cheated on, then being told it was my fault for not meeting her sexual needs... then she tells me her reasons for marrying me were more about looking good to her family because she thought she was actually gay and since I am bi she thought I was too, and we could be married and just friends, be each other’s beards I guess, yet here we are where sex is her biggest complaint and so she goes for it with another guy, not a girl, instead of just trying to keep her inside thoughts inside for a night so I can at least try to get hard without her getting insecure that I’m not attracted to her anymore. None of this makes sense and isn’t consistent, I know, traumatic brain injury and underlying pre-existing personality disorder can do that, but I love her anyway.

Of course I’m a bit bitter and probably in a toxic relationship now, but I’m also not the type of man to run when his partner gets sick. I’m sure it’s mostly the head injury and resulting personality change, but she has gotten somewhat better the last couple years and so I keep hope alive that she’ll fully recover

But I really need to know, from the advanced level masters of poly, am I the cheating bastard for being kissed by my crush, or giving my boyfriend a blowjob even though he broke up with my wife? I don’t think so, and I’m sure I probably subconsciously presented the evidence in a way that emphasizes my innocence, so please tear me a new one if I am and poke all the holes in my story... or give my heart some validation and tell me I’m not crazy and I’m being emotionally manipulated by the girl I love who is almost as bad as an abused dementia patient but is recovering. Trying to be a stand up guy but may need to take some time just for me soon and see how it feels to be on my own again if that’s what wants to happen. If I did go that route I could still stay legally married for a year or so, so she could get help on my insurance, but she wants me to get her an RV first so she has someplace to stay with our kids and can run away if COVID gets really bad (paranoia with her head injury maybe?)

Please give me feedback so I can decide on my next action.

Submitted August 02, 2020 at 10:40PM by MoJoe1 via reddit https://ift.tt/39NbRLq

#IFTTT #reddit

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moonlitfirefly · 5 years ago

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A letter from an Ebola nurse (me) to the COVID-19 nurses (all of us):

It is OK to be scared.

Imma say that one more time.

It is totally, absolutely, completely, and wholly OK to be really, really, really, really scared.

It’s OK to be scared about going to work.

It’s OK to be scared about getting infected at work.

It’s OK to be scared about not being one of the “minor” cases if you DO get sick.

It’s OK to be scared about being on a ventilator.

It’s OK to be scared about dying.

It is completely normal to be scared about exposing your family to the virus.

It’s normal to be scared - terrified - that you might be the one who gets your husband/wife/partner sick.

Who gets your mother/father/Nana/Pops/beloved elder sick.

Or worse.

It is OK to be at the end of your tether about how to manage being the one who has to work, carry the health insurance, and figure out how to fill the next six open, isolated weeks with your children at home. And support your partner now that they’ve lost their job.

To be overwhelmed by being so frightened at the thought of having to go back to work tonight — but knowing that by doing so, you are the final fragile thread that is keeping your whole family’s life tied together.

It’s OK to be so unbelievably fucking pissed at your hospital. At the for-profit healthcare system we’ve got in this country that allows administration to endorse minimal precautions in an effort to not have to find/purchase/steal/commandeer the PPE that will keep you safe.

If they’re not fighting for you now, will they ever? (#Unionize)

It’s OK to be enraged at a country so broken, so politicized, so skewed away from the tenets of basic humanity that we aren’t immediately implementing comprehensive testing, and taking even more radical steps towards mass isolation to ensure most of us make it through this alive.

Because some of us won’t.

Us. Nurses. Doctors. Healthcare workers.

Some of us won’t make it out of this alive.

And it’s OK to grieve.

And grieve hard when it happens.

A little more than five years ago, I stood in the “green” zone of my Ebola Treatment Unit in Sierra Leone. I watched over the fence as one of my nurses, one of my ‘national’ nurses, a nurse from Sierra Leone, fighting to save her own country, her own people, was escorted out of the back of an ambulance into the “red” zone, tired and pale and sick, had her blood drawn by her co-workers in full PPE, and was housed in the “Suspected” ward.

I stood there, and I wept. I cried and cried and cried. I couldn’t touch my face to cover my tears, so I just wept openly under a hot, hazy sky.

Gabriel, having left his family safely in northern Sierra Leone to come south to fight for his country as well, was one of our ‘sprayers.’ (They walked with us in the Unit and sprayed everything except the patients with diluted bleach, both before and after we touched it.) He walked up behind me, and stayed precisely three feet away from me.

“Don’t cry, Martha.”

I kept crying. “I am so FUCKING SICK of nurses and doctors dying. I am so FUCKING SICK of this thing killing us.”

“Don’t cry. It will be OK.”

I looked at him, red-faced and swollen and utterly broken. “How do you know? How will it be OK?”

Gabriel paused for a minute, looked at the sun behind the clouds, looked at the big trees covered in red dust outside the walls of the ETU, looked at the walls of the red zone, at the shack behind the “Confirmed” ward where we stacked the bodies of the dead, soaked in chlorine bleach and zipped into bodybags, and soaked in bleach again.

“I don’t know.” He said. But he smiled at me, just a small, comforting smile. “I don’t know how. But it will be OK.”

I signed up to be an Ebola nurse.

I chose that path, deliberately, passionately.

You didn’t sign up to be COVID-19 nurse.

You didn’t choose this path.

You didn’t get any choices about this at all.

So.

It’s OK to be scared.

It’s OK to be angry.

It’s OK to be exhausted.

It’s OK to be sad.

It’s OK to grieve.

Find your steps along this path in the way that feels right to you.

Be angry. Scared. Tired. Sad. Terrified.

But never forget that along with all those other feelings, you’re still - and always will be - a nurse.

Never forget the strength and history and legacy that comes with that title.

Even if you don’t feel it, it’s there.

You are more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

And as an Ebola nurse, I’m more proud of all of you than I can ever possibly say.” -Martha Phillips

#registered nurse #nurse #ebola nurse #covid-19 #honest #intergrity #courageous #genuine

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