Health Care

Honoring Child Safety in Our Hearts and Keeping It All the Year

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not (and please pardon me for hearkening back to yuletide when your azaleas are finally blooming), you’ve probably heard that famous line of Scrooge’s from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol: “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” That line was on my mind in the last days of April, which was Child Abuse Prevention Month. I realize that we need to have days, weeks, and months like this to raise awareness about important issues, but the fact is that child predators won’t conveniently wait until next April to abuse children. So if children are at risk of abuse year round, we adults must have their protection at the forefront of our minds year round.

Happy Mother's Day! (cringe)

Mother's Day — you might wonder why a woman would cringe at that. Maybe she recently lost a child or suffered a miscarriage. Maybe she misses her mother. But often, it's because she's experiencing infertility. Mother's Day can be incredibly difficult for women experiencing infertility. Fifteen years after my own experience, my wishes on Mother's Day are to help women celebrate the day, not struggle through it.