Will We Ever Be Healthy?

The last few months have been particularly grueling. It's not language barriers, difficulties at school, transportation, or finances, in spite of that five week government shutdown.

It's our health. The five of us cannot seem to get healthy and stay that way. Seventeen days ago, Dash started fussing loudly in her sleep. This is my clue that she's about to spike a fever and sure enough, she was running about 101 degrees Fahrenheit by 4 AM. She woke with a wet cough as well, so I figured she'd caught some virus at school.

Later that morning, a mother with twins in Dash's maternelle texted me a photo indicating that someone in the class had been diagnosed with scarlet fever. Well, okay then. Dash is coughing and her throat doesn't hurt, so it's not strep.

When her fever went over 102 with ibuprofen in her the following evening, I got worried and we asked a neighbor from our church to come and help give her a Priesthood Blessing.  I had also walked to the nearest open pharmacy to purchase acetaminophen. That proved just a bit trickier because the drug names here are different. I put Google to work when the pharmacists offered a specific liquid for fevers to confirm that what I was purchasing was, in fact, what I was looking for.

Shortly thereafter, I smelled it.

If you've had children with it before, you know that smell. The smell of strep throat.

Ugh. It was a Saturday night and the only thing open was the emergency room. I made a call to the Embassy nurse and she agreed to meet me the next morning to check Dash.

She did not run the strep test, mainly because Dash had the swollen lymph nodes, spots on her tonsils, and the unmistakable strep smell. So, we gave her a nice, juicy shot of penicillin and I expected everything to be okay by the next morning.

Nope. Thirty six hours later, Dash was still running a fever over 101 so I took her back in. By then, her throat wasn't red and the lymph node swelling was gone, but Dash was clearly still sick.  The clinical diagnosis we were given was "virus" and that I should expect the fever to last 8-10 days and the cough to persist for a couple of weeks after that.

Dash finally went to school for a half day a full week after she'd started showing symptoms.  The night before, however, The Reader, who is now 12 years old, started running a fever and coughing. From one child to the next . . .

Four days later, we were in The Netherlands at the Scoliosis Care Clinic, the facility we have picked to treat The Reader's scoliosis. She napped and coughed on the three hour drive up, survived the two and a half hour fitting, and then napped and talked with me on the drive home. It was a very long day. Dash came with us, still coughing, but in good spirits otherwise. On the return trip, the weather was rough. We drove through some snow but mostly it was a slushy rain. In California, driving in the rain wasn't much of a problem because they use reflectors on the highways that can still be seen in a downpour. In Belgium, they do not do that. The paint is minimally reflective so add on a frozen, slushy mess on unfamiliar roads on the outskirts of Antwerp and I was a wreck. I could not see the lines and my life and those of my children were depending on my ability to seeeeeeee. With one quick second of freak out, I maneuvered my van behind a big rig in the slow lane and just stayed there, using his tread marks to line myself up on the road. The lines on the road appear at certain points, but for about 10 kilometers, I was driving with my trust fully on the location of the truck in front of me.

I'm not exaggerating when I say it was the second scariest conditions I've ever driven through. I was so very glad to get HOME that night.

By the following morning, The Reader was running a scary high fever. When our mercury thermometer hit 105.1, I tamped down the immediate panic attack and called the nurse to see if I needed to take her to the ER or not. The verdict was for me to bring her in as quickly as possible, so I had The Reader put on a face mask and we made our way to the embassy.

It was pretty clear to me that she had the same virus as her little sister but because she has more sensitive lungs, it was having a greater impact. The nurse said she had pneumonia, gave her a breathing treatment, and would be willing to give an antibiotic, but since the initial illness was viral, it wouldn't do much but that what was really needed, was for The Reader to get hydrated. It was then that I thought about just how little my fever-running-daughter had drunk on our trip the day before.

Less than 12 ounces of water. 

So, with all the effort she could muster, we started having her sip water and an electrolyte beverage, sip by sip, until she was hydrated.  Her fever came down to a reasonable level.

Over the course of the next few days, The Reader was supposed to be increasing her number of hours in her new RSC brace. The brace applies pressure to one part of her ribs while allowing room for expansion in another part, helping to reverse the curve in her ribs and increase her lung capacity in the "squished" lung.

Wearing a brace while coughing cannot possibly be fun. Those first few days though, my darling child managed to keep adding hours of brace time at night.  First three hours, then five, then six, then eight and last night, she wore it for nine hours. On top of that, she has slowly been adding hours during the day. Today she wore the brace to our two hour church block as well as at least another three hours while we spent the afternoon as a family.

The clinic gave her a schedule to adjust but it seems my daughter is on her own accelerated schedule, which is fine by me!

The brace has a temperature sensor on it to monitor compliance, so The Reader also knows the clinic will be able to read how much she's wearing the brace when we return for her in-brace imaging.

The Reader has missed six school days with her illness and is still coughing but knows she really needs to return to school, so she is planning on that for tomorrow.

That said, Spitfire will not be going to school. She went to school feeling crummy on Friday but because she wasn't running a fever, I sent her anyway. She's now coughing and running a low grade fever, having caught that same stupid virus but not reacting as badly. We haven't had an actual flu test run, but late last week Belgium announced they're officially at "epidemic" level of flu in the country, so I believe it's what my girls have been fighting, one by one.

My husband has been on the brink of illness for over a few weeks, too. It's like he just can't quite get healthy.  None of them can.

In all this, I haven't had much more than a little stuffy nose and a mild, dry cough, but that's pretty normal for me no matter the season.

What's happened the last two and a half weeks is just an extension of what we have been dealing with since we moved to Belgium. One illness after another and then another. . . It's exhausting.  As I rest in bed at night, thinking about my day, I can't feel anything in my chest. My mind races but my heart beats so softly I can't feel it, and that's unnerving too.

When you go your entire life using your own heartbeat to rhythmically put you to sleep, and then all of a sudden you can't feel it in your chest or hear it in your ears, the silence is deafening.

So as my children get sick one by one, over and over again, I'm left wondering how long I have until my heart beats so softy it just "gives up" . . .

The cardiologist insists my low voltage isn't "that low" and I confess that on these meds, I seem to do pretty good three of every four weeks, but having lost my mother, both my grandmothers, and my mother-in-law at young ages, my own mortality haunts me as I try to sleep.

My First Belgian ER Trip

You all know my family moved to Brussels 8 weeks ago. We were not informed that we'd be in a hotel for more than a week until about 12 hours before the movers came and packed everything out, giving us little to no time to rearrange our stuff.

We moved in a smelly, gross hotel with the tiniest kitchenette I've ever seen (It has one functioning burner) and none of the restaurants are open for dinner because they only cater to the business lunch crowds. This has meant some serious challenges in trying to feed the family, as there is also only a teeny-tiny grocery store nearby and the prices are quite high.

This has been really stressful for me, apparently, and I've developed a heart condition thanks to all of it.

We finally move into our home on Thursday, but we won't have our household stuff, including sheets and towels, until Friday.

This heart condition is likely a part of me for the rest of my life. My mother developed a similar problem at the exact same age during a high-stress summer. She was on heart meds for the rest of her life and eventually died of heart failure at the ripe ol' age of 55.

I'm freakin' scared that the family decision we made has ruined my heart and will forever taint the wonderful experiences I have been having and will continue to have here in Brussels.

My sensitive 8 year old was so upset by my trip to the ER on Saturday that her stomach is all messed up and she's had to stay home to be near the bathroom today. The other girls are scared, too.

For those of you in the medical field, it's a persistent PVC with pretty low voltage. The PVC's are occurring at a rate of 8-20 times a minutes so it's pretty bad. All my minerals and other labs came back perfect so there is no medical reason for this to have happened.

Until I meet with the cardiologist next week, I have been told to be as sedate as possible (ha! we're MOVING again this week and it's a 20 minute walk from the metro to my kid's school, each way, twice a day until that move happens). The doctor at the hospital has put me on the European version of the same exact medication my mother was one. According to my father, she didn't have PVC but she would develop a very hard, fast heart rate. I am on the lowest dose possible and it seems to help, but is wearing off too soon. So I sleep great, wake up and have about 2-3 hours where I still feel good, and then my heart feels all wrong again for the rest of the day. The cardiologist is highly respected by the medical staff here at the Embassy so I am hoping he is as good as they say. I was sent to a specific hospital by the embassy health unit and it happens to be the nearest local hospital. I was worried that I was bankrupting us but my heart was beating so badly that I felt I didn't have any choice. I found out just why so many people love socialized health care! For the entire 3-4 hours visit, including being seen by multiple doctors, getting an x-ray, 5 vials of blood, and continuous monitoring, the out-of-pocket cost for us was under 300 Euros. In the US, that would have run well over 10 times that amount. I will not hesitate to go to the ER again!

But that said, as I sit here feeling my heart do flip-flops around itself, i'm frustrated and scared. This wasn't supposed to happen. I'm the healthy one in the family. I'm only 10 pounds overweight, my blood work is always perfect and other than infertility-causing autoimmune weirdness, I've always been pretty darn healthy. So a heart condition that makes it so I can barely stand on a metro, or walk down the street, is painful.

What I Mean by Clear Bathroom Doors

As promised, I'm including some photos of the bathrooms doors that I mentioned in my last post.

 In this first picture, the bathroom door is closed. There is a reflective coating on the glass that allows you to see the bed. I am standing at the foot of the bed, for reference' sake. Please note that you can
A) see the toilet
B) see the bathroom counter
C) see EVERYTHING in there

If I turn out the light inside the bathroom, it's harder to see through but still possible. The other bathroom is in the middle of the hallway, which is even worse. We're admittedly grateful that this bathroom is around the corner from where the kids are!

The kitchenette is quite small. Although there are 2 burners in that space, it only has space for one pot unless both are tiny. We're a family of 5, so tiny pots don't work. The movers forgot to pack one drawer of spices but that's ended up being a pleasant thing because those spices have already been put to use with several of our meals. Below the stovetop is the adequately sized dishwasher. In the cupboard above the stove is a microwave and then above that, the two pots and skillet the hotel has for our use. Below the spices is the fridge. . . on the other side, garbage and a handbroom is below the sink. The sink is tinier than the stove and set up so that if you try to wash a dish, it knocks the faucet and turns the water off, which is frustrating. Above the sink in the first cupboard is the dish supply (there are more wine glasses than dishes in that thing) and above that is a bunch of coffee equipment because apparently, the giant coffee maker on the counter isn't enough! The middle top cupboard is where we're keeping cereal and rice.

We're making it work, mostly because we don't have much choice, and trying to laugh through the chaos. It will be another 2 weeks before we hear if the gov't has signed a lease for a home for us and after that there will still be a delay before we can move in. I am hoping that delay is as short as possible.

Touring the City without a Phone

Since I last posted, my husband and I have given up on another pregnancy. We did several more medicated rounds, but with the stress of the death of my beloved mother-in-law and then returning to teaching, we couldn't keep it up any more.
If my spouse asked to give it another shot, I absolutely would, but I'm more or less at peace with our decision to be done.
It's strange though, because I'd always wanted four children and even now when I could kids or sometimes when I've set the table, I start to count out 6, rather than the 5 of us that there are. It's not upsetting, but there's a small piece of my family that will always be missing.
Either days ago I stepped off an airplane in foreign country, something I haven't done since I was 14 years old. That country was an English speaking one, so although the accent was fun, I knew what was being said around me and how to communicate with waiters, sales clerks, etc.
But here in Brussels?
Nope.
I have always tried to help those around me who couldn't speak English and am so grateful now to be having the experience where I am now the oddball. My children have been begging me to let them get ice scream and waffles (yes, it's a thing here) but I'm legitimately scared of trying to order such a thing from a street vendor.
We are in temporary living quarters for the next 2 months. Our location is pretty fantastic but the accommodations are pretty awful. It could be worse, don't get me wrong, but it's pretty bad. I'll post pictures when I get a chance, but imagine this: You're in a two room suit. One suit has a king sized bed with a gigantic picture of a woman with hair in her face over the bed. The picture takes up the entire wall. The bathroom has a near constant smell of fart or leftover fecal matter and there's no fan to clear it out. The shower stall is clear as is the door between the bedroom and the bathroom. Yes, CLEAR. As in, you can see right through it so nobody can go to the toilet in privacy. There is less than three feet between the toilet and the king sized bed . . .The second suit is similarly designed, although it has a decent sized tub in addition to the stinky shower. There's a tiny kitchenette and by tiny, I mean that although there are two burners, you can only use one at a time because you cannot fit two pots on there simultaneously.
Because we have a kitchenette, we do not qualify for the meal reimbursement we expected to get and really wish we had available to us. We're sinking about 100 euros a day into food because there isn't a decent grocery story nearby and nothing within walking distance is open for dinner. We could live off sandwiches from the local mini-mart style things on all the street corners, but each sandwich runs about $4 each and there are 5 of us and . . . sandwiches get really boring, really fast.
We've only been here 8 days and I'm already annoyed by the struggle to feed the kids 3 times a day. Dash had cereal for dinner last night. I've been a parent for 12 years and this was the first time I'd ever said anyone was eating cereal for dinner.  There are plenty of places to stop and grab lunch but the only places open for dinner are those that cater to city-living, meaning, hangout on  a patio and drink for a couple of hours. They are not kid-friendly at all.
We've spent hours upon hours on our feet, walking around the city, hopping on public transit, and walking some more. I'm getting to know the Metro here pretty well and will get better about the trains and trams as well with some practice.
Today I navigated several square miles without a working phone. Oh, did I not mention my phone problems yet?
Yes, we've been here 8 days but our phones were cut off on day 2, so I've been without cell service or data all week. This means I've been using old school maps to get from point A to point B. My kids gave me an A- for our adventures earlier this morning and an A+ for later in the morning. The minus is because I walked down one street too far at one point, but this actually allowed me to get some cash out of an ATM and let us walk down a busier street, which also felt safer. . . so maybe I deserve an A for overall navigation. Yes??
I'm heading over to the Embassy again later today with the hope that I can meet with the cell provider that will be there. A week without service (oh yeah, I signed up for service last week, so it SHOULD have been working 6 days ago) is rather ridiculous.

Autoimmune Testing

Back in April I was referred to a reproductive endocrinologist with experience treating infertility caused by autoimmune issues. I had a lot of blood drawn over the following 6 weeks. I know it wasn't record setting by any stretch of the imagination, but it came to 35 vials.

Prior to the first draw, I had been eating a decently strict grain-free diet. This meant no corn, wheat, barley, rice, etc. I didn't eat potatoes, either. My results came back with elevated cytokines and speckled ANAs but everything else was pretty normal, including the bloodwork that led to my diagnosis with antiphospholipid antibody syndrome several years ago.

At that point, I was pretty tired of having so many of my foods restricted, so I spent 2 weeks eating whatever I wanted. The test was run again and my level of ANAs doubled which to me was a pretty clear indicator that my immune system responds negatively when I eat grains. After a couple days of some hard introspection and a few discussions with friends who've treated immune issues with dietary changes and a friend I have in the medical field with Crohn's Disease, I decided to go beyond the grains and adopt the Autoimmune Protocol, an eating lifestyle that is highly restrictive in the foods consumed with the intent of healing the immune system.

A little over two weeks after making those dietary changes, I had additional autoimmune testing run by a rheumatologist.  The results came back and I got quite a shock: everything came back completely normal. Those speckled ANAs? Gone.

So as much as I absolutely don't like these restrictions, my immune system is now behaving just as it should and that makes it worth it.

For now.

When I say restricting, let me give you a list of the things I can't eat.

No: wheat, barely, oats, corn, etc
No seeds, including quinoa
No dairy (you know I love cheese!!)
No soy
No nightshades (things like tomatoes, bell peppers, other peppers, cumin, eggplant)
No spices made from nightshades
No nuts
No eggs
No foods made with preservatives like nitrates/nitrites
No sugar
Limited fruits (because of sugar content)

So what does that mean I can eat? Well, I can eat lots of meats and green veggies that aren't peppers. I can have uncured bacon, chicken, beef, pork, and fish but seasoning these is sometimes a challenge. I can have coconut, including coconut milk.
I can have zucchini, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, leaks, celery, and carrots.
I can have sweet potatoes. Did you know they come in white and purple as well? White sweet potatoes are very similar to regular potatoes in taste and texture so they make great hash browns.
I can have cassava flour, coconut flour, and arrowroot flour, all good choices for baking or thickening sauces.
I can have coconut aminos, which taste like a slightly sweetened soy sauce.
I can have berries. Strawberry season around here lasted almost 8 weeks. It has been heavenly!!
I can have broccoli and cauliflower, both cruciferous veggies that I enjoy cooked in a variety of ways.
I can have cilantro, oregano, black pepper, salt, ginger, onion, garlic and any other herbs that suit my fancy.
I can have avocados (um, yummmmm!)
I can have a "caesar salad dressing" made from avocados, oil, fish sauce, and a couple of spices. It's actually really good and is a recipe I will keep using even after I'm off this crazy train.

Breakfast has been my hardest challenge. I really do love eggs and veggies for breakfast so what I've found myself doing more often than not is eating leftovers from dinner for breakfast. On Tuesday I browned some pork sausage from a local farm along with some sliced purple sweet potato. That purple added more color to my breakfast than I've seen for a long time. So much of what I eat is green and that gets pretty boring pretty fast.

These dietary changes are not permanent. As much as I would love to be able to eat this way for life, I won't be able to sustain it for an indefinite amount of time. The psychological impact of "I can't eat that" is going to do long-term damage to me if I have to keep it up. Cooking meals that appease my family and myself is also incredibly complicated. Tom Brady eats AIP, I think, but he has a personal chef! I do not have good ol' Mr. Brady's budget.

That last paragraph might not be so true if I felt somehow healthier with these eating changes but the truth is, I don't feel any better. I am still getting those sucky headaches when I'm not visiting the chiropractor regularly, my bowels are still sluggish, and I've put some weight on because I'm overeating the foods that I can eat. My dreams have gotten really vivid and bizarre the last two months as well, too. I wake up in a near panic because of dreams of losing my girls, car accidents, planes crashing into my house, tornadoes, floods, and the complete collapse of our government.

The dreams are decidedly not awesome.

But . . .if it allows my husband and I to conceive and carry another baby into our family, it will be worth it.

In the long run, I can see myself possibly keeping with a modified version of this diet for longer term. What I'll need to do is add back one of the food groups and see what my ANAs do. For example, add back eggs and see if my immune system reacts. If not, then add back the night shades or dairy, working one at a time to see what causes the immune flare then avoiding those foods regularly but allowing myself a little wiggle room for special occasions.

Until then, I'll be sticking to AIP for at least another three months or longer if we're unsuccessful in conceiving before that two months is over.

Mother's Day

I have a less-than-life-shattering confession to make: I don't like Mother’s Day.
Why?

Mother’s Day is a full day of reminders of not only the best days of my life, but also the worst days of my life.

I don't have the strength to handle all those emotions in a single day. . .

"Least of These, My Brethren"

I think there are times in each of our lives where we look at the world around us and wonder how in the world we got here. Lately, that feeling has been on the verge of overwhelming but I am taking each day as it comes.

My husband was gone for work for the better part of 6 months, with a few short weekends home here and there. During that time, I took a prep course for the Math Content PRAXIS exam, the final requirement I needed to complete my Virginia teaching license with the math endorsement.

The short version is that I passed, with a little room to spare! The long version involves the hours upon hours that I spent reviewing Calculus, taking practice exams, and commuting to and from the prep course.

My score showed up immediately when I hit the submit button.I started to shake, the kind of excited, emotion-filled tremors that only something you’ve worked so hard for, after putting off for over a decade, can cause.

Three days later, all the excitement was gone as I watched the election coverage. This particular election season was very hard on me. I didn’t have my husband to bounce issues off, to muddle through after the debates, or to distract me in the evenings from the other mundane aspects of life.

My husband’s absence magnified the inconceivable.

I am now fighting in ways I never thought I’d fight before. If you’re asking “why”, then please listen with an open mind because I know that many of my friends and family voted for Trump, as is your right. I am speaking to anyone who takes the time to read this, no matter when or how we may or may not know each other.

There are two truly core principles in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The first is that he is our Savior and Redeemer. He suffered in Gethsemane for all of our sins, no matter how big or small. The second is a principle that extends from before the earth was created and that “thing” is the reason Christ atoned for our sins in the first place: we each have been given our own agency. This means we get to choose how to think, how to act, how to react, in every aspect of our lives.

We fought a war in heaven so that we could all come here and choose for ourselves whether or not to live worthy of entering the Kingdom of Heaven. In Moses 4:1-4, we are taught that “Satan rebelled against me (God, the Father), and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down.”

Satan was cast out because he wanted to take that gift of agency away and have all the glory of God for himself.

As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.” 12th Article of Faith

What does it mean to honor and sustain the law? In light of some of the immediate aftermath of the election, let me share with a few thoughts with you.

I don’t know when life truly begins—when the spirit of a Child of God enters the body and stays there. I can only share that I have felt that life before 10 weeks’ gestation and I have felt it leave, for good, as well. We have knowledge that the spirit can leave the body while the heart is still beating, based on the experiences of others both within the LDS community and those of many other faiths as well; a beating heart does not mean the spirit is in the body. Even within church policies (which are subject to change), a child is not given a name of record unless he or she is born and takes a breath. My experiences with Jackson aren't unique, as women though all of history have lost babies before birth or during childbirth.

The discussion from here in light of recent events naturally turns to abortion. Is it murder or something less grievous, such as simply not accepting the consequences of using your agency poorly? If it is murder, then does that make God the biggest murdered of all, given the sheer number of pregnancies that end each and every day since the dawn of time?

I don’t know and I’d prefer err on the side of life. In contrast to that, abortion is legal, in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, so what does it mean to “err on the side of life?”

To me, this means changing how American men and women of every political ideology views life. The new administration may seek to outlaw abortion, but that doesn’t mean that abortions won’t happen. Women have attempted to abort their pregnancies throughout history and for a variety of reasons (if you aren’t familiar with this, please do a little research). Those same reasons exist today.

So how do we, as a society, prevent abortions from happening if we believe abortion is wrong?

I see two distinctly different areas to fight.  The first is free, reliable birth control for anyone who wants it and proper, detailed reproductive education for all genders at an early age. The latter was never an issue prior to the modernization of the world and single family homes that kept children apart from their parents at night. 

To those who are argue regarding the law of chastity, remember that your values are not those of others. We each have our own agency. The biggest key to preventing abortions is to prevent pregnancy in the first place! Reliable birth control is not the pill, by the way. I’m talking about options that are intended for longer term use and also for technologies that aren’t quite there yet, such as temporary male sterilization.  If a woman doesn’t get pregnant, then she’s not going to be seeking an abortion. 

The second line of defense against abortion is support for mom’s who choose to carry their babies to term. This support can come in many ways, but one very serious area is the cost of childcare. In the US, the average cost of childcare for a year is higher than college tuition. Families who plan ahead can save for almost 20 years for college for their children, but what about daycare? Should a 12 year old start saving her babysitting money so that she can afford daycare for the child she might have in 18 years? 

Absurd? YES!

I run an in-home daycare, so I am keenly aware of what it costs to put an infant or toddler in a small, safe, loving daycare. Daycare providers struggle to balance the cost of tuition with the number of children they can watch both physically and in terms of their mental health as well.

I don’t particularly like pointing out problems without also making a few suggestions that I’ve spent time mulling over, so bear with me for just a moment while I go completely radical on you: Grant new families paid time off.

*Gasp*

What are the drawbacks? Higher taxes, obviously. That money doesn’t come from nowhere. Those taxes can come from a variety of places, but how does using the interest on federally paid student loans sound for a start? 

Or taxing luxury items up the wazoo so that only the wealthiest spenders are hurt? 

For those crying out “It’s MY money” trust me, if you’re reading this, it is unlikely that I’m talking about raising your taxes. I don’t know anyone in the top 5%! Also, it’s not an income tax, but a tax on truly optional purchases, so if any single person doesn’t want to pay it, they don’t have to.

Providing for paid family leave for men and women allows those families to spend time with their new child, establishing breastfeeding, reducing exposure to illnesses that could be harmful, and provides a chance for moms who suffer from postpartum disorders a chance to get help, something a new working mom may not be able to do.

Years ago, politicians fought hard to provide funding to educate each child in America. The idea that an educated public was advantageous won and continues to be important today. That same "Greater Good" mentality is one I believe in as far as providing for new families.

The inability to afford a child is one solid reason for abortion, no matter the age or marital status of the mother. Providing help, in terms of daycare costs, day-to-day living expenses, a real living wage . . . these are all options that anti-abortion Americans need to look at because like it or not, abortions will happen.

These issues all revolve around our agency—our right to choose how we live our lives and just because someone sins differently than I do doesn’t mean that I don’t love them or want to do everything I can to support them.

With those thoughts in mind, I participated with my oldest daughter, my mother-in-law, and two of my sisters-in-law in the Women’s March on Washington on Saturday. It was truly a remarkable day and gave me the opportunity to show my growing daughter that we do not need to be silent. The issues that surround abortion can be fought so that abortion stays safe and the rates can continue to decline.

I also marched for religious freedom. That particular issue was a little further down on the list for the organizers, but it was there and it is very personal to me. My ancestors were kicked out of their homes, multiple times, because of their religion. They fled to Utah, which was a territory at the time. Where to religious refugees have to flee now? The opportunities here are still great and I want that religious freedom to remain . . . for all religions.

For the few of you who think, “Meh, I have what I want” I have one question: The things you have, how did you get them? Did someone march on your behalf in decades past?

Lastly, I marched for those who couldn't march for themselves. We took the Metro into the city and the workers there were hollering and cheering us on. It seemed like they all had a bounce in their step as they watched over a million riders walk on through, marching for equality, marching for women's rights, marching against a man who doesn't believe America is already great and the policy changes he had already implemented to remove the rights of others.

To conclude this not-so-short post about a lot of random related topics I say this: I marched for the future of the world and I did so because I can. . . and I can because others did so for me. 

I owe my present rights and responsibilities to those of the past and am paying it forward now. I marched for "the least of these, my brethren" and I'll do it again. And again. . . because I have been given the privilege to fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.