Tag: disability

you are strong

You Are Strong

By Hanna | Featured Contributor


Sometimes Strong Is:

Taking a break
Having a cry
Listening to your body
Holding your tongue
Asking for help
Saying you can’t
Getting out of bed
Turning around
Feeling grateful
Feeling scared
Feeling helpless
Slowing down
Being mindful
Not knowing
Trusting
Loving with your whole heart
Wanting with your whole heart
Breathing through the pain
Just being here
Existing.

My dear reader, thank you for reading! I do hope you enjoyed. I wrote this poem for myself when I was in a lot of pain, but really this poem is for you. Let me explain…

Continue reading “You Are Strong”

Hope Was Not a Loss: A Story About Measles Encephalitis

By Barbara Leonhard | Featured Contributor


In this article, I would like to share my story of how an illness I suffered as a child affected me. Particularly with the climate of today, I hope this will help inform people of the consequences that can develop in young children who are at risk of getting certain illnesses.

It was the summer of 1958, and it seemed to have happened all at once, where I turned from an active six-year-old girl to a helpless baby overnight. At that time, my family was living in Lewistown, Montana, where my dad was a Presbyterian minister. Mom was at home with three children, aged seven to four. That summer, all three of us contracted measles. But while my siblings’ illnesses took a more benign course, I developed a life-threatening complication: measles encephalitisa serious and potentially fatal inflammation of the brain that can occur either during the rash phase of measles or following the illness itself.

I have often contemplated my own battle with measles encephalitis…because it did indeed nearly kill me.

Continue reading “Hope Was Not a Loss: A Story About Measles Encephalitis”