Tomorrow.

A day I spent the weekend NOT thinking about. Or at least telling myself to NOT think about. Another ultrasound. Another opportunity to take off my clothes, slip into a scratchy hospital gown, and lie back on a table so a technician can shake a bottle of goo, fresh from the warmer, and splatter it onto the skin above my ovaries.

As I walked down the wildflower strewn road at my parent’s house on Sunday morning, I had a little pity party for myself about the rock and the hard place I am stuck between.

When I got back to the house, I flopped onto the guestroom bed (insert dramatic, I hate my life flop), pulled my laptop onto my knees, and logged on to Facebook to escape my troubles.

As soon as I saw this picture, my clouded perspective cleared, like a crowded etch-a-sketch after a good shake. The fear of cancer is real, and I don’t want to downplay it (especially for the many people who are fighting for their lives). But when I get out of my head, I see how minor my current “I might end up with cancer again” fears are when compared to the tens of thousands of people who have died of starvation recently in East Africa…

A CBC article about what the United Nations is calling the worst hunger emergency in a generation caught my attention and rattled me out of my ‘poor me’ funk. The World Food Program estimates 11.3 million people across the Eastern Horn of Africa urgently need food and medical supplies. 11.3 million people! 

I know sometimes my eyes glaze over (and maybe yours do too) when I think about the magnitude of this crisis. It becomes easy to forget that each of these people have a story. In a CBC article written by Kazi Stasna, he interviews Austin Kennan of the Concern Aid Organization who says, “The stories are actually what made it so horrendous, because every single family had lost two or more children.”

His words lodge in my head on repeat, “every single family has lost two or more children.” How can a mother bear this kind of suffering? How would you bare it? (more…)