Remembering Mom
This is how I'll remember Mom and Bob.
I keep seeing her face, smiling, with those big glasses. She adored Bob, which is why she left three days after he did. She knew her daughters would be OK because she raised strong, smart women.
She knew how to fight for what she believed in and her last message to me was to keep telling the stories that people need to hear.
Mom was constrained by society’s view of women until the late 1960s, when she started working with Bob to save the striped bass along the East Coast. She was a self-taught marine biologist, and she and Bob went against what was commonly accepted science in the late 1960s and proved that PCB and DDT pollutuion in coastal estuaries was endangering the species. She and Bob lectures people with PhDs in marine biology and convinced them of the truth. They eventually convinced Congress.
My mother didn’t take no for an answer.
So, for her as well as for Mike, I’ll keep fighting for access to quality health care for all Americans.
Patient Pals & Family Friends
Life o' Mike has a new peer support program for people newly diagnosed with chronic or serious illness or with a new disability and their caregivers.
Patient Pals are people who have experience with various illnesses and disabilities, who can help someone newly diagnosed or with a new disability work through the fear, frustration, confusion and grief often experienced in the first few months.
Family Friends are there to help caregivers and other family members grow into their new role.
People with new illness or disability fare better when they have a role model -- someone who can help them negotiate their new path in life.
We need volunteers, who are asked to donate a minimum of one hour a week. Training is free and includes information on active listening, ways to help and when to know more help is needed.
And of course, we need funding.
To learn more, call Leslie Boyd at 828-243-6712 or e-mail lifeomike@gmail.com.
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